Trevor Ncube, the owner and publisher of the Mail & Guardian and Zimbabwe’s Standard and Independent had his passport impounded as he landed in Bulawayo on Wednesday. The confiscation of Ncube’s passport is based on a recent set of laws which limits citizenship of those who the Zimbabwe government alleges to be harming the interests of the country.

President Thabo Mbeki’s sacking on Tuesday of his deputy, Jacob Zuma, has been widely lauded but also criticised, while Zuma himself has accepted his fate.

President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party secured a two-thirds majority on Saturday, winning 71 seats which along with 30 seats appointed directly by the president carried it to a major victory. Mugabe (81) will now be able to rewrite his country’s Constitution unopposed.

Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Friday dismissed the elections as a ”disgusting massive fraud” and accused President Robert Mugabe of treating his country like ”his private property”. Incoming election results are showing that Mugabe’s ruling party is starting to close in on Tsvangirai’s early lead.

An interdict to prevent the Mail & Guardian from publishing was dismissed with costs in the High Court at 3am on Friday morning, after the attempt to gag the newspaper was launched at midnight by lawyers acting for the National Council of Provinces and its chairperson, Joyce Kgoali.

Two South African men being held in Pakistan have apparently told investigators that they received ”basic al-Qaeda training,” ThisDay newspaper reports on Monday. The newspaper said that Fordsburg doctor Feroz Ganchi and Laudium student Zubair Ismail had both admitted that they were recruited in South Africa and had travelled to Pakistan for training.