Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has ruled out talks with Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the main opposition party Movement for Democratic Change. ”No sir, I don’t want to meet you,” he told thousands gathered in Harare’s Heroes’ Acre, a shrine to those killed during the country’s independence war.
Police in the Zimbabwean capital Harare are arresting more than 200 people daily as they continue a blitz on market vendors and street vagrants, state radio reported on Sunday. ”Police are aware that touts, street people and illegal vendors that had disappeared from the city are gradually resurfacing,” the radio said.
Zimbabwe has not been informed of a visit next week by a United States ambassador to examine the humanitarian situation in the Southern African country. Secretary for foreign affairs Joey Bimha said he would have to verify whether ambassador Tony Hall had been granted a visa.
As South Africa was announcing a partial finance rescue package for Zimbabwe on Wednesday, President Robert Mugabe instructed his Zanu-PF politburo to extend Operation Murambatsvina to urban suburbs. Mugabe accused his local government and security arms of ”hypocrisy” for halting the demolitions.
Proposed changes to Zimbabwe’s Constitution that seek to make it easier for the government to seize farmland from whites could be aimed at ethnic cleansing, the country’s top white farmer said on Tuesday. Zimbabwe’s Parliament is expected to debate amendments that will make it impossible for white farmers to seek legal recourse once the government has earmarked their land for expropriation.
New Zealand arrived in Harare on Tuesday for the start of their controversial tour of Zimbabwe. They spent most of the day travelling from the Namibian capital, Windhoek, where they had a week’s preparation for two Test matches and a triangular one-day international series involving Zimbabwe and India over the next month.
Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai walked out of court a free man on Tuesday after prosecutors scrapped treason charges that had been hanging over his head since 2003. Prosecutor Florence Ziyambi told the court that the state was ”withdrawing the charges before plea” without stating any reasons for the about-turn.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe returned to work on Monday after a visit to China yielded a few agreements but fell way short of an expected rescue package for his country, and remained defiant of Western criticism of his regime. The 81-year-old leader shrugged off global pressure over his government’s urban demolition blitz.
Zimbabwean police on Friday charged a leading opposition lawmaker under the country’s tough security laws after arresting him when he went to file a complaint of vandalism against ruling-party supporters, his lawyer said. Gift Chimanikire, veteran trade unionist, was arrested together with an aide inside a Harare police station.
Two South African pilots jailed in Zimbabwe over their alleged involvement in a plot to overthrow the government in Equatorial Guinea will only be released at the weekend. Niel Steyl and Hendrik Hamman were arrested along with 68 others in March last year when they landed a Boeing 727 in Harare to pick up an assortment of weapons.
The publishers of a banned Zimbabwean daily have launched a legal appeal against a decision by a government media commission last week denying them a licence to publish, their lawyer said on Wednesday. The Daily News and the Daily News on Sunday were banned nearly two years ago.
Army trucks ferried the last residents evicted from Porta Farm township to rural areas in Zimbabwe on Wednesday, despite government pledges it had ended its demolition campaign that has left up to 700Â 000 people without homes or livelihoods.
The Zimbabwe government has closed down a boarding school in the east of the country where at least 53 pupils were sexually abused by a handful of adults including a teacher and a caretaker, the state-controlled Herald newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Zimbabwe has resumed destroying homes, witnesses said on Tuesday, a day after United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said he plans to visit the country to discuss the demolition campaign. Meanwhile, South African opposition Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon has launched his party’s Stop the Mugabe Loan Campaign.
A United Nations official said on Monday that Zimbabwe has not halted its demolitions campaign despite assurances from the government last week that the razing of shacks and other unauthorised homes had stopped. The official said ”we are still getting reports that, for instance, in Chipinge demolitions have continued”.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has accepted an invitation by President Robert Mugabe to visit Zimbabwe to assess the government’s controversial campaign of shack clearances, the Herald newspaper reported on Monday.
Zimbabwean opposition and human rights activists are ”ecstatic” at a United Nations envoy’s report denouncing a government crackdown that has forced thousands of poor from their homes and jobs. The report calls the operation a ”disastrous venture” that has left 700Â 000 people without homes or jobs.
The Zimbabwe government is studying a United Nations report on a controversial government campaign of shack and home demolitions and President Robert Mugabe will respond to it at an ”appropriate time”, it was reported on Friday.
A campaign of political persecution is being waged against Zanu-PF politicians aligned to Rural Housing and Social Amenities Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, the Mail & Guardian has learnt. The current tension, which has its genesis in the power struggle over President Robert Mugabe’s successor, has triggered speculation about a split in the 42-year-old party.
Zimbabwe’s central bank on Thursday massively devalued the local currency in a bid to increase inflows of scarce foreign currency as the country battles to find hard cash to pay for fuel, food and electricity. The Zimbabwe dollar was devalued by 40% from about Z 500 to Z 500 to the United States dollar.
Police raided church halls in Zimbabwe’s second city of Bulawayo on Wednesday, rounding up people who had been sheltering there since their homes were destroyed in a so-called urban renewal drive, a human rights lawyer said on Thursday.
A report from a United Nations fact-finding mission on Zimbabwe’s demolition campaign was turned over to the Harare government on Wednesday and will be made public on Friday or Monday, UN spokesperson Marie Okabe told a press briefing.
The Zimbabwean government has again refused to license one of the country’s only independent daily newspapers, which has been banned from publishing for more than two years, the state-owned Herald newspaper reported on Tuesday.
A group of South African church leaders from the South African Council of Churches (SACC) arrived back in Zimbabwe on Monday to discuss an aid package for people affected by the government’s blitz on illegal homes and market stalls that has left hundreds of thousands homeless. The visit follows a fact-finding mission last week by an SACC delegation.
The Zimbabwe government has published a draft Bill to overhaul the country’s Constitution and provide for the re-introduction of a two-chamber Parliament, the state-run Ziana news agency said on Saturday. The Constitution has so far been amended at least 16 times.
President Robert Mugabe on Friday stressed Zimbabwe’s solidarity with South Africa, defying reports of mounting pressure on the South African government to take a hardline stance towards its crisis-ridden northern neighbour. Mugabe said his country is ”pleased to continue our solidarity and comradeship” with South Africa.
President Robert Mugabe’s former spin doctor Jonathan Moyo, sacked earlier this year for defying Zimbabwe’s ruling party, is working on a book about his time in government, a newspaper reported Friday. Once seen as Mugabe’s blue-eyed boy, the former information minister has become a fierce critic of the Zimbabwean government.
A fact-finding mission by South African clergy on Zimbabwe’s demolitions campaign was ”sponsored by Britain and part of a plot to unseat President Robert Mugabe’s government”, The Herald said on Friday. Meanwhile, Mugabe’s former spin doctor Jonathan Moyo is working on a book about his time in the government.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Thursday said his government should have emphasised the ”reconstruction aspect” of a controversial programme of shack demolitions that human rights groups say has left at least 300Â 000 people homeless.
A male Zimbabwean athlete who won several awards in women’s competitions in Southern Africa was on Thursday sentenced to four years in jail for offensive behaviour, the prosecutor said. Samukeliso Sithole (18) was arrested in February after a female friend lodged a complaint to police.
Two South African pilots arrested in Zimbabwe last year over an alleged plot to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea will be released this month after serving two-thirds of their 16-month prison terms, their lawyer said on Thursday. The two men were jailed by a Harare magistrate last September.
The controversial Operation Murambatsvina and President Thabo Mbeki’s role in the Zimbabwean crisis has heightened divisions within Zimbabwe’s two major political parties, and has caused ructions within the diaspora. Opposition Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai is taking strain for ”betraying” the party by meeting Mbeki in Pretoria.