Recently in Zimbabwe Category

The power and reach of radio is felt throughout Africa. But what improvements need to be made?

An interactive map in Mother Jones Magazine of the celebrity recolonization of Africa.

OVERSIZED SHADES have replaced pith helmets, writes By Dave Gilson in Mother Jones Magazine, but the new scramble for Africa has its share of adventurers, would-be saviors, and even turf battles. As Madonna's publicist explains, "She's focusing on Malawi. South Africa is Oprah's territory."

The map below takes a lighter look at the sometimes serious, sometimes silly business of celebrity altruism. For more on how Africa became the hottest continent for A-list do-gooders like Bono and Brangelina, see here. And if you're looking for a more sober approach, check out Mother Jones' recent package on human rights.

By Basildon Peta, Africa Editor

 

Zimbabwe remains without a single privately-owned daily newspaper or radio station, more than a year after a new unity government that promised to scrap draconian media laws and usher in media reforms  was inaugurated.

Restoring banned publications and opening up the airwaves were among the cornerstones of a Global Political Agreement (GPA) signed by President Robert Mugabe and then opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in September 2008.

As the US State Department annual human rights review, put it last week:

The government continued to restrict freedom of the press (and) controlled the state-run media, including the two remaining daily newspapers, the Chronicle and the Herald. ...High-ranking government officials, including President Mugabe, used the state-controlled media to threaten violence against suspected critics of the government.

The US State Department has issued a blistering indictment of Zimabwe's human rights record over the past year. It concludes that : "ZANU-PF, through the use of government and paramilitary forces, intimidated and committed abuses against opposition parties and their supporters and obstructed their activities. The Joint Operation Command (JOC), a group of senior security and civilian authorities, maintained control of the security forces, and often used them to control opposition to ZANU-PF." Now read on after the jump

By Basildon Peta
 South African President Jacob Zuma will travel to Harare early next week with a message to Zimbabwe's ever quarrelling coalition government partners to hold fresh polls next year if they cannot break their deadlock over outstanding issues in a political agreement they signed in 2008. Mr Zuma is the official Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) mediator on Zimbabwe. He will try to break the deadlock between the coalition partners but if he fails, he will tell them to end their unity arrangement by holding fresh elections in 2011, authoritative sources said.

By Basildon Peta

Zimbabwean Prime Minister met diplomats in Harare yesterday telling them of his growing disillusionment with being cut out of key decision making by Robert Mugabe in their problematic unity arrangement.

In public Tsvangirai has tried to prop up his working relationship with Mugabe saying its cordial. But diplomatic sources who attended yesterday's briefing said Tsvangirai told them he is never consulted on any key issues by Mugabe. Important decisions are taken without his input despite being Prime Minister and he was now seriously disilllusioned.

A devastating report from Physicians for Human Rights decribes the health situation in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is suffering from a mounting health crisis, and it is almost entirely man-made. Just as President Mugabehas long politicized the delivery of food aid, he has similarly manipulated the health system. The report asks exactly the right question: "When government policies lead directly to the shuttering of hospitals and clinics, the closing of its medical school, and the beatings of health workers, are we to consider the attendant deaths and injuries as any different from those resulting from a massacre of similar proportions?"

"Freelance journalist Stanley Kwenda was found dead on the outskirts of Harare. His remains were found dumped in a ditch along the Harare to Domboshava road . . . " Stanley Kwenda Yes, the above paragraph describes an imagined worst case scenario, but one that I could not quite rule out happening that Friday evening, moments after receiving a threatening phone call from a senior police officer advising me that I was not going to survive the weekend. But the good news first. I am safe and sound in my hiding place. Who knows, all the news organisations that carried the story of how I fled Zimbabwe last week following the death threats would by now probably have been writing about my death. Usual suspects Sadly, all this is happening at a time when we should be celebrating the dawn of a new era of democracy in Zimbabwe. I saw it first hand last Friday evening that the usual suspects are still on the prowl - almost a year after a new coalition government came into office in Harare with a mandate to promote among other things the rule of law and respect for human rights. Friday began with the normal routine, which means grabbing all the newspapers I can lay my hands on just to check what's happening around. I had just received a copy of British-based Index on Censorship 2009 Review. From the moment I flipped open the first chapter, I could never put the book down. The stories told in the book of how some journalists elsewhere in the world have stood up to tyranny - with some even getting killed in the process - in order to be able to practise their profession are encouraging. Although, I must admit, there is something quite disturbing about knowing that someone could order your death simply because you dared tell a story. Somewhere, on one of the pages of the Index, there was a long list of journalists who have either been harassed, incarcerated or lost their lives in the line of duty. Interestingly, some of them were from Zimbabwe - and little did I know that by end of that day, I would be part of the statistics. Death threats This was after I received very specific death threats from a senior police officer in connection with a story I did for the The Zimbabwean newspaper. At about 11 am I received a call on my phone and on the other end of the line was a gentleman who told me that a certain Sylvia who works for fast food outlet Chicken Inn wanted to talk to me.