Zimbabwe Finance Minister Herbert Murerwa announced new measures on Thursday to raise state revenues in the face of rampant inflation, including extra levies on fuel and the construction of toll gates on all major highways. Taxes on gasoline and diesel will increase and eight new toll gates will be added, he said.
President Robert Mugabe opened a new legislative year on Tuesday with a low key speech to Parliament, blaming economic problems on Britain and other Western critics of his human rights record. Zimbabwe is in a state of economic collapse, suffering from the world’s highest inflation rate — more than 1 000% — and shortages of all basic goods.
Only 40% of the 11-million hectares of land seized from whites since February 2000 have been taken over by black farmers, President Robert Mugabe was quoted as saying on Friday. Mugabe told an annual gathering of 100 traditional tribal leaders the government had resumed allocating land after a temporary halt, according to state radio and the official Herald newspaper.
Zimbabwe’s ruling party is planning a major cleansing exercise to remove elements who are tarnishing its image with bad behaviour, President Robert Mugabe told leading party members on Friday. ”You are not being fair — some people are just being crookish,” he was quoted as telling 400 members of his Zanu-PF central committee.
President Robert Mugabe has threatened to bring down ”the full wrath of the law” against anyone who disturbs Zimbabwean peace and stability. The threat, made in a speech on Tuesday, came after calls by the country’s main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, for street protests to topple Mugabe’s 26-year rule.
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/ 26 February 2006
President Robert Mugabe used his official 82nd birthday celebrations on Saturday to launch a new tirade against the West, boosted by a split in the opposition party. In an apparent play on the name of United States President George Bush, Mugabe warned Zimbabwe’s youth to beware ”the monster of imperialism … lurking in the bush”.
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/ 21 November 2005
President Robert Mugabe has said Zimbabwe will process recently discovered uranium deposits in order to resolve its chronic electrical power shortage, state radio said on Sunday. Mugabe, who has close ties with two countries with controversial nuclear programmes, Iran and North Korea, made the announcement on Saturday.
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/ 12 October 2005
Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono has joined the condemnation of continuing and often violent farm seizures, saying new seizures and the under utilisation of land already confiscated were hurting the government’s effort to check hyperinflation.
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/ 28 September 2005
A government commission is looking into the alleged defection of eight soccer players from a squad that went to play a friendly exhibition match in Britain, a newspaper reported on Wednesday. Officials confirmed on Monday the eight had failed to show up at London’s Heathrow airport last week for the return flight.
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/ 22 September 2005
A Cabinet minister said on Thursday it was up to Britain to compensate thousands of white Zimbabweans whose farms were seized under President Robert Mugabe’s land reform programme. Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said a constitutional amendment Mugabe signed on August 30 that strips landowners of their right to appeal expropriation ”finally settled the land question in Zimbabwe”.