Free Republic

In 2000, Timon Shava was a hero of Zimbabwe’s land reform program when he joined hundreds of other landless peasants in a wave of land seizures and evictions of white farmers. Today, he is homeless after police, acting on behalf of President Robert Mugabe’s wife Grace, destroyed dozens of thatch dwellings on a farm that she wants to control. The First Lady, who has another farm in the area, said last year that she wanted to turn this farm into a wildlife conservancy that could raise money for an orphanage. A new twist on the long struggle over land in...

Boko Haram is officially an international problem. At least according to the African Union, which asked the United Nations Security Council on Jan. 29 to greenlight an intervention force to bring the Islamist group to its knees. The A.U. plans a 7,500-strong military force, named the Multinational Joint Task Force, and staffed by Nigerian, Cameroonian, Chadian and Beninese troops. If the coalition gets the go-ahead, the soldiers will base in their respective countries, but coordinate and assist each other.

The African Union’s rotating post of chairman has gone to Robert Mugabe. Zimbabwe’s veteran president enjoys respect across the continent, but faces travel bans from both the US and EU for harassing opponents. Mugabe assumed the largely ceremonial role on Friday at an African Union (AU) summit in Addis Ababa as it leaders and UN chief Ban Ki-moon called for global action against Boko Haram in Nigeria. […] Western nations accuse Mugabe, a former guerrilla leader who fought against white-minority rule in former British-ruled Rhodesia, of crushing political dissent and ruining Zimbabwe’s rural-based economy. For many in Africa, however, he...

Several million Zimbabweans left for South Africa and other countries during past economic turmoil. Now, a year after the re-election of longtime leader Robert Mugabe, the country is facing new financial hardships. Zimbabwe's unemployment rate is estimated at 80 percent, pushing many people try to earn a living as street traders.

Salisbury, Rhodesia (now the impoverished toilet of Harare, Zimbabwe) - 1960s  (photo: RhodesiaRemembered ) More at Reaganite Republican...

Earlier Tuesday, NBC News reported that President Barack Obama had shaken hands with Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe. However, the UK Telegraph's Josie Ensor reported that Obama "was asked to take his seat just before reaching Mugabe." Complicating matters, another article in the UK Telegraph also claimed that Obama had shaken hands with Mugabe--in very similar terms to those used in the NBC article. Breitbart News caught the discrepancy--and suddenly the NBC News article was corrected, with no notice. Before: On his way to the rostrum, Obama also shook the hand of Robert Mugabe, the strongman ruler of Zimbabwe, and hugged...

President Robert Mugabe has yet again revived his acerbic attacks on Zimbabwe's gay community whom he called worse than pigs and threatened to behead them. Mugabe is a self-proclaimed homophobe who in the past has labelled gay people "worse than pigs and dogs", and threatened them with severe punishment. Mugabe's latest threats were made in Mutare where he was addressing a rally at the Aerodrome Ground on Tuesday, according to a NewsDay report. In the report, Mugabe is quoted telling his followers that: "If you take men and lock them in a house for five years and tell them to...

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe has said he won't step down because of pressure from Britain and other countries for a change in government. “You want me to retire? You do not talk of retirement when elections are coming, do you?” the 89-year-old president told Kyodo News in an interview in the Japanese city of Yokohama where he was attending and a thre- day summit on African development. Mugabe will lead his Zanu PF party in elections to choose a substantive government this year, replacing the coalition administration he formed with rival Morgan Tsvangirai after disputed polls in 2008. The Constitutional Court...

The Regime Wants Your Property and Your Heart, but God Wins by John deWitt Sometimes I think the Left really lacks self-awareness of how the news they control presents to people who don’t support them. The headlines in the last ten days have been dominated by two things: Cypriot capital controls, and homosexual marriage before the Supreme Court. The Media Directorate might actually think these things are about, respectively, orderly stabilization of the Eurozone and the heroic advance of Freedom. That’s not what they look like to Rhodies.The big-picture narrative of Cypriot capital controls the Media Directorate isn’t telling you very...

PRESIDENT Mugabe yesterday said homosexuals and lesbians will be punished severely for their behaviour which is inconsistent with African and Christian values. He made the remarks at the launch of the Tongogara Community Share Ownership Tru-st at Unki Mine. Zimbabweans told Copac during the outreach programme that they want homosexuality outlawed. Said the President: "Do not get tempted into that (homosexuality). You are young people. Mukaenda ikoko we will punish you severely." He took a swipe at recent utterances by British Prime Minister David Cameron that London will not aid countries that do not respect gay rights. Mr Cameron said...

Legendary Rhodesian Pilot Chris Dixon "Green Leader" passed away in Harare yesterday after his last battle with Cancer.

Zimbabwean farmers attend a meeting of white commercial farmers in capital Harare Zimbabwe's Supreme Court heard a case on behalf of three farmers who claimed the constitution excluded confiscation of their land because they bought their properties after the colonial era ended with independence in 1980. The Supreme Court did not agree and quickly dismissed their application. One of the farmers, Colin Cloete, a former president of the Commercial Farmers’ Union at the height of often violent land invasions seven years ago, was one of the applicants. He, like many of his colleagues, has been arrested, harassed and appeared in...

Mugabe loyalists blame Ian Smith regime for corpses Pathologists say bodies appear less than 30 years old Hundreds of skeletons found in a remote mine shaft in Zimbabwe have been used as political propaganda by supporters of President Robert Mugabe. The Fallen Heroes of Zimbabwe Trust, a previously little known group of Mugabe party loyalists, says says the remains of more than 640 bodies have been discovered in the disused Chibondo gold mine near the provincial center of Mount Darwin, 110 miles from Harare, But while the trust says the bodies are those of victims of colonial atrocities committed under...

Can you imagine the bloated ego and over-the-top taste to live in such exaggerated -even cartoonish- opulence?  A Saudi Prince, ya think?  Russian oligarch?  Chinese billionaire?  Or was it Louis XIV of France...? Any guesses yet? Why, this bodacious crib belongs to none other than Soviet-trained economic incompetent, tin-pot dictator, and self-proclaimed "Hitler of all time"... Robert Mugabe Just contrast that pad with most Zimbabweans living in grinding poverty with a 95% unemployment rate and hyperinflation that topped-out at 6.5 quindecillion novemdecillion percent (6.5 x 10108%!) ... fact is, the poor wretches he's ruled over for thirty years have never had it so bad: Zimbabwe...

Last Sunday marked 30 years of Communist rule of Rhodesia, which was renamed Zimbabwe after being taken over. At a public ceremony marking the occasion, Marxist dictator Robert Mugabe, responsible for the wholesale slaughter of Matabele tribesmen who opposed his rule and the racist eviction of Whites from their farming homelands, called on his subjects to “foster an environment of tolerance.” Mugabe then announced he would continue with a new program whose objective is to steal White-owned businesses and hand them over to Black Zimbabweans. Rhodesia, a first-world country that produced its own television sets and was “the Breadbasket of...

Here’s a measure of how President Robert Mugabe is destroying this once lush nation of Zimbabwe: In a week of surreptitious reporting here (committing journalism can be a criminal offense in Zimbabwe), ordinary people said time and again that life had been better under the old, racist, white regime of what was then called Rhodesia. “When the country changed from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, we were very excited,” one man, Kizita, told me in a village of mud-walled huts near this town in western Zimbabwe. “But we didn’t realize the ones we chased away were better and the ones we put...

Yes, Apartheid was wrong and oppressive, but does anyone think South Africa and Rhodesia would have been nearly as prosperous had they always had such 'enlightened' rulers like Robert Mugabe? Fact is, before Mugabe, Rhodesia was one of the most prosperous countries in Africa. It was known as the "breadbasket of Africa". South Africa was run by highly educated and industrious Dutch/German immigrants. They had a very advanced and wealthy economy, one of the finest Navies of a country of that size, and they were stridently anti-Communist. Today, they are a fraction of they once were, and have been slipping...

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...

Gentlemen, Another tribute to our Rhodesian cousins. No Apologies (as usual), gents. We relive their experience now. Have a good Saturday night.