Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition notes that the Southern African Development Community (SADC) claims that Zimbabwe and the SADC region are committed to “meaningful and constructive dialogue … to consolidate the rule of law, democracy, governance and human rights”. However, in Zimbabwe the shrinking of democratic space, weaponization of the judiciary, criminalization of civil society work, militarization of key state institutions, clampdown on the opposition, entrenchment of authoritarian rule, corruption and plunder of national resources by political elites among others issues are of major concern to Zimbabweans.

As the UN Special Rapporteur Alena Douhan winds up her visit to Zimbabwe, I wonder what real incontrovertible evidence she has managed to garner on how the so-called 'economic sanctions' have crippled the country,” writes social justice activist Tendai Ruben Mbofana. “… Should Douhan want to [probe further], there is more than enough documented evidence of widespread, wanton corruption - touching very high offices in the country. Douhan could also have a look at the Pandora Papers and see just how much in supposed diamond earnings were hidden in offshore accounts - by people linked to high offices…”

An American trophy hunter who shot an arrow into a magnificent male lion on the border of Hwange National Park and left it to suffer for 24 hours has been tracked down by Daily Mirror (UK) journalist Christopher Bucktin. The man who killed Mopane, the majestic pride male, is Phillip Smith, a physiotherapist who lives in Columbia, Missouri, where he co-owns PEAK Sport and Spine. Mopane was lured out of the same park as Cecil, the magnificent black maned lion, in 2015, killed in the very same location, by the very same hunting company, Dinguzulu Safaris. He was left overnight to drown in the dust in his own blood.

A Zimbabwean community-led forestry restoration project, "My Trees Trust/Miti Yangu", has been selected as one of British rock band Coldplay’s conservation partners - co-founder Chris Martin spent much of his youth in Zimbabwe. A community-led project, My Trees Trust will protect a vast new area of wilderness, support the regeneration of forest and provide a habitat for critically threatened wildlife. Zimbabwe is the largest producer of tobacco in Africa and, as a result, is facing tobacco-led deforestation. An estimated 330,000ha of indigenous woodland are now lost every year, with 60,000ha lost due to tobacco production.

MDC Alliance reports that party leader Nelson Chamisa’s convoy was intercepted by suspected Zanu PF youths on 19 October 2021. They fired gunshots, hitting a rear window on the opposition leader’s vehicle on the outskirts of Mutare. Chamisa is currently on a tour of Manicaland province to drum up support for his party. He was coming from Birchenough Bridge and Chipinge headed for Mutare when he was intercepted by the youths who were travelling in over a dozen unmarked twin-cab vehicles. They were armed with axes, guns and machetes. Other vehicles were stoned. There was a previous attempt on his life in 2018.

National spokesperson of the National Patriotic Front (NPF) Jealousy Mawarire, who was a close ally of the late former President Robert Mugabe, said that the government’s fast track land reform programme, which was launched at the turn of the millennium, was speared by the military to create what they called “liberated zones”. Mawarire claimed that the ruling ZANU PF party considered losing the 2000 elections to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party a distinct possibility, and the war veterans and security service personnel who took over farms did so in preparation for such a possibility.

Zimbabwe’s currency is in danger of collapsing as companies resort to the U.S. dollar for transactions, The Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) has warned its members, amid a crackdown on black market currency trading. “Clamping down on informal foreign exchange trading in the absence of a viable formal market will have catastrophic consequences for the economy,” the CZI noted. The value of the domestic currency has weakened to 88 per U.S. dollar on the official market as of October 11 from 2.5 a dollar in February 2019. On the black market, it trades significantly weaker, at around 170 to the dollar.

Rwandan president Paul Kagame is interested in hiring Zimbabwean teachers. Commenting on Rwanda Television early October, he said: “I heard the presentations made to us [by the Zimbabwean delegation in Kigali, led by Foreign Affairs Minister Frederick Shava], very important things we can do together, what each country offers [notably teachers] and so forth.” Rwanda has 13,000 vacant teaching posts. In the face of deteriorating working conditions and slave wages, Zimbabwean teachers have called on President Emmerson Mnangagwa to look into their grievances, which have been routinely ignored by government.

World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organisation dedicated to tackling poverty and injustice projects that some 3.3 million children are at the risk of child marriage due to the post-Covid-19 hunger crisis. 

World Vision said millions of children will be forced into early marriage because of increased poverty levels, rising hunger and reduced access to education. The report also highlights the impact that school closures have had and reveals that children who are not currently in school are 3.4 times more likely to be married off than their peers currently in school. Their report covers Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Ghana and India.

Authorities are arresting informal currency traders who they blame for fueling the latest collapse of the local unit on the black market. The Zim dollar currently changes hands on the streets of Harare for Z$170 per US$, while the official rate is Z$88.55. The local unit was scrapped after a bout of hyperinflation in 2009 and trade in US$ and other currencies was permitted. The thriving informal roadside currency trading became a platform for the elites to launder ill-gotten gold dealing money and drive the demand for US$. The phenomenon of elites in currency trading is extends back to the hyper inflationary period.

Residents in Chegutu are now stuck with the highly controversial Zanu PF MP, Dexter Nduna, who, even the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) admitted, lost the 2018 election to the opposition MDC Alliance candidate, Gift Konjana. This week the Constitutional Court (ConCourt) dismissed an application by Konjana who was challenging Nduna’s controversial announcement as the winner in the 2018 parliamentary election. While Konjana is highly regarded for his commitment and courage, Nduna has been on the wrong side of the law on various occasions, including an illegal mining deal, and has links to a machete gang.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has come under fire for claiming that it is “neutral”. ZEC was also accused of being a ZANU PF tool to fight the opposition after the commission conducted stakeholders’ engagement meetings without inviting the MDC Alliance opposition party led by Nelson Chamisa. Furthermore, ZEC is being widely castigated for announcing Dexter Nduna of ZANU PF as MP for Chegutu West constituency after he lost the 2018 election to the MDC Alliance’s Gift Konjana. ZEC has been consistently criticised during previous elections for being partisan and for patently favouring the ruling ZANU PF party.

Author Cathy Buckle’s Letter From Zimbabwe is written in memory of a brave farmer friend who has passed away. “His story is our story and versions of it can be told over and over again across our country where we are a nation unable to move forward as we are suffocated by secrets, paralyzed by non accountability, silenced by fear,” writes Cathy. The farmer and a friend were seized from a police station where they had sought help to rescue a fellow farmer who had been abducted by war veterans. They were beaten repeatedly before being left tied up in a vehicle in the bush. The neighbour was murdered in broad daylight. 

“In case you’re wondering, I’m enduring prison quite well,” writes a brave Zimbabwean activist, Makomborero Haruzivishe, who is just 29 years old. “I’ve been prosecuted countless times over the past decade [and have] made a gentlemen’s agreement with pain. Having been arrested an average of three times a year, tortured numerous times since 2011, I have come to appreciate that pain has its place and I don’t mock its power.” Mako, as he’s known, is currently incarcerated at Harare Remand Prison in sub-human conditions. “Justice is the first condition of humanity, and we deserve it pure and undiluted,” Mako says. 

Compensation court cases continue to mount against the Zimbabwean government. In this latest case, the High Court has ordered Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage Minister Hon. Kazembe Kazembe and Commissioner-General of Zimbabwe Republic Police Godwin Matanga to pay a Harare resident and opposition Movement For Democratic Change (MDC) supporter, Linda Musiyamhanje, US$12 000 as damages for violation of her fundamental rights when she was unlawfully arrested, detained and prosecuted 10 years ago for allegedly murdering a police officer. She was detained in cruel and inhuman conditions.

The United Nations will deploy an envoy to Zimbabwe from October 18-28 to assess the impact of sanctions imposed 20 years ago on targeted individuals who engage in human rights abuses and corruption. The special rapporteur is mandated to determine if President Mnangagwa’s government is using sanctions as a scapegoat for the prevailing economic crisis. Alena Douhan is scheduled to meet government officials, the opposition and members of civic society who argue that the prolonged economic crisis in Zimbabwe has been caused by grand corruption – estimated at around US$1.8 billion annually - and not sanctions.

Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) chairperson Loice Matanda-Moyo told a whistle-blower protection workshop during September that the country was losing about US$1.8 billion each year through corruption. She said corruption was bleeding the economy of revenue meant to promote sustainable socio-economic development and the betterment of the livelihoods of all Zimbabweans. She urged those with ill-gotten wealth to return it, promising them amnesty from prosecution. Matanda-Moyo is the widow of the late Sibusiso Moyo, the army major general who announced the 2017 coup on national television.

The Zimbabwean government has been urged to complete the ratification of the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG) before the 2023 general elections. Election results have been contentious since 2000 with violence and intimidation a key factor. The call was made by legal think-tank Veritas in its latest Bill Watch publication, where it said ratification of the AU charter would help to promote peace and stability in the country. Zimbabwe signed the ACDEG on March 21, 2018, but has not yet ratified it, according to the African Union (AU) status list for the charter which is on its website.

A Chinese mining company, Heijin, has reportedly told villagers in Kaseke, Uzumba district of Zimbabwe, that they have no capacity to stop their eviction to pave way for granite mining as they have no title deeds to the disputed communal land. Chief Nyajina told a government delegation tasked to resolve the land dispute that the mining company’s representatives had told them to stop fighting for their ancestral land since they did not have rights to it. Chief Nyajina said the company’s representatives were disrespectful and claimed to be connected to the highest offices on the land. More than 70 homesteads will be affected.

When President Emmerson Mnangagwa took over power in a November 2017 coup, he declared that Zimbabwe would open up for business and the country’s vast mineral resources became a magnet to investors, notably Chinese and Russian. Mnangagwa’s new dispensation implemented a raft of measures, among them tax incentives, to lure investors. However, the reality is that because the leadership is corrupt and pursues self-enrichment, communities do not benefit from the mineral resources and are frequently displaced in the process, while unilateral tax holidays are prejudicial to prejudicial to the economy.

The Fraser Institute’s index published in Economic Freedom of the World measures the degree to which the policies and institutions of countries are supportive of economic freedom. The cornerstones of economic freedom are personal choice, voluntary exchange, freedom to enter markets and compete, and security of the person and privately owned property. The five areas measured are: Size of Government, Legal System and Property Rights, Sound Money, Freedom to Trade Internationally and Regulation. Hong Kong is in first place, followed by Singapore. Zimbabwe is in the bottom 10: number 161 out 165 countries.

It is with sadness that we hear of a new wave of farm invasions presently underway in Beitbridge, writes Cathy Buckle in her latest newsletter from Zimbabwe. Denlynian Conservancy belongs to the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority and government resolved not to resettle people on conservancies and citrus plantations but that means nothing. This is the reality of the new normal in Zimbabwe: invasion after invasion after invasion depending on who’s in power, who’s in favour and who’s got friends in high places. Twenty-one years after the invasions began, we remain reliant on imported food.

FRESH farm invasions have been reported at Denlynian Conservancy in the dry Beitbridge area where settlers armed with 2014 letters are reported to be trooping in. Most of the settlers are setting up shacks and clearing land for farming, despite the conservancy falling within Natural Region V which is a low and erratic rainfall area (less than 650mm/year) with poor soils which make it unsuitable for crop production. Trees are being cut down indiscriminately and the bush is being burnt. This development comes just days after government introduced new offer letters with security features to avoid ongoing corruption.

Zimbabwe is Africa’s biggest tobacco producer, ranking high up with the world’s leading producers such as China, India, Brazil and the United States. China National Tobacco Corporation (CNTC) is the biggest cigarette company, producing nearly half the world’s cigarettes, originally focusing internally. Journalists from Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and its partners on five continents — including The NewsHawks — decided to investigate CNTC’s activities. They found that the massive conglomerate has pursued a strategy of expansion that is ethically dubious, and sometimes outright illegal.

A group of Germans and Austrians whose farmlands in Zimbabwe were expropriated during the regime of the late former president Robert Mugabe has asked a U.S. federal court to confirm an International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) award in their favor worth more than US$260 million. On July 28, 2015, the ICSID tribunal ordered Zimbabwe to return the properties and their water rights to the von Pezolds. Zimbabwe appealed but lost. On Nov. 21, 2018, an ICSID committee ordered Zimbabwe to bear in full the arbitration costs and compensate the von Pezolds for 50 percent of their attorney fees.

MyRight2Vote, a Zimbabwean group led by the dethroned Ntabazinduna Chief Nhlanhlayamangwe Ndiweni, has added its voice to growing calls for the government to permit diaspora vote. The organisation, in a document seen by the Zimbabwe Independent this week, expressed concerns over the government’s hypocrisy by enjoying huge diaspora remittances at a time when it does not want those who give it the remittances the opportunity to choose their government representatives through actualising the diaspora vote. Diaspora remittances amounted to US$1 billion in 2020 , contributing approximately 5% of GDP.

The majority of families from drought-prone areas of Zimbabwe might be in need of urgent food aid as their available food stocks have dropped sharply, food insecurity monitoring agency FewsNet has warned. There are already plans to resume a drought relief programme beginning next month, which was suspended in April. According to a Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee (ZimVAC) 2021 Rural Livelihoods Assessment Report, 50% of households in Matabeleland South province have less than three months’ supply of food stocks. The food shortages are compounded by the high cost of living in the country.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa's government is tightening the noose on non-governmental organisations it accuses of pursuing a regime change agenda ahead of crucial elections in 2023. Like Mugabe, Mnangagwa is accusing NGOs of being conduits of money from hostile Western countries, seeking to topple his party. He faces a tough re-election campaign after struggling to fulfil promises to engineer a swift economic revival after years of a downward spiral during Mugabe's tenure. A recent Afrobarometer survey revealed that 72 percent of Zimbabweans are very worried about the economic conditions.

Since their first publication in 1996, numerous studies have used the data published in Economic Freedom of the World to examine the impact of economic freedom on investment, economic growth, income levels, and poverty rates. Virtually without exception, these studies have found that countries with institutions and policies more consistent with economic freedom have higher investment rates, more rapid economic growth, higher income levels, and a more rapid reduction in poverty rates. Protection of individuals and their property rights, which are paramount, are crucial functions of government.

Trails of enforced disappearances continue to haunt Zimbabwe four decades after gaining independence in 1980. In 1983 for example, 27-year-old Menzisi Nyathi disappeared from his home, never to be seen again after Mugabe’s ruthless 1983-1987 genocide (Gukurahundi) swept across Matabeleland and the Midlands in his strategy to achieve a one-party state. It’s estimated that more than 20,000 people died. After this, abductions and disappearances continued under Mugabe and then under his successor, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who was a key implementer of Mugabe’s brutal strategies for more than 50 years.

Since 2000, there have been more than 5,000 abductions by the Zimbabwean state, with about 49 abductions recorded in 2019 alone, according to the UN. The fact that there have been no investigations leading to perpetrators being held to account is widely believed to be indicative of state culpability. Furthermore, Zimbabwe has neither signed nor ratified the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances. On 30 August, the National Transitional Justice Working Group (NTJWG) commemorated the United Nations International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances.  

Despite its claims of progress, the diamond industry’s Kimberley Process (established to prevent the sale of “conflict diamonds”) continues to greenwash Zimbabwe’s Marange district conflict diamonds. Hundreds of officers from the army, police and Central Intelligence Organization (CIO) have been deployed to this community. Violence has been normalized. Driven by unemployment and poverty, desperate artisanal miners who break into the fenced area at night to mine are subjected to the worst forms of torture. They are handcuffed, set on by vicious dogs and then dumped deep in forests, where many die of their injuries.

Zimbabwe will use more than half of the US$961 million allocated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the form of Special Drawing Rights (SDR)s to support its beleaguered currency. The government abandoned a 1:1 peg between a precursor of the reintroduced Zimbabwe dollar and the greenback in February 2019. The currency now trades at 85.82 to the U.S. dollar and even lower on the black market. The SDR is not a currency, it is a potential claim on the freely usable currencies of IMF members. As such, SDRs can provide a country with liquidity. An SDR allocation does not add to any country’s public debt burden.

On a recent road trip the feeling of travelling half a century back in time was palpable, with teams of donkeys pulling carts more plentiful than cars. Goats and pigs, cattle and turkeys have right of way and always they are being minded by children who have been out of school almost continually for the past 18 months. Crucial childhood learning has been lost to Covid restrictions in rural areas where online learning is non-existent, as are computers or even internet connections. Parents without access to any educational resources have had no option but to turn their children to chores: chop wood, carry water, tend to livestock.

Commenting on the election victory last week by Zambia’s opposition United Party for National Development (UPND), Hakainde Hichilema (HH), a successful business man, commercial farmer and politician, Zimbabwean academic Ibbo Mandaza said that the elections had been closely followed by Zimbabweans. He noted that Zimbabwe’s opposition MDC Alliance leader, Nelson Chamisa, had been elated at HH's victory. Mandaza also commented that, were it not for the support of the military and related securocrat state, Zimbabwe’s Zanu-PF could have certainly faced the same fate in the 2008, 2013 and 2018 elections.

High profile Zimbabwean journalist Hopewell Chin'ono had to deliver his keynote address virtually at the South African National Editor’s Forum (SANEF) Nat Nakasa Award ceremony on 14 August 2021, after the Zimbabwe High Court failed to make a ruling on his application to have his passport released for travel. Chin'ono said it was evident that thousands of journalists, including himself, were still subjected to legalised and political persecution, regrettably by black governments who were meant to put an end to state-sponsored indignities. “Unfortunately, this history keeps repeating itself on the African continent,” he said.

A three-judge panel at the SADC Administrative Tribunal, sitting in Gaborone, Botswana, has thrown out an appeal by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) not to award compensation to Justice Mkandawire, for unfairly and illegally terminating his contract. Mkandawire, a Malawian judge who was the first ever Registrar of the regional human rights court, the SADC Tribunal, who has been locked in a five-year legal battle with SADC, will reportedly be compensated for US$380 184.71 less his cumulative earnings in Malawi from the time of the termination of his contract up to 30 November 2016.

The recently released Auditor-General’s report for Zimbabwe (2019) includes a section on the devastation caused by Cyclone Idai in March 2019 and the gross mismanagement of the disaster: “The unimaginable and colossal damage inflicted by Cyclone Idai caught the Civil Protection Organisation unaware and ill-prepared to deal with a disaster of such a magnitude. … There were no robust and water-tight procedures and policies designed to match and address emergency disasters of this kind ….” It further records a distressing tale of food distribution failures, while donations and money were misapplied or went astray.

Zimbabwe’s Centre for Natural Resource Governance (CNRG) has expressed its concern about the growing phenomenon of extractivism. Throughout the country, people are living on the edge as hundreds of special grants are issued to so-called investors, predominantly from China, to explore for minerals and ultimately displace the people from their ancestral homes. For example, more than 1,300 families were forcibly evicted from the Marange diamond fields without compensation and dumped more than 80km away. Diamonds worth hundreds of millions of dollars continue to be looted from Marange annually.

Commenting in the Black Lives Matter movement, especially in relation to sport and the Olympics, Zimbabwean political commentator Tendai Mbofana asks:  “What about the plight of the majority of black people (in Africa) who have no one fighting for them, or kneeling for their cause? Who is going to take a stand for the nearly 1.4 billion mostly black folk in Africa - who have either been, or are still being, ruthlessly massacred by their power-greedy black leaders, or those who are dying, or are sick, due to starvation, as a result of their richly-endowed nations being unashamedly plundered by the black ruling elite? 

Land reform: Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, the MDC-Alliance, has written an excellent position paper on the land reform issue. While it acknowledges that the land reform program is irreversible, it says “there is a need to rationalize the process through a comprehensive land audit that ensures title and security of tenure to the citizens who are beneficiaries. This must be a national and inclusive process aimed at a sustainable, equitable, transparent, just, lawful and economically efficient rationalization of the ownership and use of land….” Adequate compensation must be paid to dispossessed farmers and farm workers.

In many independent African countries, the new ruling elites have shown little concern for the poor, or for their country, largely because loyalties have focused on family, clan or one’s ethnic group, not on the nation, writes RW Johnson. He notes: “Zimbabwe is ruled by a tiny elite of Zanu-PF politicians and the military who are rich due to all manner of cartel arrangements and rackets. Similarly, in South Africa the rapidity of its post-1994 decline has also bred disappointment and anger.” The IRR’s John Kane-Berman has, in the wake of SA’s July insurrection, penned 20 solutions which also apply largely to Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe’s Dr Grant Murewanhema writes that “damage caused by the third wave of the coronavirus has exceeded that of the first and second waves combined by a huge margin, with many lives being claimed. Several families have lost two or more members, and the extent of social disruption is unimaginable. I have come across families that have lost both parents, young couples have been disrupted, pregnant mothers have departed from us, and some have left their neonates. This indeed has been a very sad time for us Zimbabweans and has been very draining both emotionally and physically for us healthcare workers.

Outgoing Netherlands Ambassador to Zimbabwe Ms Barbara Van Hellemond this Wednesday bade farewell to President Emmerson Mnangagwa at the State House. She said: “I was posted here four years ago, I have the restarting of the re-engagement process, the Netherlands, the EU and Zimbabwe have reengaged with dialogue intensifying. She said Zimbabwe needed a stable economy and that her mandate was to build trust with the country as a nation. In 2018, Hellemond challenged Zimbabwe to work on values such as the rule of law and anti-corruption before her country can trust it with investments.

Three Zimbabwean-born law graduates who cannot practice their trade in South Africa because they are not “permanent residents” or citizens, are aiming to overturn a section in the Legal Practice Act which discriminates against non-citizens within the legal profession. One of the trio, a Zimbabwean-born and fully South African qualified advocate, is having to work as a waiter because of legal profession’s rules. They all have various permits which allow them to live, study and work in South Africa. Doctors, engineers, accountants, auditors, quantity surveyors, nurses and teachers do not require permanent residence status.

AFC Land and Agriculture Development Bank together with Agricultural Marketing Authority will raise $20 billion [approx. US$55 million] through agro bills. The money will be used to support farmers in the 2021/22 summer season with funding for seed, fertilisers, chemicals, mechanisation, irrigation, electricity, labour, combine harvesting services and transport. Beneficiaries will include smallholder, medium and large producers and input suppliers. The fund will be used to produce maize, soyabeans, traditional grains and sunflower. 

Zimbabwe’s vaccination programme, which started in February, is gathering momentum. According to statistics released by the Ministry of Health and Child Care (MOHCC), as at July 25, 18 452 people were vaccinated with their first Covid -19 vaccine doses bring the total to 1 447 342 since the start of the programme. As at the same date, 2 286 received their second dose bringing the total to 680 660 people. The country has received the Sinopharm, Sinovac [both Chinese] and Sputnik V [Russian] vaccines. The population estimate exceeds 15 million.

“The third wave of Covid-19 is upon us, and social media in Zimbabwe is awash with death messages and condolence messages,” writes Thandekile Moyo, a Zimbabwean writer and human rights defender. On Tuesday [20 July 2021] there were 2,705 new positive cases and 62 recorded deaths. But Zimbabweans believe those statistics are not reflective of the reality on the ground. They suspect that many Covid-19 deaths are going unrecorded. Covid-19 is killing multiple family members in many cases. Trevor Ncube, a newspaper publisher and entrepreneur, lost his mother, father and a niece to Covid-19, one after the other.

The United Kingdom will this week [from 19 July 2021] start the mass deportation of Zimbabweans, who sought asylum at the height of the country's political upheavals in the 2000s under the late Robert Mugabe. Many also  fled in the wake of the brutal government strategized violence during the 2008 presidential elections. British envoys in Harare are said to have met Zimbabwe's Foreign Affairs ministry officials to lay the ground for the imminent deportation of 150 Zimbabweans. Seventy-five British politicians have expressed their disagreement, citing the "deteriorating" political and humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe.

Tshabalira Lebakeng, former street child in Durban, and now a writer with the Homeless Writers Project, reports on his struggle to find food and operational ATMs in Johannesburg after the insurrection attempt that has devastated South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province and parts of the Johannesburg area. He is approached by a man who offers him looted goods, justifying the theft by saying that he had to do something to survive. ‘Because South Africa will look like Zimbabwe in the next coming five years’, he said. He told Mr Lebakeng that he should think deeply about this African National Congress (ANC) government. 

ZANU-PF national deputy political commissar Omega Hungwe urged the party at a meeting in Bindura to target Form 4 students for the 2023 elections since they will be eligible to vote. This is in order for ZANU PF to realize President Mnangagwa's target of five million voters. The party's second secretary, Kembo Mohadi, said at the meeting that they needed to grow the party in order to “preserve it to perpetuity”. "We have to account for the fulfillment of the promises we made to the people during the run up to the 2018 general elections,” he said (only of which 2% have been achieved according to a SIVIO Institute report).

Zimbabwe is set to reap its biggest maize harvest since the 1984/85 season. This is attributed to an expansion of land devoted to (or cleared) for the crop and favorable weather conditions. Zimbabwe will also, for the first time in three years, manage to maintain the minimum strategic grain reserve of 500,000 tons in physical stocks. However, yields remain dismal (1.4 tonnes per hectare) in comparison to South Africa’s 5.9 tonnes per hectare. This poor performance is a warning to South Africa as expropriation [of the country’s largely white-owned commercial farms] without compensation looms, notes the Daily Maverick.

Violent demonstrations in South Africa that have seen businesses attacked, looted and torched, will negatively affect trade with Zimbabwe and other regional partners. Zimbabwe’s industries will be impacted by the insurrection in its largest trading partner as trade channels get clogged and supply chains disrupted. The insurrection over the incarceration of former president Jacob Zuma for contempt of court started KwaZulu-Natal and have spread rapidly, notably to the Gauteng economic hub. There are severe disruptions at the ports of Durban and Richards Bay.

Cathy Buckle’s latest newsletter from Zimbabwe is written to the country’s friends and neighbours in South Africa: Oh South Africa, we are heartbroken for you. Your pain is our pain. We have watched events of this week [and the destruction] in absolute horror, overcome with helplessness. As if the orgy of stealing wasn’t enough, shops, warehouses and buildings were deliberately set on fire by the looters. For twenty years South Africa has been our home from home. The place we could go to for solace, comfort, healing, sanity, food, work and so much more. Now we know how you have felt watching us for the past two decades. 

President Mnangagwa extended the level 4 lockdown by two more weeks from 14 July 2021 and deferred the reopening of schools, as the country recorded an 80% prevalence of the vicious Delta COVID-19 variant. Mnangagwa said his administration was targeting one million people for vaccination against the virus during the extended two-week lockdown period. On 12 July, 2 681 people tested positive to the virus while 59 died. The number of active cases in the country stood at 21 258. Information minister Monica Mutsvangwa said the national COVID-19 vaccination programme was now open to everyone.

On 7 July 2021, former South African president Jacob Zuma was taken into custody to begin serving a 15-month prison sentence imposed on him the previous week for contempt of the Constitutional Court. The sentence was imposed after the Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, chaired by Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, argued before the court that Zuma should be jailed for defying the same court’s order that he appear and testify before the commission. This sends a strong message that the rule of law must apply, and that no one is above the law, an important democratic principle.

In 2018, President Mnangagwa pledged to extend voting rights to millions of Zimbabweans abroad – a move that, if implemented, would answer a decades-long plea by the country’s citizens in the Diaspora, who have consistently asked for the unconditional removal of restrictions to their right to vote. However, it has become apparent that the promise was mere political grandstanding as it was recently rescinded in a statement by Zanu-PF’s acting political commissar, Patrick Chinamasa. Last year the estimated 5 million people in the Zimbabwean Diaspora sent home a total of US$1-billion which accounted for 5% of GDP.

While Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube claims he remains optimistic about the country’s economic future, there are two sides to every coin, writes Alec Hogg of the BizNews Power Hour. In comparison, highly respected economist John Robertson says that while there has been some improvement, recovery is still some distance away – mainly because the government is refusing to fix what they broke. When they took land off the market, the link between the farmers and the banks was broken – and that breakage is still there.  Manufacturing relied on dependable supplies of agricultural raw materials. 

Reports analysing corruption and State Capture in Zimbabwe seem to be coming thick and fast. Maverick Citizen has obtained a new report published on Thursday that zooms in on the burgeoning offshore business empire of Kudakwashe Tagwirei, Zimbabwe’s richest businessperson and a close adviser to President Mnangagwa. In August 2020 Tagwirei was added to the US’s sanctions list. He also looms large in two earlier documents reported on by Maverick Citizen: the Cartel Power Dynamics report (published in February 2021), and the Africa Risk Consulting (ARC) Political Stakeholders report (published in March 2021). 

There are moments in rule of law, which determine whether rule of law or rule of politics prevails. The actions of political leaders, especially presidents, shape the culture of societies. On 29 June 2021, the South African Constitutional Court ruled that former president Jacob Zuma was in contempt of court, and he was sentenced to an effective 15 months’ imprisonment. If Zuma fails to comply, the damage will be irreparable. SA has a moment now, to elect whether to go the Zimbabwean route - which Mugabe did when he repeatedly flouted the rule of law - or maintain its own and respect judicial pronouncements.

The Zimbabwe government made its first compensation payment as part of an agreement to settle a dispute with white commercial farmers who had their land seized violently two decades ago. The state-linked Kuvimba Mining House Ltd. transferred just $1 million to the farmers as the government asked for a delay in paying the full $3.5 billion compensation it had agreed to a year ago. While the payment is a fraction of that agreed to, resolving the dispute is key to the country pulling out of the economic stagnation that the land seizures, ordered by then President Robert Mugabe, triggered. 

Public law specialist Alex Magaisa, award-winning journalist and filmmaker Hopewell Chin’ono and Camilla Nielsson, director of President, discuss the making of the film and the Zimbabwean electoral system. Nielsen contends that ‘the international community let the Zimbabweans down big time on this one’. President details the rigged 2018 Zimbabwean elections from within the campaign of Nelson Chamisa, the president of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) Alliance (the opposition party). The film follows the buildup to the elections, the corruption and the disappointing aftermath of Zanu-PF’s stolen victory.

Zimbabwe’s ministry of Lands says beneficiaries of the land reform programme owe the government ZW$145.4 million for the infrastructure they inherited on allocated land, but the Auditor-General’s report for 2019 says there is no database of such farmers and farm improvements. The audit lays bare the government’s shambolic record-keeping in the Agriculture ministry. The country embarked on a fast-track land reform programme at the turn of the millennium which it claimed was to address colonial ownership imbalances and which came against the backdrop of mounting pressure from disgruntled war veterans.

It’s well known that the Zimbabwean presidential election of 2018 was stolen to consolidate the political gains of the military coup of 2017 that ended the rule of Robert Mugabe.. What is neither known nor understood, is how the election was stolen and the nature of the system that conducted the spectacular theft. Even more unknown is that the popular opposition presidential candidate Nelson Chamisa actually scored 66 percent of the vote while Emmerson Mnangagwa trailed far behind with 33 percent. Prof Jonathan Moyo’s book Excelgate:  How Zimbabwe’s 2018 Presidential Election Was Stolen, reveals all.

A 50-page report written by private consultancy Africa Risk Consulting (ARC) promises to reignite questions about the capture of Zimbabwe’s economy by cartels and politicians that were raised in the report on Cartel Dynamics published by Maverick Citizen earlier this year. Titled Zimbabwe Political Economy Stakeholder Map, it was published in March 2021 but is confidential and not available online. Focusing on the main individuals involved, it warns that “Zimbabwe is rapidly moving toward a Russian-style oligarchical system [and that] it’s becoming a regional hub for laundering illicit wealth that is fuelling violent conflict.”

Sipho Malunga, the director of the Open Society Institute of Southern Africa (OSISA)  and two associates who run a very successful farming operation on their legally purchased farm outside Bulawayo are now being targeted by the government because of Mr Malunga’s human rights activities. On 14 June he reported on Twitter that he had received a call from the Lands Office in Bulawayo stating “that the Zim Govt has acquired our privately owned farm & tomorrow they are coming to peg it & give it to people they have allocated it to. This isn’t about land reform & we will fight it in every way.”

The Agreement forming the African Free Trade Area came into force on 30 May 2019 and was launched on 1 January 2021. The main objective is to create a single market for goods and services and to facilitate the movement of persons in order to deepen the economic integration of the African continent. The efficacy of this body depends upon the respect that it is given by the member states. The main legal hurdle that the continent has to overcome is centered on the issue of the rule of law. A precedent has already been set by the Zimbabwean government, which refused to recognize the decisions of the SADC Tribunal.

Can man escape divine justice? In February 2020, Zimbabwean Chief Justice Luke Malaba and his cohorts at the Supreme Court, ruled … that the RTGS dollar was equivalent to the US dollar. This resulted in many Zimbabweans losing their savings yet again. Furthermore, debts incurred in US dollars could now be repaid in RTGS  dollars. The decree was a windfall for debtors whose debts were denominated in US dollars , but for creditors, it was a nightmare. However, Chief Justice Malaba, having reached the retirement age of 70, now faces retirement on a pension of US$30 per month instead of his anticipated US$ 3,000 per month!

National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) board chairman Advocate Martin Dinha has left the country for Turkey to engage investors that are keen to help revive the organisation. Other interested parties include Russia, China, Indonesia and Turkey. According to Dinha, “there’s interest from Russia through the provision of wagons and locomotives” and from Turkey.

Turkey, a giant in rail, has shown interest in developing the new rail line and links, in particular the Lion’s Den-Kafue-Zambia railway link and the Shamva-Mutoko link.

This report adopts a conservationist’s perspective in exploring the impacts of mining on wildlife, biodiversity, and the environment. The primary objective is to provide factual evidence on the intersection of mining and conservation in Protected Areas and Critical Ecosystems (PACE). While both are major contributors to socio-economic development, mining in PACE raises critical questions on the negative impacts on biodiversity, tourism, and the fundamental human rights of communities including the right to water, health, clean and safe environment. This report covers Chimanimani, Hwange, Umfurudzi, and Mazowe.