Free Republic

Don't cry tomorrow.Saturday 1st May 2010 Dear Family and Friends, A tragic event involving a 15 year old schoolboy and a fatal stabbing in a church, has sent shivers down my spine. It should be ringing alarm bells both in and outside Zimbabwe because this, more than any diplomatically worded political speech, demonstrates just how tired Zimbabweans are of waiting for accountability and justice. The news came in a transcript from a Voice of the People Radio report. A 15 year old schoolboy was attending a service in the Zion Christian Church in Village 2 near Neshuro Growth Point in...

Two South African farmers are attacked every day, and two killed each week, according to figures released by the country's largest agricultural union. Since 1991, there have been 11,785 attacks and 1,804 murders, and the problem is getting worse... Eugene Terreblanche...death inflamed South Africa's race tensions amid anger over a "shoot the Boer [farmer]" slogan sung by Julius Malema, the ANC Youth League leader.

Growing Anger At Collapse Of U.S.A. Standard Of Living Politics / US Politics Apr 25, 2010 - 07:03 AM By: Global Research Hiram Lee writes: A series of recent studies conducted by the Pew Research Center shed new light on the scope of the economic crisis in the US and the level of hostility the majority of the American population holds for the US government. Released in March, before the passage of the Obama administration’s health care legislation, a survey entitled “Health Care Reform—Can’t Live With It, or Without It” indicates that 92 percent of Americans give the national economy...

ZiziSaturday 24th April 2010 Dear Family and Friends,Saying goodbye to an old man this week was really sad. Joe is one of the forgotten generation, one of hundreds of thousands quietly slipping away in front of our eyes. Not cared for by Mr Mugabe's government and ignored by Mr Tsvangirai's party, Joe is 4 years older than our country's President but there is no dignity in his old age. There is no free or subsidized medical care for Joe, no rent assistance or food stamps, not even a bus pass for the elderly men and women who have made it...

<p>KAMPALA, Uganda— Iran's president is in Africa this week to build alliances to evade stronger U.N. sanctions for his country's nuclear program, ease its international isolation and strengthen its economy.</p> <p>Both Zimbabwe and Uganda, the two countries President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is visiting, have something to offer.</p>

 John Noonan   April 18, 2010 7:00 PM “Greetings in the name of freedom,” proclaimed the newly minted prime minster, Robert Mugabe, during Zimbabwe’s independence celebration in 1980. His words marked one of the most brilliant transitions of power in recent history, as the last conflict of the post-colonial retreat faded into history. The white rulers of the renegade Rhodesia had ceded power to African nationalists, after assurances by British mediators that free markets and democracy would be preserved.So in the fashion of a true capitalistic democracy, it is said that the first words uttered in the new Zimbabwe were,...

Dig your own graveSaturday 17th April 2010 Dear Family and Friends,Three months before Zimbabwe's 30th anniversary of Independence I happened to get lost in the vast urban sprawl that characterises the outskirts of the capital city, Harare. A huge shanty town lay on both sides of the road and stretched as far as the eye could see. Shacks and shelters made of tin and plastic were surrounded by mounds of rotting garbage which had even been scraped into contours in an attempt to demarcate little vegetable plots. Stinking streams of sewage ran right outside people's shacks and children ran...

On April 18th 1980, the Union Flag came down in Harare and the last Governor of Southern Rhodesia, Lord Soames, transfered executive power to the first Prime Minister of independent Zimbabwe. On the thirtieth anniversary of Zimbabwean "freedom", how's it working out? Zimbabwe didn't have to be like this. "You have given me the jewel of Africa," Robert Mugabe told Ian Smith, his notorious white racist predecessor, at independence in 1980. Actually, at one point Africa had quite a lot of jewels. But through the Sixties and Seventies decolonization delivered the continent into the hands of Afro-Marxist kleptocrats-for-life who reduced...

A New Jersey congressman says he will demand a government inquiry into Mikhail Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire poised to buy the New Jersey Nets, for his extensive business dealings in Zimbabwe -- a bombshell that could blow up the $200 million team deal and threaten the future of Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards, The Post has learned. Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., a member of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, wants to know if companies controlled by Prokhorov in Zimbabwe violate federal rules that forbid American citizens and companies, and subsidiaries set up in the United States, from doing business with...

Bruce Ratner is a New York real estate developer and owner of the New Jersey Nets of the National Basketball Association. For five years, he’s been trying to move the team to a new arena in Brooklyn that he hopes to build, relying on New York’s powers of eminent domain to move hundreds of homeowners and businessmen out of their quarters. The Brooklyn arena project, known as Atlantic Yards, is on life support. It is only being kept alive by an investment of Russia’s richest man, Mikhail Prokhorov, who is reportedly worth more than $13 billion. He is investing $200...

Prokhorov NBA Bid Gets Scrutiny; ACORN-Funder Ratner Needs Russian Billionaire to Build Brooklyn Arena Bruce Ratner is a New York real estate developer and owner of the New Jersey Nets of the National Basketball Association. For five years, he’s been trying to move the team to a new arena in Brooklyn that he hopes to build, relying on New York’s powers of eminent domain to move hundreds of homeowners and businessmen out of their quarters.The Brooklyn arena project, known as Atlantic Yards, is on life support. It is only being kept alive by an investment of Russia’s richest man, Mikhail...

GeneratorsSaturday 10th April 2010 Dear Family and Friends,When you ask people how they've survived this dreadful decade in Zimbabwe, almost everyone mentions the name Gideon Gono (Governor of the Reserve Bank.) People say they would have been able to salvage something if it hadn't been for Gono's incessant printing of money - and bragging about it; for his inability and unwillingness to control government spending; for his looting of foreign currency from private bank accounts, and for his removal of zeroes from the currency: 3 were taken off in 2006 and 10 in 2008. It's hard to understand how...

Julius Malema ...fresh off of a meeting with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, has said he will follow his neighbors policy of land seizure... And, most concerning to foreign investors, he has called for the nationalization of South Africa's mines. South Africa's mining industry produced 11% of the world's gold, 80% of the world's platinum, and 40% of the world's palladium in 2007.

Here’s a measure of how President Robert Mugabe is destroying this once lush nation of Zimbabwe: In a week of surreptitious reporting here (committing journalism can be a criminal offense in Zimbabwe), ordinary people said time and again that life had been better under the old, racist, white regime of what was then called Rhodesia. “When the country changed from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, we were very excited,” one man, Kizita, told me in a village of mud-walled huts near this town in western Zimbabwe. “But we didn’t realize the ones we chased away were better and the ones we put...

To learn or to teachSaturday 2nd April 2010 Dear Family and Friends,It has now been two years since the MDC won elections and were voted into power in Zimbabwe. There's not a lot to show for two years because every day and every week there's been another delay, excuse and stalling tactic to prevent real power being handed over to the MDC. To say that the MDC is in office but not in power is the most accurate description of our situation two years after elections. Because there wasn't a referendum to ask the people of Zimbabwe if they...

Julius Malema, the firebrand South African youth leader who has been accused of inciting violence against white farmers, has received a hero's welcome in Zimbabwe. Mr Malema, head of the youth wing of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), touched down in Harare to be met with a loud chorus of "Shoot the Boer" – a refrain from an apartheid-era song which is now outlawed in South Africa. Julius Malema The 29-year-old, who has been accused of inciting violence against South Africa's white population with his repeated renditions of the song Ayesaba Amagwala (The Cowards are Scared), will meet President...

SNIPPET: "Harare, March 30, 2010: The United States government officially handed over a new, upgraded bio-safety level 2+ laboratory to the Minister of Health, Dr. Henry Madzorera. The facility will enhance the capacity of the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare to offer clinical and diagnostic testing as well as research on indigenous/exotic agents which may cause serious disease after inhalation, such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB),typhoid (Salmonella Typhi),anthrax (Bacillus anthracis) and the H1N1 virus. Speaking after a tour of the facilities with the Minister of Health and Child Welfare, U.S. Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Charles Ray described the cooperation between the...

Harare(ZimEye)President Robert Mugabe has for the first time confessed that he is addicted to mistresses, from what are known as ’small houses’ in Zimbabwe. Mugabe who also castigated homosexual people said that it was impossible for him and a lot of other men to give up the ’small houses’, a widespread practice that gave rise to a television soap, ‘The Small House Saga”. “Its impossible to stop. ‘Small houses’ are everywhere in Zimbabwe. That’s what we do and the women suffer,” Mugabe said.

Over 3,000 have been killed since 1994. Now the ANC is accused of fanning the hate. THE gunmen walked silently through the orchard. Skirting a row of burnt-out tyres, set ablaze months earlier to keep the budding fruit from freezing, they drew their old .38 revolvers. Inside his farmhouse Pieter Cillier, 57, slept with his 14-year-old daughter Nikki at his side. His 12-year-old son JD was having a sleepover with two teenagers in an adjoining room. As the intruders broke in, the farmer woke. He rushed to stop them, only to be shot twice in the chest. In his death...

Out of sight is not out of mindSaturday 27th March 2010 Dear Family and Friends, The democratic space in Zimbabwe shrunk dramatically this week in a series of events reminiscent of our recent past. It's a familiar litany which instils fear, silences voices and closes doors that were just beginning to open: The Mayor of Marondera town together with a Ward councillor and two others were arrested after a rally at a football stadium. The Mayor was held overnight and released without charge. At the time of writing the others were still detained without charge. A 10 day photo...