<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/199502/Zim_icon.GIF" align=left>Jostling for votes on opposition turf in Beit Bridge and Gwanda with less than a few days to go before the March 31 poll, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has continued to drum up his anti-Blair rhetoric. But on this leg of his campaign blitz, he added another "imperialist" target to his list: the Oppenheimer family. Mugabe took a swipe at mining magnate Nicky Oppenheimer, whom he described as selfish.
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/199502/Zim_icon.GIF" align=left>"The only decent meal I have is when I get back home after work, but often we sleep on empty stomachs when our groceries run out. But I am not alone in my suffering, not that it is any consolation. Many of my friends and relatives living here in Glen View have carbon copy lives." In the run up to Zimbabwe’s elections little attention is paid to ordinary people. Amson Hwandih shares his story.
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After the dust of next week’s election has settled, Zimbabwe’s municipalities face the headache of removing graffiti and posters from trees, walls, billboards, commuter buses, government buildings, shops and pushcarts. There are no catchy messages, but colourful campaign media is everywhere. ”People have already made up their minds,” says one political analyst.
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/199502/Zim_icon.GIF" align=left>Tsholotsho has become a symbolic battleground in the Zimbabwean elections with the ruling Zanu-PF, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and independent candidate Jonathan Moyo, former information minister, vying for the parliamentary seat in the March poll. This otherwise sleepy town has impacted like no other on the country’s political landscape.
Hunger is stalking the rural folk in Chimanimani, about 450km east of Harare, and the political fallout could be significant. Traditional chiefs are normally the rearguard of President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF. But this time round, it appears that some have thrown their weight behind Heather Bennet, wife of jailed Movement for Democratic Change MP Roy Bennet. Failure to deal with hunger could be Mugabe’s downfall.
The ruling Zanu-PF in Zimbabwe has set its sights on achieving a two-thirds majority in the parliamentary elections scheduled to take place on March 31. The party’s secretary for administration, Didymus Mutasa, told the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> that "judging by the situation on the ground and the turnout at our rallies, the opposition presence in Parliament will be cut to 15 seats".
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/ 25 February 2005
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is expected to spend the next six weeks on the campaign trail, mending fences with disgruntled provinces whose popular chairpersons have been suspended for attending the controversial Tsholotsho meeting to drum up support for Emmerson Mnangagwa’s failed bid for the party vice-presidency.
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/ 20 January 2005
The former Zimbabwean consul-general to South Africa, Godfrey Dzvairo, was the ringleader of a network of Zimbabwean spies that has been selling confidential Zanu-PF documents, including minutes of the party’s supreme organ — the Politburo — to the South African government.
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/ 17 January 2005
Zanu-PF will contest the March parliamentary elections a divided house. The old guard might have wrestled control of the ruling party in Zimbabwe but its authority has become increasingly tenuous since the bruising leadership struggle at its December congress in which Joyce Mujuru emerged triumphant.
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/ 16 December 2004
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is under pressure from its youth wing to rescind its decision to boycott Zimbabwe’s parliamentary elections scheduled for March next year. ”We will be giving the dictatorship a blank cheque to run Zimbabwe the way they like for the next five years,” said former student leader and MDC MP Job Sikhala.