Free Republic

OPPOSITION parties have called on President Robert Mugabe to resign after a massive boob in his office resulted in the ageing leader reading the wrong speech while officially opening the 3rd session of the 8th Parliament. Mugabe, battling old-age and ill-health, looked tired as he trudged through the inspection of the military parade before slipping into the confines of Parliament’s chamber where he was supposed to lay down the agenda for this term’s legislative sitting. Instead, a mortal error resulted in Mugabe re-reading his State of the Nation Address delivered to the national assembly at the end of August. Mugabe’s...

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe’s wife, Grace, has warned Zimbabweans that they will miss the veteran leader when he is gone. “It will come a day that Mugabe will not be there and people will regret, missing his leadership,” Grace said Thursday while addressing supporters at Murombedzi, in the president’s Zvimba home district. Mugabe turned 91 this year and, according to opposition MDC-T spokesman Obert Gutu, is “clearly not in the best state of both physical and mental health”. But the ruling Zanu PF party appears unwilling to contemplate life without him and has already nominated the nanogenarian as its candidate for...

As part of the celebrations for his 91st birthday next Saturday, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe will be served a feast featuring five impala, two buffalo, two elephants, two sables, and one lion. According to a report in Zimbabwe's The Chronicle, the menagerie was donated by Tendai Musasa, owner of the prominent Woodlands Farm near the Elephant Hills Resort at Victoria Falls, where the 20,000-person shindig will take place. While you'd think that eating elephants and lions, icons of wildlife conservation, would be illegal, it turns out it's not—neither under Zimbabwean nor international law. As of 1997, elephant populations in Botswana,...

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's government has reportedly indicated, for the first time, that it may hand back land to some white farmers whose farms were forcibly taken away from them during the height of the country’s controversial land reform programme. This comes a decade and a half after the Zimbabwean government seized large swaths of land from white farmers in the country - a move that saw a drastic deterioration in the country's economy. According to The Telegraph, Minister of Lands Douglas Mombeshora said provincial leaders had been tasked to come up with names of white farmers they wanted to...

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe jokingly said he would travel to the White House and propose to U.S. President Barack Obama, who lauded a historic Supreme Court ruling that made same-sex marriage legal in all 50 American states last week. The Zimbabwean leader mocked the 5-4 court decision and condemned marriage equality during his weekly radio interview with the country’s national radio station, ZBC, on Saturday, according to media reports. “I’ve just concluded since President Obama endorses the same-sex marriage, advocates homosexual people and enjoys an attractive countenance – thus if it becomes necessary, I shall travel to Washington, D.C., get...

Robert Mugabe has mocked America’s decision to legalize gay marriage across all 50 states by vowing to travel to the White House and proposing to Barack Obama. […] Mugabe, who is known for his brutal crusades against homosexuality, was responding in bizarre fashion to the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling that the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees gays and lesbians the same right to marry as heterosexuals. […] Speaking on on Saturday, Mugabe said: “I’ve just concluded—since President Obama endorses the same-sex marriage, advocates homosexual people and enjoys an attractive countenance—thus if it becomes necessary, I shall travel to...

During his weekly interview with the national radio station, the Zimbabwean president joked that he planned to travel to Washington DC ‘get down on one knee and ask his hand’. Mugabe, who is known for his brutal crusades against homosexuality, was responding in bizarre fashion to the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling that the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees gays and lesbians the same right to marry as heterosexuals. Speaking on on Saturday, Mugabe said: ‘I’ve just concluded – since President Obama endorses the same-sex marriage, advocates homosexual people and enjoys an attractive countenance – thus if it becomes...

PRESIDENTS Jacob Zuma of South Africa and Botswana’s Ian Khama angrily clashed with their Zimbabwean counterpart, President Robert Mugabe over xenophobia in South Africa, with the two demanding that instead of blaming their neighbour, Zimbabwe and other Sadc states must fix their broken economies to curb the rising tide of immigration. Hazel Ndebele/Elias Mambo While Sadc leaders met for an extraordinary summit in Harare on Wednesday to discuss an industrialisation strategy and roadmap, the major highlight of the meeting was the recent xenophobic violence and killings in South Africa which raised a storm of debate and anger across the region....

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, 90, fell down steps from a podium after speaking to supporters upon his return from Ethiopia, say witnesses. Mugabe appeared to miss a step and toppled when he left the raised lectern at the airport Wednesday afternoon, according to several witnesses, who insisted on anonymity because of security concerns. His aides quickly helped him up and escorted him to his limousine which sped away, they said. […] Zimbabwe, a once-prosperous nation of 13 million people in southern Africa, has struggled since Mugabe’s government began seizing white-owned farms in 2000. Mugabe is accused of using widespread violence...

Mugabe recently accused Mujuru of plotting to assassinate him and branded her a witch. The ministers of energy, education, public service and social welfare, presidential affairs, communication and postal services are among the other members of Cabinet who were fired.

The government of Zimbabwe’s core business appears to have been reduced to paying civil servants’ salaries, abandoning other responsibilities, as the economy becomes President Robert Mugabe’s biggest undoing, one year after sweeping to power in 2013. Last week Zanu PF celebrated its victory anniversary notwithstanding the attendant economic collapse since Mugabe retained the keys to State House in a controversial election. Zanu PF promised when campaigning that it would create over two million jobs by 2018. Of that figure, 222 800 were supposed to have been created in the first year. The glaring fact on the ground however is that...

Sadly what did make front page news this week were the shocking words: “Don’t sup with whites: Mugabe.” Mr Mugabe said that people who had been given seized farms were leasing them out to white Zimbabweans and accused his own officials of being involved. “Some of my ministers are being mentioned here. They are refusing to remove white farmers from their constituencies… we are told that Chiefs are also involved in land deals,” Mr Mugabe said. “What annoys us... is where our own indigenous farmers sub-lease to the very same white farmers we took our heritage from yesterday,” he added....

Whites in Zimbabwe can own businesses and urban apartments but not land, according to the country’s president, Robert Mugabe, who called for the removal of white farmers in a fiery speech to a group of supporters on Wednesday. “We say no to whites owning our land and they should go,” the 90 year-old Mugabe told the crowd, gathered in Mhangura, a farming village, according to the Christian Science Monitor. “They can own companies and apartments…but not the soil. It is ours and that message should ring loud and clear in Britain and the United States.” “Don’t be too kind to...

“I have been given a list of 35 white farmers in Mashonaland West alone,” Mr. Mugabe told an emotional crowd in what was billed a patriotic speech. “We say no to whites owning our land and they should go. … Mugabe, reelected last summer to his fifth consecutive term, “There are white farmers who are still on the land and have the protection of some cabinet ministers and politicians as well as traditional leaders. That should never happen. They [whites] were living like kings and queens on our land and we chucked them out. Now we want all of it.”...

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has called on the country's remaining white farmers to cede land to black people. "We say no to whites owning our land and they should go," Mr Mugabe told his supporters at a rally. The white farmers union said it was regrettable that racial tensions were flaring up again. The president's critics say his policy of seizing most of Zimbabwe's white-owned farms caused the country's economic collapse from 2000-2009. Mr Mugabe, 90, has governed Zimbabwe since independence in 1980. He was re-elected president last year with 61% of the vote, defeating his long-standing rival Morgan Tsvangirai....

Zimbabwe’s long-serving president on Sunday threatened to expel foreign-owned companies over what he said was the West’s interference in the politics of the country he has led since 1980. President Robert Mugabe said he wanted no “ideas from London or Washington,” speaking before supporters at the funeral of a top military chief in Harare. He warned the Western powers that although his government hasn’t “done anything to your companies, time will come when we will say tit for tat.” He said: “You hit me, I hit you. We have a country to run and we must be left free to...

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...

Russia used its annual appearance at the U.N. General Assembly on Saturday to accuse the United States and its Western allies of bossing the world around, complaining they were attempting to dictate to everyone "what is good and evil."