Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe is fighting for his political life in a behind-the-scenes power struggle within his own party that could oust him faster than street battles with a reinvigorated and determined political opposition. Analysts say rival factions within the ruling party are plotting to force the president to step down.
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/ 1 December 2006
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Four women emaciated by Aids, perilously close to death and abandoned by the state healthcare system, cling tenaciously to life at a remote South African clinic where doctors give them one last fighting chance. The women, sent home to die by doctors at a state hospital, arrived critically ill.
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/ 6 November 2006
At an informal, unlicensed bar at a house in a remote corner of Soweto, men and women sip lukewarm beer, mingle, flirt and sometimes dance to driving and monotonous kwaito rhythms. They share a secret. The bar, called a shebeen in the townships, is one of the places where young, black gay people don’t have to hide who they are.
Watch your back in South Africa. They kill folks here. Murder them at a bewildering rate. Robbers kill their victims, bystanders kill criminals, and family members kill each other. Gun battles erupt on streets or in shopping malls. Passers-by whip out pistols and join in firefights between criminals and police or security guards.
Zimbabweans too proud to cry about their troubles could soon find it too dangerous to joke about them. Parliament next month will debate proposals to give the secret police extraordinary powers to intercept, read or listen to the mail, e-mail, telephone or cellphone communications of any of its citizens without the approval of any court.
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/ 29 November 2005
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Aids activists said on Monday that mismanagement, bureaucracy and inadequate funding have kept the world from meeting the goal of providing treatment to three million people infected by HIV/Aids by the end of the year. The International Treatment Preparedness Coalition said the goal fell short by at least a million people.
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/ 18 November 2005
Three years after the end of a fierce civil war, foreign businessmen and a handful of wealthy Angolans, mostly government officials, reap huge profits from a post-war boom fuelled by oil and diamonds, but most of Luanda’s five million people live in ramshackle shacks in fetid and treeless slums.
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/ 19 October 2005
A Zimbabwean archbishop said on Wednesday he fears 200 000 of his countrymen could die by early next year because of food shortages he blames on his government, and called for President Robert Mugabe’s ouster. Roman Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube said: ”The amount of suffering is beyond imagination.”
Former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide charged on Tuesday that the United States and France are orchestrating a ”black holocaust” in Haiti that has killed more than 10 000 of his supporters since he was ousted last year. Speaking to reporters in Pretoria, Aristide said he remains the democratically elected president of Haiti.
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Zimbabwe’s main opposition said on Wednesday an investigation into last week’s election indicates massive fraud in at least 30 seats won by the ruling Zanu-PF. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said in 11 races the winning Zanu-PF candidate got more votes in the official returns than the electoral commission said were cast.