Free Republic

ROME – Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe used the U.N. summit on world hunger Tuesday to lash out at the West and defend land reforms blamed for plunging his people into starvation. Addressing the summit hosted by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, Mugabe said the policy under which thousands of white-owned commercial farms were seized in 2000 was a quest for "equity and justice." He blamed the subsequent meltdown of Zimbabwe's economy on "hostile interventions" by "neocolonialist enemies" that have imposed sanctions on his regime. Western countries have slapped travel bans and asset freezes on Mugabe and his...

In February 2009 Zimbabwe was the only country in the world without debt. Nobody owed anyone anything. Following the abandonment of the Zimbabwe Dollar as the local currency all local debt was wiped out and the country started with a clean slate.

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...

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...

YOU'VE seen them as mythical beasts in the Chronicles of Narnia - now a village has been left shellshocked after the birth of a bizarre faun-like creature with the combined features of a man and a goat. Bild reports the goat, which died just a few hours after birth in Lower Gweru, Zimbabwe, had a huge head and face which resembled a human as well as goat legs and a tail. Villagers said the end product was so scary even dogs were afraid to go close to it. They burned the corpse fearing it was an evil sign. "This is...

WHEN the youths saw Murray Pott's sister filming them as they hit the Zimbabwean farmer with sticks, they smashed the kitchen window to try to get to her too. Mr Pott, who is of Scottish descent, was left with broken ribs and head injuries after a mob attacked him on his farm in Chinhoyi, central Zimbabwe last week. The incident shows how terrifying life has become for the country's last white farmers seven months into the power-sharing agreement between president Robert Mugabe and former opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai that was widely expected to end land invasions. "I was attacked in...

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...

With former Obama green jobs czar Van Jones gone, along with his views about whites directing poisons to minorities, focus is now shifting to race-based views of "diversity czar" Mark Lloyd, who has suggested "white people" step down from positions of power to allow "more people of color, gays" and "other people" to take those positions. Lloyd, the Federal Communications Commission chief diversity officer appointed to the newly created position by President Obama in early August, has talked about issues such as a 100 percent tax on broadcast outlets to collect money to provide alternative viewpoints, mandatory diversity in station...

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...

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.

WASHINGTON -- When stock markets plumbed new lows in March, the Federal Reserve responded with nearly every tool in its box. It announced it would create new money to buy $1.25 trillion in mortgages and $300 billion in government debt. That purchase of government debt looked particularly ominous. Creating new money to buy government debt is the sort of strategy that's known to destroy economies--just ask Zimbabwe, which suffered so much hyperinflation that it destroyed its currency. The Zimbabwe central bank printed bills in the denomination of 100 trillion Zimbabwean dollars, then found they had value only as a novelty...

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...

Joseph Msika, who died on August 4 aged 85, was vice-president of Zimbabwe and a central figure in his country's headlong rush to ruin. A foul-mouthed, embittered man, much given to swearing in public and delivering foam-flecked speeches, Msika was perhaps the only Zimbabwean who could outdo President Robert Mugabe when it came to verbal vitriol. The targets of his bile included journalists, farmers, all young Zimbabweans – who had allegedly failed to match his standards of patriotism and devotion – and white people in general. During a rally in Bulawayo in August 2001, Msika took racist rhetoric to a...

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...

— Zimbabwe’s prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, said Tuesday that an official he had appointed had secured lines of credit worth $950 million from China, President Robert Mugabe’s longtime ally.

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...

Only 70 miles from a 2010 World Cup football stadium, a farmer's wife and a boy aged 13 learn to defend themselves with lethal weapons. They say thousands of white landowners have been killed by Zimbabwe-style marauders; their black rulers accuse them of belligerence and right-wing tendencies...

Fears of insolvency, inflation, or both have scared investors away from U.S. Treasury securities. This has pushed the interest rate that the government must pay to bond buyers higher—adding more to the deficit and threatening the government’s economic “stimulus” program. An option under consideration is to require financial institutions that have received bailout money to use the funds to buy U.S. Treasury bonds. “We gave these banks that bailout money,” said Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. “They ought to use it to help us cover the deficit.” Geithner said he expects the President to be making a few phone calls this...

US President Barack Obama announced 73 million dollars in aid for impoverished Zimbabwe following talks with Morgan Tsvangirai, the former opposition leader turned reform-seeking prime minister. Obama, citing concern "about consolidating democracy, human rights and rule of law," cautioned the aid will go to the Zimbabwean people rather than a government where Tsvangirai shares power uneasily with President Robert Mugabe. The US president hailed Tsvangirai and criticized Mugabe who he said "has not acted oftentimes in the best interest of the Zimbabwean people and has been resistant to the kinds of democratic changes that need to take place." Standing next...

Should the U.S. give aid to Zimbabwe? ($73 million is being discussed) A Daily Poll Still 24 hours remaining to vote in A Weekly Poll. What would the President of Iran do if he acquired a nuclear weapon?

The US president was speaking at the White House in Washington, where he met the visiting Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. Earlier, Zimbabwean Finance Minister Tendai Biti said the country's economy could grow by between 4% and 6% this year. The power-sharing government has said the country needs about $10bn (£6bn) to stabilise its economy.

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 has told the British Broadcasting Corp and Cable News Network that their journalists are welcome in the country, an official said. The BBC was banned from Zimbabwe in July 2001, five months after the organisation’s Harare correspondent Joseph Winter had been expelled. In comments carried by the state-run Sunday Mail newspaper, President Robert Mugabe’s press secretary George Charamba said CNN was never banned from the southern African country which is coming out of a decade-long economic and political crisis. Charamba said: “We would want to remind CNN that they are not banned from this country. Nothing was given either...

Hello everyone, I'm working on a book about my passion (and, I think, yours): American exceptionalism through the eyes of immigrants who haven't always had the fortune of living in freedom. This book consists of first-person stories of Americans who lived under authoritarian regimes: Cuba, Eastern bloc countries (Poland, Russia/former USSR), Vietnam, Zimbabwe, Laos, and so on. Unfortunately, there are many, many such countries to choose from. The local talk station I listen to has broadcast calls from new Americans who came here for liberty, which they weren't accorded in their homeland. Every call I've ever heard from one 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

Zimbabwe has so far secured lines of credit amounting to US$400 million from countries in the region to revive operations of local companies in yet another sign that the international community is warming up to the country after the formation of the inclusive Government. Industry and Commerce Minister Welshman Ncube said the lines of credit had been secured to specifically meet the working needs of local companies that have been operating way below capacity due to undercapitalisation. Minister Ncube who was addressing members of the Masvingo Business community in the city last week said Zimbabwe had managed to secure about...

Tatenda Majiri, 22, hoists a calabash of home-brewed beer with some authority while discussing news of the day. But he has no confidence in the future. The social work student says he has lost hope of going back to school because the government-owned University of Zimbabwe (UZ) has been closed since last year. "Drinking is the only constructive activity I have," he says, as he passes the time in Nzvimbo rural township in Chiweshe, about 150 km north of the capital Harare. "What else can I do?"

HARARE, April 20 (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's central bank raided the private bank accounts of companies and donors to fund President Robert Mugabe's government during the economic crisis, according to a central bank statement made available on Monday. Central Bank Governor Gideon Gono said the central bank took foreign currency from private accounts to help pay for some $2 billion in loans to state-owned companies and utilities and for power and grain imports.

WASHINGTON (AFP)--President-elect Barack Obama's nominee for United Nations ambassador, Susan Rice, Thursday vowed to get tough with Zimbabwe and revive U.S. leadership globally with an emphasis on beefing up peacekeeping capacity. At her Senate confirmation hearing, Rice pledged to confront the regime of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, urging China, Russia and southern African countries to join the Obama administration in isolating the veteran strongman. "Their interests no longer, frankly, coincide" with Mugabe's regime, the former diplomat told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, after its chairman, John Kerry, D-Mass., said she was an "outstanding choice" for the UN job. Arguing it...

The death of the child, Sean, comes less than a month after Mr Tsvangirai's wife Susan died in a car crash.

[1]Johannes Nel, a Masvingo farmer evicted from his farm by Zanu-PF militants camps by the roadside around March 17, 2009. By Owen ChikariMASVINGO – People suspected to be Zanu-PF supporters this week evicted commercial farmer John Bolland, from his Chidza Farm about 35 kilometres east of Masvingo city as disturbances on farms took a turn for the worse.Bolland joins a list of other commercial farmers who have been pushed off their farms over the past two weeks as fresh farm invasions continue to spread across the country. The police in Masvingo have since placed Bolland on a police wanted...

Loyal to Liberty This morning one of the media lookouts at AIPnews.com drew attention to an article in the Washington Times about the awful conditions in Zimbabwe. In the article images of prison conditions there are likened to photos of inmates just after their liberation from the Nazi death camps. In addition to the horrid prison conditions, the country as a whole is in a state of collapse. "UN agencies estimate that up to three-quarters of Zimbabwe's estimated 12 million people are malnourished and dependent on food aid. Critics blame bad governance and a land-distribution program that began in 1999...

Consumer prices in Zimbabwe declined in January and February according to the country's Central Statistical Office, suggesting that the substitution of U.S. dollars and other hard currencies for the virtually worthless Zimbabwean dollar has vanquished hyperinflation. The statistical authority said prices fell 3.1% in February from the month earlier, and declined by 2.3% in January from December levels, a stunning turnaround from the last inflation rate officially announced by the CSO of 231 million percent in July of last year. Some prominent international economists including hyperinflation expert Steve Hanke of the Johns Hopkins School of Applied Economics reckoned Zimbabwean hyperinflation...

Its hard to imagine this could happen here. President of Zimbabwe says he will be vidicated by the recent actions of the US it makes one ponder. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ubJp6rmUYM

(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...

From now on, think of the US as a bigger Zimbabwe "I've been condemned by traditional economists who say printing money drives inflation," observed Gideon Gono last month. "But once the IMF advised America to print money, I decided God was on my side and had come to vindicate me." By Liam Halligan 21 Mar 2009 For readers who may not know, Mr Gono is governor of the Central Bank of Zimbabwe. He'll be feeling particularly pious this weekend – as the mighty US has, indeed, just started printing money. We're supposed to call it "quantitative easing", I know. But...

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...

"The fed is planning moves that would more than double its balance-sheet assets by September to $4.5 trillion from $1.9 trillion. Whether expressing approval or concern over the fed’s move, most commentators fail to understand the real magnitude of the projected expansion of the US monetary base because they don’t take into account the amount of dollars circulating abroad......................The fed’s planned balance sheet expansion results in a 15-fold increase in the base money supply. 262 Billion = US monetary base as of September 2008 (minus dollars held abroad) 3,818 Billion = projected US monetary base in September 2009 (minus dollars...

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...

That’s Erin Burnett holding up a $100 billion Zimbabwe bill. It will buy you about three eggs. Could the USA be on the road to becoming the next Zimbabwe? Very doubtful. But the threat of high inflation is very real, and that’s what prompted Erin to display the bill during her Morning Joe appearance today. The CNBCer was responding to Joe Scarborough’s questioning about the inflationary risk of the government’s decision, announced yesterday, to create $1 trillion out of thin air that it will use to buy Treasury bonds and mortgage securities. View video here.

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...

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Federal Reserve announced Wednesday it will spend up to US$300 billion over the next six months to buy long-term government bonds, a new step aimed at lifting the country out of recession by lowering rates on mortgages and other consumer debt.