ZIMBABWE'S Minister of Energy and Power Development, Retired Lieutenant-General Mike Nyambuya is in Equatorial Guinea meeting his counterpart to negotiate an oil deal which will help ease the current fuel shortages in the country, the Zimbabwe Guardian has learnt.
THE Movement for Democratic Change's Democratic resistance Committees are behind the recent spate of violence in the country which is meant to discredit the electoral process in the country and delegitimise a Zanu PF victory in the run-off presidential election, says the commissioner general of police.
PRESIDENT Mugabe has said that Britain is to blame for all the troubles bedeviling the country today because they reneged on their pledge to fund the land redistribution programme as agreed at the Lancaster House Conference in 1979 which paved way for a transitional constitution for an independent Zimbabwe.
AUSTRALIA says it may impose more sanctions against Zimbabwe if President Robert Mugabe wins a run-off election echoing statements made by Britain which says will draw some "contingency plans".
MORE than 100 observers from the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) were deployed across Zimbabwe on Thursday ahead of the June 27 run-off presidential election, the 14-nation regional bloc said.
SUSPECTED Movement for Democratic Change thugs are reported to have killed four Zanu PF supporters and seriously injured eight others in Zimbabwe's Bikita district in the Masvingo Province and in Cashel Valley near Chimanimani between Saturday last week and Monday this week.
THE United States said Monday that it will contribute seven million dollars to 'help monitoring' the run-off presidential election in Zimbabwe on June 27.
SOUTH AFRICAN President Thabo Mbeki's office has issued a statement condemning the 'demonisation campaign' by sections of Zimbabwean media intent on preventing "the possibility for a solution to the challenges in Zimbabwe."
THE Southern Africa Development Community (Sadc) is to send a beefed-up observer mission for Zimbabwe's run-off election next month to ensure "greater transparency," according to Angola's foreign minister.
ZANU-PF and the MDC-T met in Harare yesterday to discuss conditions for the June 27 presidential election run-off and both expressed willingness to call for peaceful campaigns.
TWELVE suspected MDC-T thugs were arrested in Mutare yesterday after they were found in possession of axes, chain blades and sjamboks they were allegedly using to commit various acts of violence as they moved around in a pick-up truck belonging to the opposition party.
ZIMBABWE'S political opposition and its Western-sponsored civil society allies are concocting stories of an impending genocide to call for Western intervention to oust the economic nationalist Zanu-PF government of Robert Mugabe.
The opposition has so far failed to release details of the alleged plot and Tsvangirai's spokesman George Sibotshiwe was unable to say who was behind it or who had indicated to the party that their leader was in danger
Zimbabwe Finance Minister Samuel Mumbengegwi said African leaders should stand strong in their desire to work together and should not be manipulated by the west if development is to be achieved on the continent.
Zimbabwe's opposition accused Robert Mugabe's military intelligence Monday of trying to wipe out its leadership as the ruling party outlined battleplans for a run-off presidential election next month.
"This makes no sense and anyone who thinks this is credible news is just supporting the Western propaganda, demonize Mugabe apparatus." --Ayinde
The presidential run-off pitting President Mugabe of Zanu-PF and MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai will be held on June 27, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission announced yesterday.
PUBLIC relations and media work meant to spruce up the image of Movement for Democratic Change's leader in preparation for the presidency is being handled by a British-American company, the Zimbabwe Guardian can reveal.
The government has accused Western ambassadors on Wednesday of breaching Zimbabwe's laws and undermining President Robert Mugabe's government by "cooking up" evidence of political violence.
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T) blitzkrieg which sought to change the leadership of Zanu PF overnight–even before the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission made the formal announcement–has crumbled and will continue to crumble in our very eyes.
"We will not allow them (Western countries) because they are players. We will think favourably of them if they lift sanctions. Until they do that, there is no basis to have any relationship with them," Cde Chinamasa said.
...the MDC is in collusion with the US administration and the British government, who both acknowledge that they are working with the MDC to bring down the President Mugabe Government.
The MDC has been accused of claiming dead bodies and making unsubstantiated claims they have been challenged to report all these cases of deaths to the police, rather than to the media.
Just recently Zimbabwe's Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa accused the MDC of having a 'macabre tendency to claim dead bodies'. "Even people who have died of natural causes are adopted by the MDC-T and the cause of death is subsequently attributed to State-sponsored violence," Chinamasa argued.
A member of the Movement for Democratic Change led by Morgan Tsvangirai (MDC-T) reported to have died from Zanu PF violence is said to have died from chronic meningitis, state media reports.
In an interview with The Zimbabwe Guardian, the deputy Minister of Information Bright Matonga said, "Incidents of violence against our supporters remain unreported by a hostile media sympathetic to the west."
Ambassador Kingsley Mamabolo, head of the South Africa observer mission, claimed the failure of the Movement for Democratic Change to supply its collations of results in Harare wards had prompted the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) to release its own tallies as the final result.
We also know that the delays in announcing whether Tsvangirai will battle it out with President Mugabe in a date yet to be announced by ZEC is just but a political gimmick.
Since the release of the presidential election results last Friday showing that no contestant managed an outright majority and that a run-off was the only way to determine an outright winner, the opposition MDC-T and its allies have intensified claims that the electoral environment is not conducive for a free and fair run-off.
Top officials of Zimbabwe's electoral commission will meet "as soon as possible" to decide the date of a second round of presidential elections, a state weekly reported Sunday.
"I cannot state exactly when the run-off will be held but I can confirm that the poll will be held on a date to be announced by the commission," Zimbabwe Electoral Commission chairman George Chiweshe was quoted as saying in The Sunday Mail.
The opposition Movement for a Democratic Change has also complained that the ZEC announced the official results before the completion of a verification process.
But Chiweshe told The Sunday Mail: "MDC-Tsvangirai did not have any figures at all. They were not forthcoming when the commission asked for the statistics as had been agreed."
THE Sadc Election Observer Mission says the verification and recounting process carried out in 23 constituencies last month was done transparently and in line with Zimbabwe's electoral laws.
THE long-awaited results of the presidential election are out and no candidate managed an outright majority, that is 50 plus 1 percent of the votes cast. However, Zimbabweans were the winners for the maturity they showed in patiently waiting for official results in the face of sustained pressure from the West to go the Kenyan way, which would have justified external intervention.
RESULTS of the March 29 presidential poll were announced yesterday with no winner of an absolute majority, automatically setting the stage for a second election between the two top candidates - Morgan Tsvangirai of MDC-T and President Mugabe of Zanu-PF - with the other two candidates eliminated.
THE long-awaited results of the March 29 presidential poll have been announced the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) and have put the Movement for Democratic Change party's candidate Morgan Tsvangirai ahead with 47.9% of the vote while President Robert Mugabe got 43.2%. As none of the candidates polled the required 50 plus one per cent of the poll, a runoff election is now definite.
With controversy in the western media about Zimbabwe, disputes about the outcome of March 29 voting for president, charges of against President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF party, and calls from opposition leaders for western intervention, Final Call interviewed Zimbabwean Ambassador to the United States, Machinvenyika Tobia Mapuranga to discuss the political situation in Zimbabwe and issues facing the country.
Verification of the presidential election results began in Harare yesterday with representatives of the candidates who contested the March 29 poll in attendance.
Today Zimbabwe has taken a high profile place in corporate media headlines. Are we getting the truth this time and can we rely on the same progressives who broke through misinformation around Iraq to do the same for us again?
The MDC-T campaign to demonise the Government for alleged violence and human rights abuses came unstuck on Tuesday when the United Nations Secretariat also publicly fingered the opposition for violence against Zanu-PF supporters.
The United Nations yesterday snubbed attempts by Western backers of the MDC-T to put Zimbabwe on the agenda of the Security Council meeting as British moves to subvert Zimbabwe's democratic electoral process by mooting the formation of a contact and pressure group of three selected Sadc countries to put pressure on Harare were exposed.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is not qualified to comment on challenges facing Zimbabwe, let alone to call for more sanctions, founding Zambian president Dr Kenneth Kaunda has said.
Zimbabwe's Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Patrick Chinamasa on Friday denounced the US and Britain for their interference in Zimbabwe's elections. At the same time, he decried the Morgan Tsvangirai faction of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T), and its civil society partner, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), as being part of a US and British program to reverse the gains of Zimbabwe's national liberation struggle.
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) said on Saturday it would invite candidates to verify the results of the March 29 presidential elections from Monday, before the results are publicly issued.
Zimbabwe's opposition appeared set to retain its gains in parliament Saturday, as international pressure mounted for the release of results from the presidential vote that longtime leader Robert Mugabe is believed to have lost.
Addressing thousands of people at the official opening of the 49th edition of the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair here yesterday, Cde Mugabe said all land which was legally acquired and settled would never be returned to its white former owners.
Police yesterday arrested 215 people after raiding MDC-T's Harvest House headquarters in central Harare on allegations of committing acts of political violence countrywide and going into hiding.
In the strongest indication yet of the real motives behind the Western hullabaloo over the Chinese arms shipment to Zimbabwe, a leading American daily intrinsically linked to the United States' ruling elite has proposed that the Bush administration arm the MDC while simultaneously weakening the Government to abet illegal regime change.
Let me at the onset state that I do not believe that this "statement" reflects the views of the broad church community it claims to speak for, and I can emphatically state that the majority of church leaders were never consulted and did not sign this very unfortunate statement.
The U.S. State Department on Friday backed off comments by its top Africa official asserting that Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai had won the country's presidential elections.
Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa's ruling party, says the situation in Zimbabwe has not reached the stage where an international arms embargo is necessary. This contradicts the British prime minister's call for an arms embargo on Zimbabwe.
A spokesperson from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Jiang Yu, has stated the arms contract was signed last year contrary to claims that it was related to the current election situation in Zimbabwe. "This is normal trade in military products between the two countries," Jiang told a Press briefing in Beijing.
Western media have been titillated, maybe even physically aroused, by the idea of Zimbabwe going the Kenya way in both the violence and "national unity" phenomena and the MDC-T waltzing into Munhumutapa Building on the back of negotiations rather than votes.
ZANU-PF has retained Goromonzi West House of Assembly and Senate seats in the first batch of poll recount results released last night while the Sadc observer team says it is satisfied with the vote recounting process currently underway in 23 constituencies.
The American and British governments have campaigned tirelessly to convince the world that democracy cannot flourish in Zimbabwe without their watchful eye and direct involvement. This interpretation of politics in Zimbabwe is only embraced by those who are either ignorant of the country's history or for subjective reasons, have chosen to overlook it.
Government has challenged anyone with information demonstrating that acts of State-sponsored violence have characterised the post-election period to furnish the police with details to facilitate full investigations.
The Zimbabwean government said the opposition's claim that President Robert Mugabe's administration is waging a violent campaign to remain in power is a ploy to encourage foreign intervention.
China on Tuesday defended a cache of its weapons headed for Zimbabwe, saying it was part of normal bilateral trade, but suggested the arms might not be delivered due to problems offloading the cargo.
Only with the Conservative Party in power in the UK can that country hope to salvage its rapidly deteriorating relationship with Zimbabwe and Africa. Under the New Labour government, Zimbabwe has needlessly become to the British, what Cuba has been to the United States for the last 50 years.
SADC secretary general Augusto Salomao said late Sunday a summit here of the 14-nation regional grouping had heard a report by Mbeki, mandated to the mediation task by the SADC, and "asked him to continue his efforts to find a solution to the situation in Zimbabwe."
Zimbabwe's opposition leader pushed the UN on Monday to intervene to end his country's election crisis as President Robert Mugabe's ruling party flatly denied it was behind a rise in post-poll violence.
Ballot boxes are piled up prior to a recount at the Murombedzi centre in Harare. Britain has condemned the ongoing recount in Zimbabwe's contested general elections as a worthless exercise aimed at allowing President Robert Mugabe to "steal" the vote.
"What the Western media has not been stating clearly is that the MDC-T also called for recounts in two constituencies. The MDC-T has taken the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) to court over its desire to do a recount, not only in the two constituencies that the MDC-T requested, but also in 21 other constituencies that the government requested. ZEC held up on doing the recount and release of election results while awaiting the court's ruling. In truth, the release of the election results has been held up by actions on both sides of the political divide and not just Robert Mugabe as the western media would have us all believe." --Ayinde
The ruling African National Congress in South Africa has shot down Movement for Democratic Change faction leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai's call that President Thabo Mbeki quits as mediator in Zimbabwe because he has allegedly failed to resolve the political situation in the country.
After the opposition failed in a legal bid Friday to halt the process, electoral commission officials began recounting on Saturday morning in each of the constituencies in the presence of party agents and foreign monitors.
MDC-T yesterday filed another application at the High Court seeking an interim order barring the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission or constituency election officers from declaring as duly-elected anyone who might emerge victorious in tomorrow's vote recounts.
The Zimbabwe Electoral commission is to proceed with the recount on Saturday of ballots from 23 constituencies in the harmonised elections of March 29th...
The head of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC)'s observation mission to Zimbabwe, Angola's Youth and Sports minister Marcos Barrica, left Friday for Harare to supervise the votes recount process of the legislative elections held in 23 voting stations, starting on Saturday, ANGOP has learnt.
The SA government, through a team of SADC observers, would ensure that recounts in the Zimbabwe election process were impartial and objective, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad said on Thursday in Pretoria.
Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai yesterday called on the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to relieve President Thabo Mbeki of his mediation duties and immediately replace him with "a special envoy" similar to one that brokered a deal in Kenya.
ANC president Jacob Zuma said there is no need for him to play a mediating role in the Zimbabwean situation, as State President Thabo Mbeki is the appointed mediator.
A Seventh Zimbabwe Electoral Commission official yesterday appeared before a Bindura magistrate court charged with electoral fraud or alternatively breaching the Electoral Act.
Beijing's willingness to give aid and extend credit without attaching any conditions about good governance or human rights is winning friends across Africa, but nowhere more so than in Zimbabwe. In 2005 Mr Mugabe signed a big aid deal with China. A year later he signed a massive energy treaty, bartering chrome and other mineral concessions for new Chinese-built coal mines and power stations. China is to rebuild Zimbabwe's rail network, provide trains and buses and 12 fighter jets. Last year it swapped agricultural machinery for tobacco. It provides spare parts for military vehicles which are banned under Western sanctions. It has sold water cannons, bugging equipment and a jamming device to block independent radio stations. It even provided all the pro-Mugabe T-shirts in the run-up to the elections.
The yet to be announced result for the presidential election held two weeks ago has presented to the opposition MDC-T and its Western backers, an opportunity to stage-manage a crisis -- a condition that they have failed to create for the past eight and a half years.
Zimbabwe's main opposition leader called on South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki to quit his role as mediator in the nation's political crisis, saying "extraordinary intervention" is needed.
The Zimbabwean government delegation to the SADC summit held at the weekend has hailed SADC's ruling that there is neither a stalemate nor an impasse in the electoral process in Zimbabwe.
British and US attempts to place Zimbabwe's elections on the agenda of the United Nations Security Council meeting flopped yesterday with African Union chairperson Mr Jakaya Kikwete saying Sadc was managing the situation.
Western states joined the United Nations in urging action to ensure a fair outcome from Zimbabwe's elections but most African nations avoided the issue at a Security Council-African Union summit yesterday.
THE Supreme Court may order a rerun of last month's presidential election this afternoon when it considers a constitutional application brought by the leaders of two minor political parties.
The MDC-T stayaway flopped yesterday after people ignored the strike, triggering acts of violence by frustrated opposition youths but these were quickly suppressed by the police.
Zimbabwean election officials said in a state-run newspaper that on Saturday they plan to start a recount of the presidential and parliamentary votes in 23 districts. A ruling on an opposition challenge of a recount is expected Tuesday in the same court system that rejected the opposition's case on Monday.
I am so disappointed with Western media coverage of our elections. Western journalists went into Zimbabwe with one objective in mind that President Mugabe loses the elections while Morgan Tsvangirai wins.
Why does the British government believe it can use the likes of presidents Mbeki and Museveni, to do their dirty work in Zimbabwe when we all know that the central issue in the equation is land?
Two South African satellite engineers, held in Zimbabwe on several charges, including violating the country's media accreditation laws, were acquitted today, according to news reports and local sources
The Movement for Democratic Change called for Zimbabweans to stay home from work indefinitely to register their protest at what the party sees as the deliberate withholding of the tally in the presidential poll, held more than two weeks ago. As in the past, the call went largely unheeded.
A petition by Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change to order the release of presidential election results, has been rejected by the High Court.
Zimbabwe's High Court today refused to order the immediate release of delayed results from the 29 March presidential election, in a major blow to the opposition MDC.
Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change says it will challenge a decision by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to do a complete ballot recount in 23 constituencies.
Zimbabwe's Ambassador to the U.S., Dr. Machivenyika Mapuranga,was the featured guest on the LaRouche Show - April 12, 2008
President Levy Mwanawasa of Zambia opened Saturday's extraordinary summit of Southern African heads of state by saying its purpose was not to put President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe in the dock.
Votes in the Zimbabwe presidential and parliamentary elections are to be recounted, it was reported, after Gordon Brown described the situation as "appalling".
South African President Thabo Mbeki says there is no post-election crisis in Zimbabwe and has urged people to wait for the presidential result to be announced.
Zimbabwe's main opposition party called for a general strike next Tuesday following president Robert Mugabe's decision to boycott today's emergency regional meeting in Lusaka on the country's electoral crisis.
Three Zimbabwe Electoral Commission officials from Masvingo were yesterday convicted and fined $8 million or one week in prison for contravening the Electoral Act after losing a ballot box while two other officers appeared before a Bindura magistrate on similar charges.
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission says that its hands are tied over the release of March 29 presidential election results because the matter is in court, according to state media. "The commission wishes to advise the public that the question of the results of the presidential election is now the subject of legal proceedings in the High Court," it said in a statement cited by the Herald newspaper. "Pending determination by that court, and in line with established rules of court, norms and procedures, the commission is unable to comment on this subject," the ZEC said.
Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is expected to meet South African President Thabo Mbeki to try to end a political deadlock in Zimbabwe's election, a local newspaper reported on Wednesday.
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission is scheduled to start announcing results of the 2008 harmonised elections at 6am today, after undergoing the necessary verification and authentication, ZEC chairman Justice George Chiweshe, announced last night.
The color revolution in Zimbabwe (yet to be given a color) unfolds as other US- and British-government and foundation-directed color revolutions have unfolded in Yugoslavia, Georgia and Ukraine.
Just as they did three years ago detractors of Zimbabwe's governing party ZANU PF and President Robert Mugabe are already forecasting that the election in Zimbabwe is rigged, even though it has not happened yet. All of the propaganda machines are in motion to plant misgivings about any outcome that announces victory for Mugabe.
