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Cholera has reappeared in Zimbabwe, where more than 4,300 people died of the disease in a recent epidemic, the United Nations Children's Fund reports. UNICEF said Tuesday there have been at least five deaths in the current outbreak... "The fundamentals of the last epidemic are still there. Water is only sporadically available, and sewerage reticulation and refuse collection are only partially working," "It's not the catastrophe that it was last year but it's still a big epidemic of an easily preventable disease that should never have been allowed to happen,"

Zimbabwe's troubled national unity government moved a step closer to breakdown Friday as Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said his formation of the Movement for Democratic Change would cease to interact with its governing partner, the former ruling ZANU-PF party of President Robert Mugabe, following this week's arrest of a top MDC official. Mr. Tsvangirai told reporters in Harare his MDC would "disengage" from ZANU-PF "until such time as confidence and respect are restored among us," clearly alluding to the indictment of MDC Treasurer and Senator Roy Bennett on charges of possessing weapons for purposes of terrorism, and his incarceration following...

Hugo Chavez has become a parody of a tin horn Latin American dictator, strutting about trying to prove to his gang of buddies what a bad-ass he is. Last month Chavez hosted a group of 30 leftist leaders from African and Latin states at the Hilton Resort on Isla Margarita, a luxury resort. Among them über baddies Moamer Kadhafi of Libya (who pitched his trademark tent on the beach) and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.  Too bad Kim Jong-il couldn't make it. I am sure Chavez offered the utmost in hospitality, as he spoke with his peers. He was out to...

A British farmer who stood up to Robert Mugabe and was beaten, abducted and finally had his house burnt down has travelled to Washington to ask the Obama administration to put pressure on the Zimbabwe government before it seizes the last remaining white farms. Ben Freeth and his wife Laura with their children Anna, Phillip and Josh. Ben Freeth, who moved to Zimbabwe from Kent, joined his father-in-law Mike Campbell in taking Mugabe to an international court to stop the farm seizures. Their secret footage of the campaign of intimidation launched against them will form part of a film to...

JOHANNESBURG – Nestle says it will stop buying milk from Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's wife's farm after facing worldwide boycott threats. ... Internet boycott calls had followed reports in Britain's Telegraph that Nestle was buying Mugabe's milk. The Telegraph reported that the farm's former owner, who is white, sold the farm after a campaign of violence.

"Hear our cry, Obama." "Deliver us, Obama." Video at link.

So the circus has come to town again. The unspeakable Gaddafi is given a reasonable 15 minutes to speak, and goes on for an hour and three quarters of clowning, tearing up the UN charter and talking complete nonsense about swine flu. Well, you might say, that’s what Gaddafi does. But why do they let him? OK, manhandling him from the room might have been a bit much to expect, but they could at least have switched his mike off. But naturally everyone simply submitted to having their schedule thrown out and their time wasted. And then, naturally, Mugabe with...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe accused Western countries on Friday of "filthy antics" aimed at undermining a power-sharing government forged in February under a pact with former rival Morgan Tsvangirai. In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Mugabe said the United States and the European Union had refused to lift sanctions on Zimbabwe, and "some of them are working strenuously to divide the parties in the inclusive government." "If they will not assist the inclusive government in rehabilitating our economy, could they please, please stop their filthy clandestine divisive antics," Mugabe said. The United States imposed...

HARARE (AFP) – President Robert Mugabe on Friday lashed out at Western sanctions against him, condemning "bloody whites" for meddling in Zimbabwe's affairs, on the eve of a landmark European Union visit. "Who said the British and the Americans should rule over others? That's why we say down with you. We have not invited these bloody whites. They want to poke their nose into our own affairs. Refuse that," he said. "We have stood stood firm and we have refused to let go. Zimbabwe, sanctions or no sanctions, Zimbabwe remains ours," he told a gathering of his party's youth wing....

HARARE (AFP) – President Robert Mugabe has pardoned 1,500 inmates, more than 10 percent of the prison population, as Zimbabwe struggles to provide them with food and water, an official said Wednesday. Mugabe granted amnesty to 1,544 prisoners, mainly women and juveniles, as well as people with terminal illnesses, said the permanent secretary in the justice ministry David Mangota. "The Zimbabwe Prison Service has faced challenges in... provision of prisoners' rations, clothing and bedding, toiletries and transport among others," Mangota told the official New Ziana news agency. "As a short-term relief option... a proposal to have a general amnesty was...

TRIPOLI (AFP) – Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi blasted Israel at a special African Union summit on Monday on the eve of celebrations to mark his 40-year rule, accusing the Jewish state of causing all the woes facing Africa. Israel is "behind all of Africa's conflicts," Kadhafi told some 30 African leaders gathered under a huge tent at Tripoli airport for a summit focused on solving the continent's trouble spots, including Sudan's Darfur and Somalia. However the one-day meeting ended without proposing concrete steps to do so, the leaders merely adopting a "Tripoli Declaration" and a plan of action "to find...

Zimbabwe's two main political leaders, President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai had talks with outgoing South African Development Community (SADC) chairman and President of South Africa Jacob Zuma into the early hours of Friday morning. Mr. Zuma came to Harare to try and unblock outstanding issues from the political agreement which is nearly a year old and which brought the unity government in Zimbabwe to power in February. Mr. Zuma has had one-on-one talks with both Mr. Mugabe and Mr. Tsvangirai and then with both of them together since he arrived in Harare late Thursday. Mr. Zuma seemed...

The Zimbabwe Defence Forces are heavily factionalised and it is by no means a foregone conclusion that, should anything happen to Mugabe, the army will fall in behind a single successor. This was revealed to me in detail yesterday after an interview I did with SW Radio regarding the story I broke on this blog about Mugabe’s medical trip to Dubai. The factions within the armed forces mirror those within ZANU PF itself. For example, last year in February, when Simba Makoni jettisoned the party to launch a challenge to Mugabe’s hold on the presidency of Zimbabwe, senior army commanders...

Harare - Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Dr Gideon Gono has proposed the reintroduction of the Zimbabwe dollar anchored on gold valued by an independent body comprising all stakeholders. He said the reintroduction of the local currency would help in addressing a number of bottlenecks the country was facing. Dr Gono said the reintroduction of the local unit in the manner he was proposing would go a long way in addressing unavailability of change of small denominations and coins, among other constraints. The RBZ chief said this yesterday while giving oral evidence before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Natural Resources,...

A woman pays her bus fare with 3 trillion in old Zimbabwe dollars — the equivalent of 50 U.S. cents. The collector accepts the brick of neatly folded bundles of a trillion each without bothering to count the notes.

Cape Town - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe is stockpiling arms and ammunition and preparing for war, the Democratic Alliance warned on Thursday.... ..."Mugabe is [also] talking to Venezuela, Cuba and Korea to fund a war-chest in preparation for the referendum and election, following the implementation of the global political agreement (GPA) brokered by former president Thabo Mbeki on behalf of SADC."... ...James said Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party appeared to be "mobilising for war against their own citizens"....

NOTE: This article was written in January, 2005. But it is actually more applicable and prophetic today than it was then. It is a little long but well worth your time. By Gemma Meyer (Gemma Meyer is the pseudonym of a South African journalist. She and her husband, a former conservative member of parliament, still reside in South Africa.) People used to say that South Africa was 20 years behind the rest of the Western world. Television, for example, came late to South Africa (but so did pornography and the gay rights movement). Today, however, South Africa may be the...

The Cambridge police commissioner today defended the actions of the sergeant who arrested prominent black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. last week at his home, saying he believed the sergeant acted "consistent with his training" and without racial bias. "I don't believe that Sergeant [James M.] Crowley acted with any racial motivation at all," said Commissioner Robert Haas. Haas also revealed, in response to reporters' questions at the news conference, that Gates's house had been broken into before the incident. He did not specify exactly when the break-in had taken place. Asked about Obama's comment, Cambridge police commissioner Robert...

Our Bully-in-Chief is at it again. His new target is the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Remember last week when the CBO testified before Congress about Obamacare being a budget buster, and how it will drive up health costs? That report was a major blow to the President's push toward socialized medicine. The report was truthful, but the truth does not play well in Chicago politics. In Chicago, when the numbers don't work, you don't change the program, you change the numbers. And wouldn't you know, as a guest on this morning's today show, the President mentioned that he just had...

Politico Miscalculation Would Mean Much Higher Deficits Than the Administration Is Now Acknowledging A series of POLITICO interviews in recent days with independent economists of varied political stripes found widespread disdain for Obama’s first round of assumptions, with some experts invoking such phrases as “rosy” and “fantasy.” (CBS/AP) President Barack Obama’s economic forecasts for long-term growth are too optimistic, many economists warn, a miscalculation that would mean budget deficits will be much higher than the administration is now acknowledging. The White House will be forced to confront the disconnect between its original, upbeat predictions and the mainstream consensus about how...

ZIMBABWE’S state media reported yester day that Robert Mugabe described the US assistant secretary of state for Africa as “an idiot” after their acrimonious meeting at the African Unit summit meeting in Libya. # Mugabe calls US official an idiot According to the Herald newspaper, Mugabe said nothing came of the talks. “You wouldn’t speak to an idiot of that nature. Who is he? “I hope he is not speaking for Barack Obama. I told him he was a shame, a great shame being an African-American,” Mugabe was quoted as saying about Johnnie Carson.

HARARE: Zimbabwe's state media reported Monday that President Robert Mugabe described the US assistant secretary of state for African affairs as ``an idiot'' after an acrimonious meeting between the two at an African summit in Libya. The state Herald newspaper carried the remarks after a briefing Mugabe gave to Zimbabwean reporters at the end of last week's summit of the continentwide African Union. US Embassy officials in Zimbabwe and Ethiopia, where Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson is visiting, would not comment on the remarks. According to the Herald paper, Mugabe said nothing came out of those talks. ``You wouldn't...

JOHANNESBURG – Human Rights Watch said Friday that Zimbabwe's armed forces have taken over diamond fields in the east and killed more than 200 people, forcing children to search for the precious gems and beating villagers who get in the way.

WASHINGTON -- Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is attempting something rare and difficult -- sharing power with the man who tried to murder him. Every Monday morning, Tsvangirai conducts public business across the table from Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's president, founder and oppressor. During a recent interview in Washington, Tsvangirai observed to me that the 85-year-old Mugabe "is someone who can be charming when he wants. I am on guard when he becomes charming. It is when I'm most suspicious of his intentions." Mugabe has a long history of co-opting his political opponents -- or killing them. "He has not co-opted...

Political Science 101 May 18, 2009 — Ideally, science should be non-partisan and stay out of politics.  That ideal is not always met, as the following recent stories illustrate. The intellectual president:  New Scientist published a commentary, “Hail to the intellectual president,” by Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science.  Opening line: “If you liked George W. Bush, it wasn’t because of his brain.”  Ronald Reagan, John McCain and Sarah Palin were other targets labeled anti-intellectual in the article, along with McCarthy and Eisenhower.  Obama, by contrast, is “the intellectual president,” in his opinion.  “With the coming of...

Zimbabwe's Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, has said the new unity government is broke and can not meet trade union demands for higher wages. Mr Tsvangirai said no state worker, including President Robert Mugabe, was earning more than $100 (£67) a month. The unions have called for a monthly minimum of $450 and threatened to go on strike if their demand is not met. "This government is broke, and we are only able to pay the $100 allowance," Mr Tsvangirai told the crowds

(edit)Hong Kong-based British photographer Richard Jones encountered the 43-year-old wife of Robert Mugabe as she walked down a street near her luxury hotel in the heart of the city to go shopping.She punched him in the face when he tried to take pictures of her on January 15, leaving Mr Jones with bruises and cuts where her diamond-encrusted ring had smashed into his face. Mr Jones told AFP: "I think it's a disgrace for the Hong Kong government to allow a person to walk on a street in Hong Kong, punch a member of the media, and walk free from...

Nine years ago, Zimbabwe had more than 4,000 white-owned commercial farms. In a fresh wave of invasions, farmers keep their guns close at hand as ZANU-PF thugs lay siege to many of the 300 that remain . Many of the invaded farms are sitting idle or neglected despite a desperate need for food in Zimbabwe, where three-quarters of the population is dependent on food aid from foreign donors. Largely because of the invasions, Zimbabwe's farm output has dropped by 50 to 70 per cent in the past seven years, and most people subsist on one meal a day. Mr. Mugabe...

HARARE, Zimbabwe – President Robert Mugabe and a longtime opposition leader-turned-finance minister made an unusual joint appeal Thursday for $5 billion (euro3.66 billion) in international aid to revive Zimbabwe's shattered economy. The two men presented an economic recovery program that scraps the stringent price controls which have fueled a black market and spiraling inflation. It also sets up "safety nets and social protection for vulnerable groups exposed to market forces," Finance Minister Tendai Biti said, without offering details. The longtime opponents disagreed, however, over the causes of the country's economic meltdown. Biti said Zimbabwe had to do its part by...

Economists have long used 1920s Germany as the classic example of what can happen to a nation when monetary inflation gets out of control. So rapid was the inflation of the money supply that the exchange rate went from 60 marks per U.S. dollar during the first half of 1921 to 8,000 marks per dollar by December 1922. There is an old story about an elderly German man who in 1919 was sent to an insane asylum. Early in 1923, the doctors decided that this man was cured and told him to take a taxicab to the home of his...

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe said the car crash that killed Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's wife was "the hand of God", speaking at a funeral service on Tuesday. "It will take him time to recover from this shock. I plead with you to accept it, it's the hand of God," Mugabe told hundreds of mourners gathered at a Methodist church in Harare. The remarks were Mugabe's first public comments on the crash that killed Susan Tsvangirai and injured her husband on Friday. An oncoming truck hit their 4x4 on a potholed highway outside Harare, sending their vehicle flipping off the road....

HARARE (AFP) – Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was flown to neighbouring Botswana for medical tests on Saturday after being seriously injured in a car crash that killed his wife, his party said. "I do not know when he will be back, he will undergo a check-up, but he is out of danger now," a spokesman for Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said. Hours earlier, Tsvangirai -- who suffered neck and head injuries in Friday's crash -- was seen by an AFP reporter walking out of the Avenues Clinic in Harare accompanied by his top allies. The crash happened...

HARARE (AFP) – Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's party on Saturday pushed for an independent probe of the car crash that killed his wife and injured him, as an official said a US aid truck was involved. Tsvangirai, a longtime rival of President Robert Mugabe who recently became prime minister in a unity government aimed at ending months of political turmoil, remained in stable condition in hospital after the crash on Friday. "Police are making their own investigation, we are also making our own," said Finance Minister Tendai Biti, also the number two leader of Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change...

HARARE, Zimbabwe: The prime minister of Zimbabwe, Morgan Tsvangirai, was hurt and his wife, Susan, fatally injured on Friday in a car crash about 45 miles south of the capital, according to officials of Tsvangirai's political party, the Movement for Democratic Change. Tsvangirai was heading to his rural home for a Saturday rally when the crash occurred Friday afternoon. From his hospital bed in Harare on Friday, he told one of his aides that a large truck driving on the other side of the road had come toward his Land Cruiser, the middle vehicle in a three car convoy. The...

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has vowed to continue seizing land from white farmers after a spate of "farm invasions" over the past month. Speaking at a rally to celebrate his 85th birthday, he also promised to push for majority Zimbabwean ownership of companies operating in the country. Mugabe supporters raised $250,000 (£176,000) for a lavish birthday party in Chinhoyi, north-west of Harare. Zimbabwe asked African states for $2bn (£1.4bn) in economic aid just days ago.

CHINHOYI, Zimbabwe (AP) - The president of Zimbabwe is vowing that land seizures in his country will continue. And he's calling for the last of Zimbabwe's white farmers to leave. He says, "They have no place there." Robert Mugabe was addressing supporters at a celebration marking his 85th birthday. The bash reportedly cost $250,000. It came as the African country's new unity government tries to raise money to rescue Zimbabwe's collapsed economy.

HONG KONG - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe appears to have picked Hong Kong for his final bolt hole as power slips inexorably out of his hands. He couldn't have chosen a more secure place. It is not just that his US$5 million three-storey villa stands on one of the fabled "Nine Dragons" that in historic times provided the British colonial army a mountainous protective barrier against Chinese imperial forces, and is approachable only by a narrow road from Tai Po, a small town in the New Territories. It is the protection from intrusion that is all but guaranteed by the...

President Robert Mugabe in a published interview rejected demands that he should dismiss two discredited officials, while the Zimbabwean government on Thursday asked its neighbors for a $2 billion loan package to aid its collapsed economy. In the interview with the state Herald newspaper to mark his 85th birthday, Mugabe ... "It is important not to jump off the bridge before there is enough water under it,"

Churches in Zimbabwe are working to feed and heal a nation abandoned by its leadersTwenty-five years ago, people involved in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa would say wistfully: “Look at Zimbabwe. It's come through a bitter war of liberation without wrecking its social cohesion, it's developed a proper democratic culture and it's feeding itself.” Granted, this was, even then, a slightly too rosy picture, but it wasn't nonsense. It represented a conviction that Zimbabwe was showing what was possible to its neighbours and indeed to the whole continent. And this means that one of the worst of the...

MUGABE'S MODEL: NORTH KOREA'S 'GREAT LEADER" RW Johnson Visitors to the offices of high-ranking officials in Robert Mugabe's beleaguered government in recent weeks have noticed the same book open for study: Juche ! The Speeches and Writings of Kim Il Sung. "Some may actually believe this stuff but it's more that they want to understand where the President is coming from," one insider told me. For it appears that those who have become anxious about Mugabe's Canute-like attempt to order inflation of 7,000 per cent to be halved and to subordinate the economy in general to his political will, is...

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe told reporters Thursday he doesn't see why the arrest of a longtime rival has made news around the world and strained relations with his new governing partners. "The issue of Roy Bennett is making headlines worldwide. I wonder why?" Mugabe said Thursday.

Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez, rebuffed by voters in his previous attempt to become president for life, has now taken a giant step closer to his goal. A reported 54.4 percent of voters approved a referendum on Feb. 15 that would permit Chavez to run for re-election indefinitely. It was the sort of "election" we remember from the communist days -- or see today in Zimbabwe. According to the Economist: "Public buildings and vehicles were plastered with pro-Chavez propaganda. State television and radio channels turned over almost their entire resources to promoting the campaign. And even the Caracas metro obliged passengers...

ZIMBABWE’S President Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace have secretly bought a £4m bolt-hole in the Far East while his country struggles with hyper-inflation, mass unemployment and a cholera epidemic. The Mugabes’ house, in an exclusive residential complex in Hong Kong, was purchased on their behalf by a middleman through a shadowy company whose registered office is in a run-down tenement block. When a reporter and a photographer called at the house last week, they were attacked by the Zimbabwean occupants. The assailants were questioned by the police. The property came to light during a Sunday Times investigation into the...

Letter from Zimbabwe sent in by John Winter I reckon that these are the last days of TKM and ZPF. The darkest hour is always before dawn. We are all terrified at what they are going to destroy next........I mean they are actually ploughing down brick and mortar houses and one family with twin boys of 10 had no chance of salvaging anything when 100 riot police came in with AK47's and bulldozers and demolished their beautiful house - 5 bedrooms and pine ceilings - because it was 'too close to the airport', so we are feeling extremely insecure right...

It is the 85th birthday of President Mugabe this month and the zealots of his Zanu (PF) party are determined that it should be an occasion that their great leader will never forget. In recent days they have been out soliciting “donations” from corporate Zimbabwe and have drawn up a wish list that is scarcely credible in a land where seven million citizens survive on international food aid, 94 per cent are jobless and cholera rampages through a population debilitated by hunger. The list includes 2,000 bottles of champagne (Moët & Chandon or '61 Bollinger preferred); 8,000 lobsters; 100kg of...

IRAN has pledged to strengthen relations with Zimbabwe that would see the Islamic Republic offering practical solutions to the current challenges facing the country. In a meeting with President Mugabe on the sidelines of the just-ended 12th African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mr Manouchehr Mottaki said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wished Zimbabwe well. He offered 30 tonnes of drugs to help fight cholera in the country. The drugs are expected in the country soon. President Mugabe thanked Iran for the drugs saying the donation would go a long way in fighting the epidemic. He briefed the...

February 3, 2009 Nothing to lose: how Mugabe’s banker turned Z$1,000,000,000,000 into Z$1 Notes with many zeros confused people and computers. So Gideon Gono ordered that noughts be crossed out Martin Fletcher in Harare Gideon Gono, widely regarded as the world’s most disastrous central banker, knocked another 12 zeros off the Zimbabwean dollar yesterday in an attempt to bring the national currency back from the realms of the fantastical. In a stroke, the governor of Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank slashed the street value of the Zimbabwean dollar from $250 trillion to one US dollar to 250, because the computers, calculators and...

Gideon Gono, widely regarded as the world’s most disastrous central banker, knocked another 12 zeros off the Zimbabwean dollar yesterday in an attempt to bring the national currency back from the realms of the fantastical. In a stroke, the governor of Zimbabwe’s Reserve Bank slashed the street value of the Zimbabwean dollar from $250 trillion to one US dollar to 250, because the computers, calculators and people could no longer cope with all the zeros. To counter an inflation rate that economists now estimate to be 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (five sextillion) per cent, Mr Gono has now struck 25 zeros from the...

Zimbabwe abandons its currency Zimbabweans will be allowed to conduct business in other currencies, alongside the Zimbabwe dollar, in an effort to stem the country's runaway inflation. The announcement was made by acting Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa. BBC southern Africa correspondent Peter Biles says the Zimbabwean dollar has become a laughing stock. A Z$100 trillion note was recently introduced. Until now only licensed businesses could accept foreign currencies, although it was common practice. The country is also facing a deepening humanitarian crisis as well. A cholera outbreak has killed over 3,000 people according to the World Health Organization (WHO). And...

By Lisa Schlein Geneva 23 January 2009 The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies says a nightmare scenario is unfolding in Zimbabwe as the number of cholera deaths and cases continues to mount. The Red Cross says it is hit with a severe funding crisis and this is hampering its ability to contain the deadly disease. Senior health officer for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Tammam Aloudat, has recently returned from Zimbabwe. He says the cholera outbreak in the country is increasing in scale and it is claiming more lives. "The scenario...