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HARARE - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, other senior government officials and diplomats will in future be guarded by youth militias from ZANU PF's National Youth Training Service. Police officials said, the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) has replaced over 300 policemen from the Police Protection Unit (PPU) with youth militias. Zim Online interviews with several inside sources have confirmed that the police have removed virtually all officers in the unit from their posts to create a loyalist guard out of the militia youth instead. "Most of these police officers in the PPU were seen as being of questionable allegiance to the...

Durban - South Africa's top Catholic bishop said on Monday he could not understand why the South African government was not considering sanctions against neighbouring Zimbabwe, given the success that sanctions brought for South Africa. However, the Catholic church believed that if sanctions were imposed on Zimbabwe, they should be applied "intelligently" and it should be up to the people of Zimbabwe to decide when they should be lifted, Cardinal Wilfred Napier told Sapa. Napier said that while he was not calling directly for sanctions against Zimbabwe, he did not understand why sanctions were not being considered. He said that...

A Farm Disaster of a Different Color Mugabe's Land-Seizure Campaign Leaves a Black-Owned Business in Ruin By Craig Timberg Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, July 13, 2004; Page A10 ODZI, Zimbabwe -- Where rows of sweet corn once grew, there are now brown and dead stalks. Where beans once sprouted, there are weeds. And where 5,000 Zimbabweans long made a good living off the land, there is hunger. Similar scenes are common on farms, most previously owned by white Zimbabweans, across this southern African nation after four years of violent land seizures under President Robert Mugabe. What is different about...

The Zimbabwean government, which faces acute foreign currency shortages and a collapsing health sector, has introduced ox-drawn ambulances to ferry ill people to health centres in rural areas. The main opposition party said the introduction of the ox-drawn ambulances, reported in the government media, was yet another indication of the "continuing collapse of institutions" in Zimbabwe under the weight of President Robert Mugabe's mismanagement. "Zimbabwe is being dragged back to the stone age," said opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) spokesperson Paul Themba Nyathi. The ox-drawn ambulances come after the bankrupt state-run National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) reportedly brought back...

It is time the African National Congress clarifies the real nature of its relationship with Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu-PF, the Democratic Alliance's acting leader, Douglas Gibson, said in a statement on Sunday. He was reacting to newspaper reports that ANC officials led by President Thabo Mbeki had met with leading Zanu-PF officials at the ANC's Johannesburg headquarters to forge closer political ties. "The South African public has a right to know what is going on," said Gibson. "We need to know exactly how close the ANC and Zanu-PF are. It seems that the relationship between the ANC and Zanu-PF is closer...

Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni, credited with slashing HIV rates in his country, insisted on Monday that abstinence and loving relationships were more crucial than condoms in fighting Aids. His remarks in Bangkok on the second day of the International Aids Conference were in line with the position of American President George Bush, but at odds with the view of a majority of researchers and activists fighting the disease. Condom use has been promoted as a frontline defence by Thailand, among others, where a campaign to get sex workers to use condoms cut HIV rates more than sevenfold in 13 years....

Africa's masses had to be mobilised for a revolution to improve the continent's political, economic and social situation, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday. Writing in his weekly online column, ANC Today, Mbeki said that duty would fall on the Pan African Parliament (PAP) and the African Union's (AU) Economic, Social and Cultural Council (Ecosocc). "The call to achieve Africa's renaissance is therefore necessarily a call to the African masses to rise up in struggle to defeat poverty and underdevelopment, to end Africa's marginalisation and to restore the dignity of Africans everywhere," wrote Mbeki. There was a need for a...

AT least 621 cases of kwashiorkor were attended to in Harare's city council clinics last year, as malnutrition cases continue to be reported at various health centres in the city and in the country. Kwashiorkor is a disease associated with the inadequate consumption of protein and calories and children under the age of three are particularly susceptible to the disease. Symptoms of the disease are "listlessness, spindly arms and legs and bloated stomachs" and if not treated quickly could result in the death of the affected child. In his 2003 annual report, director of Health Services in the city council,...

CHIREDZI - About US$1 million worth of oranges meant for the Russian market stand to be wasted in Mkwasine where Zanu PF militias have camped at a citrus farm for two weeks in a spirited effort to evict its owner, a white commercial farmer, in contempt of a court order. The militias, operating on the orders of two suspected Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) operatives and a policeman based in Harare, who have earmarked the lucrative property for themselves, have given the family of Eric Harrison today (Sunday) as the deadline for them to move out of the farm or be...

Harare - The exodus of Zimbabwe's small and anguished white population is under way with record numbers leaving their homeland, mostly for Britain or Australia. Few have the R30 000($5000) they need in foreign currency to transport their goods to new countries, and most are starting new lives with 22kg of clothes and a few photographs. They say they have hung on during the past four tumultuous years hoping President Robert Mugabe's "hate" campaign against them would ease, but it did not, and two months ago when he shut down private schools for a week for raising fees, they lost...

OPPOSITION Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, and other top party officials narrowly escaped serious injury in Mvurwi on Friday when about 200 Zanu PF militia attacked an MDC Mashonaland Central provincial assembly meeting. Other top MDC officials who fled for their lives include the party’s national chairman, Isaac Matongo, deputy secretary-general Gift Chimanikire, national women’s organising secretary, Anna Chimanikire and legislator Fidelis Mhashu. Tsvangirai and the other senior officials were not injured but several party supporters, who tried to protect them, were hurt. Some are nursing broken arms and legs from the attack and have been admitted...

Zimbabwe's ruling party asks ANC for help with election at secret meeting TOP ANC officials led by President Thabo Mbeki recently held a top-secret meeting with leading members of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF to forge closer political ties. The June meeting was confirmed yesterday by ANC secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe and Zanu-PF's chairman, John Nkomo. The meeting took place at the ANC's headquarters in central Johannesburg on the eve of this week's African Union summit, where an official report critical of Zimbabwe's human-rights abuses was circulated for the first time and as Mbeki's self-imposed June deadline for resolving the...

CASH-STRAPPED Zimbabwe might be dogged by chronic food shortages, power blackouts, water cuts and fuel queues, but the government is putting its money where its mouth is - into its latest propaganda album. Back2Black, a CD of pro-land reform songs written by Zimbabwe’s outspoken information minister, Jonathan Moyo, is being launched today amid pomp and fanfare at the country’s once-buzzing Victoria Falls luxury resort. Guests, many of them from president Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party, and approved reporters are said to be booked on flights this morning from Harare to Victoria Falls. Mr...

Dear Family and Friends, Almost since the beginning of Zimbabwe's land seizures in late February 2000, we have been bombarded with propaganda jingles on the state run radio and television. I don't just mean the odd jingle here and there, I mean total bombardment, every half hour, day and night, telling us that now the land has been taken away from white Zimbabweans, life is just wonderful. The irony is that throughout the four years of jingles about land and prosperity we were hungry. We were standing in food queues, waiting for hours for just one loaf of bread and...

The exodus of whites from Zimbabwe is gathering pace, with most heading for Britain or Australia. Many of those leaving had put up with four years of persecution in the hope that President Robert Mugabe would relent. But last week, when he ordered the closure of private schools for a week for raising fees, some lost their nerve. Jeremy Callow, 55, a solicitor, said: "It was a painful decision because this is the only home we know. I love Zimbabwe, love the people, but can't take it any more." Mr Callow said he succumbed to the "relentless" grind of trying...

Travel WarningUnited States Department of State Bureau of Consular Affairs Washington, DC 20520 This information is current as of today, Fri, 09 Jul 2004 09:53:02 GMT-0400.ZimbabweJuly 2, 2004 This Travel Warning is being issued to remind Americans of the political, economic and humanitarian crises in Zimbabwe. This supersedes the Travel Warning of January 22, 2004. The Department of State warns U.S. citizens of the risks of travel to Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe continues to be in the midst of political, economic and humanitarian crises with serious implications for the security situation in the country. All U.S. citizens in Zimbabwe are urged to...

South African Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma backed Zimbabwean government moves to stifle an explosive report on human rights abuses in Zimbabwe at the African Union summit in Addis Ababa. At the same time, there is mounting evidence that Zimbabwean Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge lied when he claimed his government had not seen or had a chance to respond to the report, prepared by the AU's Commission on People's and Human Rights (ACPHR). Summit sources said that at a meeting of African foreign ministers last week, Dlamini-Zuma had stepped up to the plate for Mudenge when he angrily insisted...

A LARGE baboon in the dusty lorry stop near Zimbabwe’s border with Zambia daily lays bare the origin of President Mugabe’s purported “bumper harvest”. Squatting on top of a bulky trailer, he rips open the heavy tarpaulin cover and stuffs his cheeks with maize until he can push no more in. Drivers here say that every day for more than a month up to 30 heavy trucks have been crossing from Zambia with 30-tonne consignments of maize bound for government silos. Grain trade executives report that at least 400,000 tonnes are on order — some of it almost certainly grown...

MONTREAL - The appearance of Saddam Hussein in a Baghdad court last week should lay to rest skepticism about the justness of the Iraq war. International politics in our time was reconfigured by 9/11. There are precedents for such sudden changes. One happened following the attack on Poland by Hitler's Third Reich in September 1939, another when the former Soviet Union became a nuclear power in 1949. Among competing issues demanding attention in international politics, such as inequities in resource distribution and income, the issue of security takes precedence. Security is the plinth on which is built the life of...