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www.zwnews.com
Some of the things going on in Zimbabwe:
The opposition party is thinking of boycotting the elections because their candidates are beaten and harrassed.
To move or not to move, either could mean death.
Over 200 families who are recent beneficiaries of Zimbabwe's land grabs are stranded outside Harare after police and the army chased them away from their homes to pave way for new unidentified owners.
Amnesty International reports that at least 10 people have died at Porta Farm outside Harare in the past three weeks.
In 1991 thousands of people living in informal settlements around Harare were moved, by the government, to Porta Farm, as a temporary measure in anticipation of being permanently resettled. More than a decade later the majority remain at Porta Farm. In July 2004 the Porta Farm residents were allegedly told they would be relocated to other farms. However, the residents were subsequently threatened with death by "war veterans" if they moved to the proposed locations. On 31 August 2004 they obtained a court order staying their eviction from Porta Farm for 10 days, while the matter was investigated further.
Journalists are being arrested if they don't tell the "official" version of the news. Harare - Police yesterday arrested Zimbabwe Independent editor, Vincent Kahiya, the paper's general manager and a reporter and charged them with breaching state press laws. The three were arrested over a story carried by their paper on July 30 alleging that High Court Judge President Paddington Garwe had sought to convict opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai of treason without consulting his assessors.
Bulwayo - Recruits from the government's controversial National Youth Service training programme have moved into one of Zimbabwe's biggest rehabilitation centres, the Jairos Jiri Association for Rehabilitation of the Disabled in Bulawayo. The youths, accused of torturing and maiming opposition supporters, moved into Jairos Jiri two weeks ago from their camp at Ntabazinduna on Bulawayo's north-eastern boundary.
Zimbabwe is a mess. The President, Robert Mugabe, is a dictator who is trying to starve his own people. He is refusing aid from the international Red Cross and other aid agencies (NGOs). Church groups are restricted in how much aid they may provide the starving population.
Bulawayo - About 50 members of the rights group, Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), have embarked on a 440 km march to the capital, Harare, to protest a proposed bill that will regulate NGOs.
The proposed bill requires all NGOs to register with a government-appointed regulatory council, and disclose details of their programmes and funding. NGOs without registration licenses will be shut down, and officials who continue their activities illegally could face up to six months in prison. Organisations involved in charity work, disbursing humanitarian assistance, the provision of funds for legal aid, animal welfare, environmental issues and the promotion of human rights are all covered in the bill. The proposed legislation also seeks to ban foreign NGOs concerned principally with "issues of governance", and deny registration to NGOs receiving foreign funding for "promotion and protection of human rights and political governance issues". The authorities have countered that the draft bill is meant to regulate the operations of NGOs for national security reasons.
The United Nations World Food Program announced recently it had reduced its staff in Zimbabwe by nearly half. Its operations were geared to feed more than five million people, or nearly half the population, at the peak of food shortages during the last three years. The government says if people do need food aid, it will do the job itself
Harare - Zimbabwe's government on Wednesday dismissed reports of dozens of deaths linked to malnutrition as lies peddled by detractors and insisted the nation has more food than it needs. Health officials in Bulawayo, the nation's second largest city, have reported at least 162 deaths related to malnutrition this year.
(I heard from someone who lives there that Food sent to the country to be freely distributed to the hungry population is being repackaged and sold by the government.)
(Elections are coming up in March. Maybe the starving people who vote for the right candidates will be given food.)
Zimbabwe was once the breadbasket of Africa.
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