Harare

Thousands of Zimbabweans jostled in line outside the South African visa office in Harare on Tuesday to apply for travel permits in hopes of some relief from their homeland’s crushing political and economic crises. Many slept outside the building after South African authorities relaxed visa restrictions.

A Zimbabwean Cabinet minister has said about 30 000ha of farmland have been recovered from Zimbabwe ruling-party officials who had acquired more than one farm under the government’s land-reform scheme. President Robert Mugabe appointed a land review committee earlier this year to investigate, among other things, multiple farm ownership.

Zimbabwe’s opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, is to send delegations to several African countries to brief them on its efforts to end the political and economic deadlock in the country.

Zimbabwe’s fast-track land-reform programme is meant to benefit landless people forced to live in congested communal areas, but many of the supposed beneficiaries are turning their backs on their new land, saying they want to go back to their original homes.

President Robert Mugabe’s attempts to muzzle the press received a temporary setback on Wednesday when Zimbabwe’s Supreme Court struck down key sections of a law that makes it a criminal offence to publish ”falsehoods”.

The main labour body in Zimbabwe is planning mass action against the government over chronic cash shortages gripping the country, a top labour official said.

Zimbabwe’s ruling party conceded on Wednesday that opposition gains in local elections were ”a rude wake-up call” for its politicians, officials and campaigners.

The Zimbabwe government has more than doubled the price it will pay for maize and wheat in a bid to boost production in the famished Southern African country. It was reported that farmers were holding on to their harvests because of poor prices offered.

Zimbabwe’s main opposition party has won a key by-election in the capital Harare and taken all council seats in the second city of Bulawayo, according to results released on Monday. But the vote was marred by massive voter apathy, with only 11% of voters casting ballots in the capital.

An opposition candidate has won a by-election in the Zimbabwe capital Harare, retaining his party’s dominance in the city after a weekend poll marred by voter apathy. The weekend elections were marred by voter apathy and reported incidents of violence and intimidation in parts of the Southern African country.

The price of fuel in Zimbabwe went up by more than 500 percent on Wednesday as the government announced a deregulation of the petroleum oil industry.

Four weeks after Zimbabwe introduced a range of measures aimed at ending an unprecedented shortage of local bank notes, the situation has not improved, banking officials said on Monday.

Zimbabwe’s opposition gave the government one month to return to talks on the country’s spiralling political and economic crisis, threatening mass demonstrations if the discussions did not resume.

A Zimbabwean government minister said on Saturday the ruling Zanu-PF party will not be rushed into talks with the opposition Movement of Democratic Change (MDC) unless the talks successfully end the country’s political and economic woes.

United Nations officials are threatening to stop delivering food relief to the hungry in Zimbabwe if the government proceeds with plans to take control of the distribution of food aid. The government has denied accusations that it uses food assistance to peddle political influence.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s government gave notice on Thursday it was almost doubling state spending for this year, in a move that economists said would accelerate the collapse of the economy already reeling from galactic inflation.

The incidence of HIV/Aids infection among adults in Zimbabwe has dropped by nearly 10% in three years, according to figures released on Thursday by the government of President Robert Mugabe.

President Robert Mugabe’s regime, accused of withholding food from thousands of starving people in pro-opposition areas, has ordered the United Nations to hand over its famine relief stocks for the state’s controversial food distribution operations, reports said here on Tuesday.

The Zimbabwean opposition said on Friday it would not join a government of national unity with President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party, widening the rift on possible negotiations between the parties to end Zimbabwe’s political and economic chaos.

The Zimbabwean opposition said Friday it would not join a government of national unity with President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party, widening the rift on possible negotiations between the parties to end the country’s political and economic chaos.

President Robert Mugabe on Tuesday hailed Zimbabwe’s military for successfully crushing anti-government protests organised by the opposition early this year, saying the army had helped secure stability.

Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe signalled on Monday he had dug his heels in against international and local attempts to bring his government and the opposition to talks to end the country’s crisis.

President Robert Mugabe’s government announced on Saturday that it was banning the ”hoarding” of cash, in an attempt to deal with a desperate shortage of banknotes in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe’s High Court on Friday upheld treason charges against opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai over claims he plotted to kill President Robert Mugabe.

The government made the unprecedented move of unveiling a range of new travellers’ cheques in huge denominations on Thursday, which it said would ease acute shortages of local currency in Zimbabwe where the economy is hovering on the brink of collapse.

Zimbabwe’s embattled white farmers said on Wednesday that only an end to the country’s political turmoil and a return to good governance will save agriculture, the mainstay of the economy, from collapse.

One of Zimbabwe’s busiest hospitals was having to give away unclaimed corpses in its mortuary to a medical school because the mortuary was overcrowded, a hospital spokesperson reported on Friday.

Zimbabwe’s main opposition party on Thursday offered to suspend its challenge to President Robert Mugabe’s 2001 election victory if the ruling party commits itself to resolving the political crisis in the southern African country.

A bid by Zimbabwe’s churches to start negotiations between President Robert Mugabe and the opposition was in jeopardy on Thursday after a top government minister denounced some of the religious leaders as opposition ”activists” under the control of ”foreign masters”.

President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has ordered top officials in his party to relinquish farms if they have acquired more than one under a controversial land reform programme, a newspaper said on Thursday.

The government of Zimbabwe on Tuesday announced that it would abolish the highest denomination of the country’s currency in circulation within 60 days as one way to curb the current cash shortage that has hit the country.