Harare

South Africa’s Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma has denied a deterioration in ties with Zimbabwe during a visit to the country in the wake of a diplomatic row.

A lawmaker from Zimbabwe’s main opposition Movement for Democratic Change party was arrested this week by police on unspecified charges. Three other opposition supporters have already been arrested this month.

The mention of the words war veterans conjures up images of large groups of men marching through the city streets in demand of war pensions, or stick wielding groups of people trying to accelerate the country’s land reform programme by camping outside white-owned farms up for compulsory acquisition.

Police said on Tuesday they had found a cache of ammunition on a farm south of Harare which could be part of a ”plot” to disrupt the World Cup cricket matches being held in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe’s state press on Tuesday stoked the diplomatic row over Zimbabwean Information Minister Jonathan Moyo with a warning to the South African government that a formal protest over his alleged slur against South African President Thabo Mbeki had set ”a dangerous precedent”.

State torture and unwarranted arrests have increased dramatically in Zimbabwe in the past week, highlighting a drastic decline in the country’s security that could force the International Cricket Council to re-think the six World Cup matches planned for next month.

A High Court judge seen as having angered the government by ruling against it was released on Tuesday after 24 hours in police custody.

Less than half the land the Zimbabwe government has seized from white farmers to redistribute to landless blacks has been taken up by its new owners in at least one prime farming region, reports said on Friday.

Aides to Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe last month sent a retired white army officer to discuss plans with the head of the country’s Movement for Democratic Change opposition party to edge the long-time leader from power.

Zimbabwe’s independent press, the target of a sustained government offensive last year, has entered 2003 in disarray. The country’s largest circulating daily has seen the removal of its editor, a financial weekly appears to have fallen into hands with close ties to Mugabe while papers owned by his supporters have started up.

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe on Tuesday made his first public reaction to British press reports of alleged plans to force him out of office, under a scheme involving his close political aides.

Zimbabwe’s ruling party on Monday dismissed reports that President Robert Mugabe would retire as part of a plan to set up a power-sharing government to end the country’s political and economic crisis.

Police on Saturday arrested the opposition mayor of Harare, Elias Mudzuri, on allegations that he was addressing an illegal meeting, a representative for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said.

The Zimbabwe government has frozen all school fees including those of private institutions, the latest in wide-ranging price controls aimed at easing economic hardship.

South African labour minister, Membathisi Mdladlana, said in Zimbabwe on Friday that this country had a lot to learn from President Robert Mugabe’s programme of land reform. The political opposition has denounced his remarks as ”chilling”.

China has donated 4 500 tons of maize to famine-hit Zimbabwe, the state-controlled Herald newspaper reported on Friday.

Train services on Zimbabwe’s busiest railway line have been closed for the past three days after illegal gold miners in central Zimbabwe dug large tunnels underneath and right next to the railway line, railway authorities said on Friday.

The editor of a Zimbabwean provincial newspaper in the south of the country was arrested last week under the country’s tough media laws, a regional media watchdog said on Monday.

Food riots in two towns in Zimbabwe could be the start of a
showdown between President Robert Mugabe’s government and a restive population facing shortages of most basic goods, commentators warned on Monday.

An Australian tourist has been stabbed to death in Zimbabwe’s prime tourist destination, the Victoria Falls, state radio reported on Sunday.

Four Zimbabwean police officers manning a food queue were injured on Sunday in clashes with a group of youths who besieged a shopping centre in Chitungwiza town, 23 kilometres south of the capital, police said on Monday.

Zimbabwe’s sole daily newspaper outside ruling party control on Tuesday failed to publish for the tenth successive day, following the departure of its award-winning founder-editor, Geoffrey Nyarota, in a management row many believe has deep political overtones.

Zimbabwe’s economy has declined precipitously in recent weeks, bringing severe shortages of food and fuel and dramatically increasing the desperation of the already beleaguered population.

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe wound up his governing party’s annual conference on Saturday threatening to nationalise oil distribution firms, many of them foreign, to end a crippling fuel shortage in the country.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Friday warned that he will respond to Western hostility against his government by taking a more negative stance against whites in the southern African country.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe says a negative attitude by Britain towards its former colony’s land reform programme pushed the country towards a more radical approach to the changes, a newspaper said on Thursday.

The United States government warned this week that it might take ”intrusive, interventionist measures” to deliver food aid directly to millions of famine-hit Zimbabweans if President Robert Mugabe continues to starve his political opponents.

A top opposition official who was found dead in a Zimbabwe prison last month died of chloroquine poisoning in what authorities said was probably suicide,

Zimbabwe’s consumer price index (CPI) rose by 135,1%in the year to August, after climbing 123,5% in July, figures from the Central Statistical Office showed on Wednesday.