Harare

An opposition lawmaker in Zimbabwe was released without charges on Wednesday, a day after he was arrested for allegedly inciting violence in the run-up to the March elections, his lawyer said. Nelson Chamisa was on Tuesday arrested for allegedly making an incendiary speech.

Zimbabwe’s traditional stone sculptors, who once earned huge sums from Western tourists, museums and galleries, are now struggling to survive due to their country’s isolation. Many sculptors are now forced to sell their works at a fraction of the price in a country labouring under a slew of economic woes.

Zimbabwe’s main opposition party has ”serious reservations” about the credentials of the man chosen to head a new election commission to supervise crunch legislative polls in March. But the MDC , in a statement issued late Friday, said it hoped the body would do its job without fear or favour.

South Africa’s Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), whose fact-finding mission to Harare was booted out last year, should confine itself to domestic issues and not seek to return, Zimbabwe’s labour minister said in remarks published on Thursday. ”Really, what is the problem of this animal called Cosatu?” he said.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s government reacted on Thursday to criticism of its regime by new United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, calling her ”a fascist”. At a hearing to confirm her appointment as secretary of state this week, Rice referred to Zimbabwe, among others, as an ”outpost of tyranny”.

Zimbabwe authorities have resuscitated a three-year-old charge for a minor misdemeanour against the wife of a jailed opposition MP. Heather Bennett, whose husband, Roy, pushed Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa to the ground, was summoned to appear in court Tuesday on charges of possessing two-way radios without a licence.

At least four Zanu-PF ministers will lose their parliamentary seats after failing to secure nomination in party primaries held in Zimbabwe at the weekend. Meanwhile, President Robert Mugabe hailed Iran as a ”critical partner” and vowed to take cooperation to ”new heights” as he welcomed President Mohammad Khatami to Zimbabwe, a state-run newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Voting for candidates to stand for Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party in parliamentary elections in March was continuing for a third day on Monday amid reports of rampant violence, fraud and confusion. Thousands of Zanu-PF grassroots supporters began queuing early on Saturday.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions has applied to the Zimbabwean government to send a high-powered delegation on a fact-finding mission to the country, two months after officials from the labour organisation were deported. But, said Zimbabwe Minister of Labour Paul Mangwana: ”They have no business to do in my country.”

Zimbabwe’s Information Minister Jonathan Moyo has ”now been officially barred” from contesting the March legislative elections as a candidate of the ruling party. State media said that Moyo ”will not stand on a Zanu-PF ticket in the forthcoming parliamentary elections after the seat was reserved for women candidates to punish those who took part” in an unsanctioned secret succession meeting last year.

The High Court in Zimbabwe has slashed by three years the jail term imposed by a lower court on the alleged mastermind behind a plot to stage a coup in oil rich Equatorial Guinea, his lawyer said on Thursday. Briton Simon Mann was sentenced to seven years in prison by a magistrate after he was convicted of trying to illegally buy weapons that prosecutors argued were to be used to topple long-time President Teodoro Obiang Nguema in Malabo.

Charges have been dropped against four journalists who reported that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe had commandeered one of the national airline’s aircraft to take him on holiday. On Monday, state prosecutors in the Harare magistrates court agreed to remove the four journalists from remand, said their lawyer, Linda Cook.

Zimbabwean police have reported yet another clash between rival groups within the country’s ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party (Zanu-PF). Police in the central district of Gokwe say two groups of angry supporters — each backing different contestants in primary elections — clashed at a small rural business centre ”damaging a lot of property”.

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe on Monday backtracked over the controversial banning of some ruling-party candidates in primary elections set for January 15. Demonstrators from the ruling Zanu-PF party held a second demonstration outside party headquarters, protesting against the imposition of candidates.

Corpses are accumulating in Zimbabwean mortuaries because the country’s last forensic pathologist has resigned, the government confirmed on Monday. Since Alex Mapunda resigned last May there have been no qualified forensic pathologists in Zimbabwe, and about 30 corpses are being stored in mortuaries awaiting forensic testing.

Zimbabwe’s outspoken Minister of Information, Jonathan Moyo, has appealed against a Zanu-PF decision to exclude him from primary elections in his home district of Tsholotsho. Moyo was told that the position will be reserved for a woman, in a move he describes as ”unfair to me and to women”.

Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF party was wracked by further divisions on Tuesday when ordinary members briefly held hostage National Political Commissar Elliot Manyika. Protesters, many of them from Zanu-PF’s Women’s League, blocked the entrance to Zanu-PF’s looming headquarters in downtown Harare, refusing to let Manyika leave.

After initially banning six provincial chairmen from party positions for six months for holding an unauthorised meeting, Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF party on Monday extended the ban to five years. The move comes less than three months before parliamentary elections in the country.

Just three months before parliamentary polls set for March, Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF has slashed several ”prominent names” from contesting important party primary elections. Information Minister and President Robert Mugabe’s chief spin doctor Jonathan Moyo is one of three ministers prohibited from contesting the primaries.

South African-born Zimbabwean nationalist leader Ruth Chinamano has died, family members said on Monday. She was ”in her 70s”, they said. Chinamano began organising women’s demonstrations against colonial and Rhodesia rule in Harare’s Highfields township, a place often cited as the birth of Zimbabwe’s nationalist movement.

Zimbabwe’s controversial information minister Jonathan Moyo has resigned from government after being dropped from the ruling Zanu-PF’s party’s central committee and politburo, reports the Financial Gazette.

A senior official in President Robert Mugabe’s party and Zimbabwe’s new ambassador to Mozambique have been arrested on charges of spying, daily papers reported on Thursday.

This year has been the annus horribilis for Zimbabwe’s financial sector which has suffered its worst crisis that left thousands without access to their salaries and savings in banks forcibly closed by authorities.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has left for Malaysia for his annual vacation, leaving the country’s newly appointed vice-president Joyce Mujuru in charge, state radio said Tuesday. Mujuru becomes the first woman to act as interim head of state and will be in charge until January 8, when Mugabe returns.

Top businesses stand to lose their investments in Zimbabwe’s chaotic banking sector this Christmas after the closure of a seventh private bank for fraud and mismanagement. Thousands of ordinary depositors have been left with empty pocketbooks and firms trading with the bank can’t pay salaries or annual bonuses for the holidays.

The Zimbabwe Independent said on Thursday it is facing a cash crisis after the government froze assets at the newspaper’s bank, which has been a target of a report by the newspaper alleging financial mismanagement. The independent weekly exposed alleged financial mismanagement at CFX Bank on December 17.

Scores of white Zimbabwean farmers dispossessed of their farms under the government’s controversial land reforms have turned to countries in the region and beyond for sustenance, their union says. Dozens have invested in farming in neighbouring Zambia and Mozambique, while others are preparing to settle in Nigeria.

A top-ranking civil servant of President Robert Mugabe’s government was arrested after giving written reprieves to white farmers under imminent threat of having their land confiscated, state radio said on Monday. State radio said the official has been charged with theft and vandalism of farm equipment on already commandeered farms.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Friday dropped three Cabinet ministers from his party’s highest decision-making body, including controversial Information Minister Jonathan Moyo, the state news agency reported. It was not clear if the trio’s fall from favour within the party presaged a possible fall from their Cabinet posts.