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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.

Zimbabwe's government on Tuesday slammed US President George Bush's government's declaration of loss of confidence in President Robert Mugabe as a "diplomatic flute" by an outgoing administration. "We have no time for US President George W. Bush's diplomatic flute. We are talking about an administration whose sun has set," Mugabe's spokesman George Charamba said, according to state-run The Herald newspaper. About half of Zimbabwe's population needs food aid, UN experts said Monday, as a first consignment of supplies designed to help fight a cholera epidemic arrived in the troubled southern African nation. As Mugabe faced fresh calls to step down...

A strong odor pounces up your nose, choking it stone dry, as you drive into Harare's Mbare township past hostels and its popular market, Mbare Musika.

Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe has begun further power-sharing talks amid reports that leaders are close to a deal which will name Morgan Tsvangirai as prime minister. Mediator South African President Thabo Mbeki has started meetings today as state radio reported they may soon reach an agreement. The spokesman for Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF said the party, after lengthy talks to try to end a post-election crisis, wants any unity government to last five years. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Mr Tsvangirai would become premier in the arrangement under discussion, although his powers were still being debated. Zimbabweans are longing...

Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai says he is pulling out of Friday's presidential run-off, handing victory to President Robert Mugabe. Mr. Tsvangrai said there was no point running when elections would not be free and fair and and "the outcome is determined by... Mugabe himself." He called on the global community to step in to protect Zimbabweans. The decision came after opposition supporters heading to a rally in the capital Harare came under attack. The MDC says at least 70 supporters have been killed in recent months. At a press conference Sunday, mr Tsvangirai said: "It is for the world...

Dear Family and Friends, It took the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission almost five weeks to verify less than two and a half million votes that were cast in our Presidential ballot. In a country where junior school children have learnt to count, add, subtract and even multiply in millions and now billions in order to survive our collapsed economy, five weeks is insulting and highly suspicious to say the least. After five weeks the ZEC declared the following results: Morgan Tsvangirai: 1,195,562 votes (47,9%) Robert Mugabe: 1,079,730 votes (43,2%) Simba Makoni: 207,470 votes ( 8,3%) Langton Towungana: 14,503 votes ( 0,6%)...

Charles Hamilton has just returned to the UK from Zimbabwe, where his family runs the park. He called the situation "desperate"... The pictures showed all three of his family's adult black rhinos, lying dead on the dusty floor. You can see the bullet-holes in their thick hides. "It's just totally unbelievable," Charles sighed. For the past 20 years the family has been rearing the animals and returning them to the wild, but last week, in the dead of night, armed men in camouflage gear burst onto the site and shot dead all three adult females. One of them was just...

Zimbabweans praise 'generous' Ian Smith By Stephen Bevan and a special correspondent in Shurugwi Last Updated: 8:27pm GMT 24/11/2007 For many black Zimbabweans, the death on Tuesday of Ian Smith, the last prime minister of white-ruled Rhodesia, was either to be welcomed or at best ignored. To them the 88-year-old, who turned his country into an international pariah with his unilateral declaration of independence from Britain in 1965, was a racist and a tyrant who led his band of white supremacists into a bloody, and ultimately pointless, war against the black liberation movement. Ian Smith left Zimbabwe in 2005 But...

The former prime minister of Rhodesia, Ian Smith, has died aged 88. The cause of his death is unknown but he had been ill for some time at a residential home in South Africa. He illegally declared independence from Britain in 1965 and his white minority government led the country for 14 years amid international scorn and sanctions. Following a bitter bush war with black nationalists, his government was overthrown by Robert Mugabe in 1979, leading to the creation of Zimbabwe. Speaking to the BBC in 1998 about his assumption of power, Mr Smith was adamant it was justified. "There...

Zimbabwe's education system, once regarded as among the best in Africa, is in crisis because of the country's economic meltdown. Almost a quarter of the teachers have quit the country, absenteeism is high, buildings are crumbling and standards plummeting. In one of the most shocking examples of the Dickensian conditions, a reporter witnessed hundreds of children...writing in the dust on the floor because they had no exercise books or pencils. "Starting this term, we are supposed to buy our own teaching materials," ... "With our paltry salaries I don't see it working. We will just sit in the classes." Absenteeism...

At the inaugural ceremony, Prime Minister Mugabe’s call for reconciliation between blacks and whites came as a welcome surprise to those who had for years dismissed him as “a Marxist-terrorist trying to gain power through the barrel of a gun.” … The unexpected size of his majority gave Mugabe an unequivocal mandate.... All in all, the election and handover represented a triumph of democracy in the face of considerable external pressure. — Andrew Young, President Carter’s Ambassador to the United Nations The excerpted statement above by Andrew Young provides a small sampling of the outrageous commentary on Robert Mugabe’s ascension...

The economic crisis in Zimbabwe is having a severe impact on its neighbour, South Africa. An estimated three million Zimbabweans are thought to have fled to South Africa to escape the chaos and they continue to flood across the border at Beit Bridge... Zimbabwe is on its knees. Its people are starving and desperate. South Africa is seen as the land of opportunity. And the bright lights of this economic giant beckon... When they reach the South African side, they dry themselves down and edge nervously towards South Africa's triple-layer border fence. This is a barrier that was put up...

President Robert Mugabe's government has published a bill to move majority control of "public companies and any other business" to black Zimbabweans. The goal is to ensure at least a 51% shareholding by indigenous black people in the majority of businesses. Critics say it could hurt investor confidence in Zimbabwe, suffering from the world's highest inflation and food, fuel and foreign currency shortages. Now the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Bill will go to parliament.

Mugabe told: stand again and you will lose By Stephen Bevan in Pretoria and Michael Gwaridzo in Harare, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:06am BST 10/06/2007 Mugabe is said to have been livid when given the warning in an intelligence meeting last month Robert Mugabe has been told by his own intelligence chiefs that he will lose if he sticks to his insistence on standing again in Zimbabwe's presidential elections next year. The 83-year-old, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980, was given the warning last month. He is said to have been livid. Happyton Bonyongwe, Mugabe's intelligence chief, told...

Ian Smith, the Grand Old Man of Africa, Speaks "What we believed in was responsible majority rule, as opposed to irresponsible majority rule and I stand by that," Mr. Smith tells the interviewer. "I think it is important that before you give a person the vote you ensure that his roots go down, that he's part of the whole structure of the country." "Smith is an African," Ernest Mtunzi says. "He understands the African mentality. [...] Smith was being realistic. If you give people something before they're ready, they're going to mess it up. And that has happened." Why did...

"Nearly two-thirds of Zimbabweans — including many former terrorist leaders — did, however, and when a moderate named Abel Muzorewa won handily on a pledge to make an orderly transition to majority rule, then-U.N. ambassador Andrew Young and his boss, Jimmy Carter — supported avidly by The New York Times, along with every other left-leaning paper on the planet — flipped. Furious at the prospect of a less-than-immediate transition, they insisted that the election results not be recognized. Democrats and their allies in the press mounted a stiff effort to keep sanctions in place until Muzorewa’s government collapsed, and a...

At the end of a week that saw protests violently crushed...a nation sliding into chaos. Among the many signs of a country sliding into chaos, one has gone largely unnoticed: Zimbabwe's morgues are filling up. It's not only that more people are dying, but also that the families of those who are cannot afford to pay their medical bills any longer. To escape them, relatives are registering the sick under false names. When they die, the bodies cannot be claimed. The practice is just one of the increasingly desperate measures Zimbabweans are taking to survive in a collapsing economy where...

SIGNS are mounting that Zimbabwe is witnessing the last, desperate throes of a regime that has destroyed one of Africa's few successful economies.As president Robert Mugabe celebrates his 83rd birthday today with champagne and cake at a £600,000 party, hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans are struggling to survive on bread and water. As the country approaches 18 April, the 27th anniversary of the end of white rule and Mr Mugabe's rise to power, the years of abuse and neglect are culminating in untenable crises. Hyperinflation that brings shortages of food, fuel, medication and electricity has the population in revolt; opposition...

Chombo, Karimanzira at each others throats Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:09:00 THREE senior officials from the ruling ZANU PF have been implicated in the corrupt allocation of Whitecliffe houses to relatives and other people who were not on the waiting list of the Ministry of Local Government Public Works and Urban Development. The officials which include the chairperson of the commission responsible for running the affairs of Harare City, Sekesai Makwavarara, deputy Minister of Science and Technology, Mugabe's Nephew and Manyame Member of Parliament, Patrick Zhuwao and Harare governor, David Karimanzira are being accused of dolling out houses and...

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Zimbabwe's national security minister has told the country's last remaining white farmers that they will be jailed if they refuse to abide by a deadline that passed over the weekend for them to leave their farms, according to a newspaper report on Monday. The official Chronicle newspaper quoted the minister Didymus Mutasa as saying police would be "unleashed" to deal with white farmers who ignored the eviction notice. "Those farmers who do not comply with the orders to vacate the land will be dealt with severely," said the minister, known to be close to President Robert...

They will be meeting after twenty-five long years but it will not take long for Captain Umesh Saxena to recognize Peter. After all, it was he who had hijacked the Air India aircraft from Mahe in Seychelles and demanded that the flight be taken to Durban in South Africa. But for Peter Duffy, who was among the 48 mercenaries who on November 25, 1981 hijacked the Air India flight 224 from Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), it would be fulfilment of a promise that he had made to the captain - that he would see the him again. "I am going to...

There are plans to appoint senior Zimbabwe military officers to the ruling Zanu-PF's top decision-making body, the politburo, Zimbabwe's The Standard newspaper has revealed. President Robert Mugabe appears intent on forging ahead with plans to militarise all state institutions ahead of his retirement. The militarisation of the ruling party will also see its central committee having a large representation of retired army officers. Mugabe, according to sources close to him, is in favour of a heavily militarised post-Mugabe era. The military is gradually assuming a significant role in the running of the country, with serving and retired soldiers serving on...

HE has used a combination of threats and patronage to keep military, police and party officials on his side as Zimbabwe descends into economic chaos. Now President Robert Mugabe seems intent on co-opting the church, leaving Anglicans bitterly divided.More than half the Anglican priests from Harare, the largest diocese, have fled the country, protesting that the church has become an extension of the regime. At least 10 have sought sanctuary in Britain. The controversy revolves around Nolbert Kunonga, the Bishop of Harare, who last year became the first Anglican priest in Africa in more than 100 years to face prosecution...

A NEW $100,000 banknote will be issued in Zimbabwe today. With a value of about 67p, it is worth only the price of a loaf of bread.Its introduction comes as the economy buckles under the highest rate of inflation in the world, currently at 1,042 per cent. The note makes its debut barely four months after the Reserve Bank introduced the $50,000 note, the highest denomination at the time. In only two weeks the Zimbabwe dollar has lost half of its value. Despite the hyperinflation, mass unemployment and crippling shortages of fuel and foreign currency, Zimbabwe is a country of...

Zimbabweans are speaking out with candour against the Government as the country descends further into economic chaos WITH his torn shirt and tattered trousers held up by a piece of string, Barons Chikamba is an unlikely millionaire. His life is a daily struggle despite the seemingly astronomical prices that he charges for even a short hop in the battered car that he uses to ferry visitors around Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. Even his lowest fare is more than a million Zimbabwean dollars. It may sound a lot, but in a country where even the official rate of inflation is nearly 1,000...

The South African government says it will expropriate a white-owned farm, following a failure to agree on a price. The move is seen as an indication the government plans to speed up its lagging land reform programs. The Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights says the decision to expropriate a 500-hectare farm in North West Province was taken as a last resort. The commission said farmer Hannes Visser rejected an offer of $276,000 for the property, demanding nearly twice as much. Mr. Visser says he will contest the expropriation in court. Professor Ben Cousins of the University of the...

They are called "hope queues", but mostly they bring nothing but bitter frustration. They consist of drivers with empty tanks who converge on garages where a rumour has gone around that a petrol tanker may be coming soon. Sometimes queues build up merely on the off-chance that fuel may arrive. The motorists often wait for hours for nothing. The petrol shortage in the Zimbabwean capital reached even more dire levels than normal this week. No tankers came and even diesel, usually more plentiful, dried up. In the last big fuel crisis three years ago, and there have been many short...

Jan 20, 2005 - FreeMarketNews.comby staff reportsDavid H. Smith, Newsbriefs Correspondent ZIMBABWE WANTS FAT AMERICAN TOURISTS TO WORK OFF POUNDS ON PLANTATIONS FreeMarketNews.Com, Jan. 20, 2005 - Zimbabwe is lurching toward another in a series of domestic crises it has endured over the years, under the despotic rule of Robert Mugabe. Inflation is currently running at around 150%, interest rates exceed 100% and unemployment is over 70%. Even the IMF has refused to lend more money to the endless financial sink that this once economically vibrant and self-sustaining nation has become. In an interview with Zimbabwe Independent, President Mugabe presented...

70pc of workforce has fled Zimbabwe, says reportBy Christopher Munnion in Johannesburg(Filed: 22/11/2004)Up to 70 per cent of Zimbabwe's workforce, some 3.4 million people, has fled the country to escape the political oppression and collapsing economy under President Robert Mugabe's rule, according to research by an independent church study group.The South African-based Solidarity Peace Trust said that most of them had crossed the borders into neighbouring countries, with an estimated 1.5 million skilled and able-bodied workers arriving in South Africa to seek work to support families left behind in Zimbabwe."An estimated 25 to 30 per cent of the entire...

Zimbabwe's police are brainwashed by Mugabe in 'reorientation' camps By Jane Flanagan in Bulawayo(Filed: 31/10/2004)Members of Zimbabwe's police force, once the most respected and efficient in southern Africa, have been ordered to attend brutal "reorientation" camps to be fed anti-white propaganda in the run-up to next year's elections.In a tactic akin to those used by hardline Communist regimes, police officers face "reprogramming" at the hands of Robert Mugabe's feared Central Intelligence Organisation.   A spokesman refused to comment on the CIO's 'reprogramming' One officer who recently attended the course told The Telegraph how he had been fed racist propaganda...

Mandela - The "Great Statesman" Mandela with SACP boss, Joe Slovo "Nelson Mandela is a symbol, an icon, one of the world's most famous statesmen, recognised and revered by all. He dines with royalty, associates with the world's great leaders and his opinion is sought and valued on all weighty matters. He has achieved an almost divine status in the world, equal to that of the Pope or the late Princess Diana." Most people on the left of the political spectrum would agree wholeheartedly with the above quote. But they run into an unexpected problem when someone asks "why...

ZIMBABWEAN authorities want to ban foreign human rights organisations and to restrict local charities in an intensification of President Robert Mugabe’s campaign against “foreign meddling”.The government has published a proposed law that would require foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to apply for a licence. Groups whose “sole or principal objects involve or include issues of governance” — seen as “the promotion and protection of human rights and political governance issues” — would not get a licence. Local groups would be banned from receiving foreign funds to finance work in such areas. The charitable activities of churches would require government approval, although...

As horrifying as it is to contemplate, the next gunfight may not be at the O-K Corral; it might be in our own community. Shock and dismay are the emotions most often expressed at recent events either seen or read about in Reston of people walking our streets and dining in our restaurants with pistols on their hips. And it is perfectly legal. In many of my columns I have talked about a rightward tilt of the Virginia General Assembly. In no area is that tilt to ultra-conservatism more evident than with gun control. The minimal laws that existed in...

Brazilian woman hands in 1,300 guns Sat 24 July, 2004 08:04 RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) - A Brazilian woman has surrendered an arsenal of about 1,300 firearms under the country's guns-for-money disarmament program that started last week. A federal police spokeswoman in the city of Sao Paulo said the woman, who will receive $65,600 (35,800 pounds) for the weaponry that ranged from muskets to mortar shells, told police she was the daughter of a late guns collector. Police transported the guns from her house under heavy escort on Friday and would not reveal her identity. Police across Brazil have...

America Online Can Fire Gun-Owning Employees Utah High Court Rules Friday, July 23, 2004 Self-defense took a big blow this week when the Utah Supreme Court upheld the right of America Online (AOL), America`s largest on-line service provider, to fire three employees whose firearms were stored in the trunks of their cars in the parking lot of an AOL call center in Ogden, Utah. In a decision that diminishes rights guaranteed under both the Utah and the U.S. Constitution, the court acknowledged the individual right to keep and bear arms, but said the right of a business to regulate its...

Gun Owners of America E-Mail Alert 8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151 Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408 http://www.gunowners.org Friday, July 23, 2004 Thanks to your efforts, the Clinton semi-auto ban is about to expire. The ban on magazines and firearms -- passed in 1994 -- represents one of the most hated pieces of gun control ever enacted. But with less than two months to go (and Congress being in recess most of that time), the ban is scheduled to sunset on September 13, 2004. Anti-gun Senator Dianne Feinstein, however, is not giving up and is pushing hard to...

BARTOW -- Bradley Beck, the wounded robbery victim who shot an innocent bystander as he fired 17 shots at a suspected robber, won't face any criminal charges, a grand jury in Bartow decided Thursday. Alearria Denmark, a 47-yearold special education teacher suffered two gunshot wounds when she drove up on the shooting scene. She testified before the grand jury and appeared shaken after Circuit Judge Ron Herring announced the jury's decision. Denmark declined to speak with reporters at the courthouse. Reached later at her home in Lakeland she said the grand jury's decision was wrong and that State Attorney Jerry...

Man looses conceal and carry permit following assault Watch Video Publishing date: 07-23-2004 10:11 AM (KAAL) -- Eric Larson probably knows better than anyone that just because a person is issued a permit to carry a concealed handgun doesn't mean he can use it any way he wants to. The 47-year-old Albert Lea man made his first appearance Thursday in Mower County District Court. Larson is charged with second-degree assault for allegedly pointing a loaded handgun at Austin Burger King manager Samuel Johnson. The incident occurred Tuesday afternoon in Burger King's parking lot following an argument between the two men...

REGINA - Prime Minister Paul Martin said he's now open to decriminalizing the federal government's controversial long gun registry only weeks after rejecting that same call from a government study. "Yes, I think that's something we want to have a look at," Mr. Martin said in a telephone interview from B.C. Currently, the law requires all gun owners to register their weapons. However, the law has been unpopular with farmers and recreational hunters who use rifles and shotguns, particularly in the Western provinces. Under the law, failing to register the weapons is a criminal offence. The change would mean that...

International terrorists who have experienced a measured degree of success in Spain, Germany, and France, are in for a rude awakening when it comes to the United States. Unlike many European countries, whose culture and people are on the brink of extinction as a result of passive intellectualism, Americans are more than willing to stand up to terrorists in order to preserve our individualism and our liberties. We are a nation born of rebels who have fought and won wars not only to preserve our own liberties, but to preserve the liberties of other nations as well. One might even...

WASHINGTON, July 22 /U.S. Newswire/ -- There are only six days left when Congress is in session before the expiration of the Assault Weapons Ban -- a law that President Bush pledged he'd renew as a candidate for President in 2000. "It makes no sense for assault weapons to be around our society," he said then. And another Republican leader made statements this week indicating the President can get a vote by simply asking for one. "President Bush is blocking a vote on the Assault Weapons Ban," said Michael Barnes, President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence united...

Harvey Williams is a vigilante hero. That is the opinion of many of his Western Addition neighbors, who are angry that Williams faces assault with a deadly weapon charges after shooting a gun-toting crook caught intruding in his Fell Street home. Williams, a soft-spoken 29-year-old electrician, arrived home Tuesday at 1 p.m. to find his front window smashed and an armed burglar lurking in his condo. A wrestling match ensued, during which Williams forced the pistol from the burglar's hands, picked it up, and plugged the intruder four times as he ran down the front steps and onto Fell Street....

WAYCROSS, Ga. -- Authorities say a robbery attempt ended with one of the suspects being fatally shot by the intended victim. Roy Rhodes, a liquor store worker, told investigators he was almost to his home on Augusta Avenue early Wednesday when he heard someone behind him. Ware County sheriff's spokesman Major Randy Royal said Rhodes, who was carrying a pistol, turned around to see two people coming toward him. One of the robbery suspects, 20-year-old Carl Jerome White Jr., was struck in the exchange of gunfire and died at the scene. Royal said Rhodes was shot in the leg but...

With the ban on assault weapons set to expire in September, 10 years after it was enacted by Congress, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-Mineola) will again try to bring the gun control issue to the forefront during a speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston next week McCarthy, who became a national advocate for tougher firearms laws after her husband was killed and son injured by a gunman on the Long Island Rail Road in 1993, said she hopes the speech stirs the American public to pressure Congress to pass another 10-year ban

New Haven-WTNH, July 21, 2004 11:05 PM) _ A new Wal-Mart store that opened in New Haven will not be selling guns. This comes after local officials took a stand against the store selling the firearms. When the discount chain opened today in New Haven it did so without any of those weapons. The new store is on Foxon Blvd. New Haven officials asked the company not to sell guns and the company complied. Many customers are happy the new Wal-Mart will not sell guns. Darlene Ross says,"Because guns are dangerous. I have young kids and I just don't like...

The Denver Postjim spencer Gun law targets public data By Jim Spencer Denver Post Columnist Wednesday, July 21, 2004 - The document is titled "ATF Youth Crime Gun Interdiction Initiative Trace Analysis Report." The report talks about the guns kids used in crimes in 1999. It incorporates data from 38 cities, including Denver and Aurora. The data contain the top 10 manufacturers of guns that kids used in crimes. The data show a small percentage of gun dealers accounting for a large percentage of so-called "crime guns." The data include all kinds of important stuff. Some researchers and citizens...

A man suspected of breaking into a Fell Street apartment Tuesday afternoon found himself tumbling down stairs and running from a hail of bullets after the resident interrupted the burglary, San Francisco police said. For rest of story, go to http://www.nbc11.com/news/3558536/detail.html

ATF no longer releases data to public — and ban may grow to lawsuits Congress has stopped a federal agency from releasing to the public records on guns used in crimes and may prevent their release in lawsuits against the gun industry as well. Proponents call the restriction necessary to protect sensitive law-enforcement information and avoid exposing undercover officers involved in gun-trafficking investigations. Critics fume that the gun industry simply doesn't want the public - or cities suing gun manufacturers for negligence - to have access to federal information about guns used in crimes. "It really is just the sheer...

WASHINGTON During his campaign for the presidency in 2000, George W. Bush took a dramatic step and voiced support for the ban on assault weapons. ‘‘It makes no sense for assault weapons to be around our society,’’ he declared. Since then Bush’s advisers have continually reiterated his support for the assault weapons ban, which has help him appeal to moderate voters and demonstrate his independence from the powerful gun lobby. But with only eight working days left in Congress before the 10-year-old ban expires, the issue has suddenly become a hot potato that no one in the Bush administration seems...