Harare

A white commercial farmer was chased off his land in Zimbabwe and the manager of a coffee plantation was beaten up by gun-toting men, the owners of the properties said on Thursday. Allan Warner, a South African farm manager, received 12 stitches on his head after he was beaten up by a group of about 15 armed men at a coffee farm near the town of Chipinge, in southeastern Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe authorities on Wednesday denied earlier press reports that Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono had issued a threat to seize maize from individuals. The reports had said Gono had suggested the launch of ”Operation Bring Back Maize” to force people to hand over their maize stocks to the state-controlled Grain Marketing Board.

A group of Somali asylum seekers have arrived in Zimbabwe after a six-month trek over 4 000km from their Horn of African nation, a newspaper reported on Wednesday. said ”at least” 26 Somalis, including two women, had surrendered to police in Harare on Monday after ”trickling into the country” in smaller groups from Mozambique.

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe’s governor says the poor way in which new farmers are using land is ”criminal”, the state-controlled Herald newspaper reported on Wednesday. ”It is criminal, the manner in which we are using land,” Gono told a parliamentary committee.

Zimbabwe were put out for only 161 runs by India at Harare Sports Club on Tuesday in their first innings of the second Test. In reply India had not lost a wicket by the tea break and have made 43 runs in reply, leaving a minor deficit of 119 for the lead.

The Zimbabwe government is considering amending the Constitution to allow presidential and parliamentary elections to take place at the same time. Presidential elections are due in 2008, while parliamentary elections are only due in 2010, but Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party was contemplating changing the country’s laws to make the two polls coincide.

A Zimbabwe government official has accused opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai of staging a ”cheap publicity stunt” after Tsvangirai decided to walk to work to protest fuel shortages. Tsvangirai walked to work again on Monday, his spokesperson William Bango said.

Zimbabwe must radically overhaul its land-reform policy to revive the economy and retain membership in the International Monetary Fund, which has given it six months grace from threatened expulsion, analysts say. The Southern African nation, in the throes of economic turmoil, faces a bleak future.

As farming experts in Zimbabwe predict another dismal agricultural season, the country’s vice-president has threatened to take back farms from newly resettled black farmers if they do not fully use the land, a newspaper reported on Saturday. ”If you are not farming properly, this is sabotage at its highest level,” Mujuru said.

Elephants and buffaloes are dying of starvation in a wildlife-rich area of western Zimbabwe, the state-controlled Herald reported on Friday. The paper said at least four elephant calves and several buffaloes have died recently in the Matetsi area near Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe’s prime tourist resort.

Zimbabwe plans to import four endangered Siberian tigers from China for the country’s national park, a project condemned by wildlife experts as potentially cruel and dangerous. Minister of the Environment Francis Nhema said the tigers were in return for Zimbabwe giving China breeding animals such as zebra, elephants and impala.

Zimbabwe’s main opposition is to decide this week whether it will boycott elections to a newly created senate to be held later this year, a spokesperson said on Tuesday. But the Movement for Democratic Change, which currently holds 41 seats in the 150-seat Parliament, has already dismissed the upper house as a distraction from Zimbabwe’s mounting economic and political troubles.

A Cabinet minister in Zimbabwe has warned the government may take over white-owned firms in an exercise similar to actions under Harare’s five-year-old land-reform programme, a newspaper reported on Tuesday. ”We might decide to take over these companies just like we did during the land-reform exercise,” the minister said.

Zimbabwe’s police on Monday warned they will arrest private bus operators who have hiked fares following a doubling of fuel prices amid triple-digit inflation and a lingering transport crisis. Police spokesperson Inspector Loveless Rupere said ”commuter operators should revert to old fares or risk being arrested”.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has quietly signed into law constitutional amendments restricting property and citizenship rights and creating a Senate. Mugabe signed the amendments into law on Friday, the same day the International Monetary Fund deferred a decision for six months on whether to expel Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe would have paid off most of its debts by the time the International Monetary Fund revisits the country in six months, says Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister. The IMF has apparently allowed Zimbabwe a six-month reprieve before deciding whether its membership should be cancelled over unpaid debt.

Zimbabwe’s central bank chief on Friday held eleventh-hour meetings with International Monetary Fund (IMF) officials to lobby support against Harare’s possible expulsion for debt arrears, state radio said. Gono was to meet the full IMF board of directors on Friday evening, the radio report said.

Prisoners in Zimbabwe’s main remand prison are forced to use pages from the Bible as toilet paper, an opposition lawmaker said on Friday. Opposition lawmaker Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga made the remarks following a trip she made to Harare Remand Prison with other members of a parliamentary committee.

The Zimbabwe government more than doubled the price of diesel and petrol on Wednesday as critical fuel shortages persist, state radio reported. ”The pump price of both petrol and diesel has been increased by more than 130% with immediate effect,” the radio report said.

Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister Herbert Murerwa has called for the scrapping of state-administered price controls, launched in 2003 to rein in galloping inflation, a state-run daily said on Tuesday. ”We should move away from price controls. They do not help. It is some of these policies that are creating additional distortions,” said Murerwa.

The high-profile trial of Zimbabwe’s former finance minister Chris Kuruneri for allegedly smuggling money abroad resumed on Monday with his lawyers asking for the judge to be changed. ”The view of the public is that there has been bias in this trial and the court cannot ignore this,” Kuruneri’s lawyer said.

Zimbabwe’s central bank head on Sunday obliquely pleaded against the country’s threatened expulsion from the International Monetary Fund and denied using undeclared foreign exchange to pay back part of the IMF debt. ”Our non-payment of our dues to the IMF remains a source of embarrassment to every self-respecting Zimbabwean whether in the country or the diaspora,” said Gideon Gono.

Corpses are piling up at town hospitals in Zimbabwe because families do not have the fuel available to collect the bodies for burial, a newspaper reported on Friday. The privately-run Daily Mirror said scores of bodies had not been collected from provincial hospitals in Bindura, Marondera and Masvingo.

A woman who tried to enrol at a nursing school by impersonating the wife of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe was on Thursday sentenced to 420 hours of community service by a Harare court. Rosemary Chakacha (24) phoned a matron at a Harare hospital on September 13 last year, saying she was Grace Mugabe and that she was sending two girls to be enrolled immediately.

A Zimbabwe court has cleared a journalist from the banned Daily News for working without accreditation in a test case likely to affect dozens of other journalists, the reporter said on Thursday. Kelvin Jakachira had been charged under the country’s press laws of working for the paper in 2003 without a licence.

Zimbabwe has paid back -million of its -million debt to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which had threatened to expel Harare for arrears, state television said on Wednesday. ”Zimbabwe has managed to pay -million to the IMF out of its own resources,” said a statement read on state television.

Zimbabwe’s Parliament on Tuesday approved a widely condemned Bill that stops white farmers from challenging land grabs in court and curtails the travel and voting rights of those without full citizenship. The Bill was passed by 103 votes against 29 in the 150-member house where President Robert Mugabe’s party has 107 parliamentarians.

Villagers said a meteorite that slammed into rural Zimbabwe sounded like a helicopter as it landed, state media reported on Tuesday. The 4,1kg, white-speckled black lump landed on August 22 in the remote Dotito area of the Zambezi escarpment, about 140km north of the capital, Harare.