On December 14 2007, the Zimbabwean government published proposed amendments to the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) and the Broadcasting Services Act (BSA). In its analysis, the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) Zimbabwe has come to the conclusion that the proposed amendment Bills contained in the extraordinary gazette reflect no serious intentions on the part of government to democratise the laws in question.

Don’t Be Negative About Being Positive is a campaign that aims to fight discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe. Since May 2005, the campaign has used personalised messages from people living positively with HIV, disseminated through television, radio and print media, to raise awareness and discourage stigma.

Police in Harare have launched a massive investigation into allegations that Premier Finance Group, chief executive officer Raymond Chigogwana has siphoned about Z$926 billion from the bank through alleged foreign currency deals using shelf companies of friends and family members. The crime is alleged to have been committed in October and has sucked Zimbabwe's central bank, whose governor, Gideon Gono has summoned Chigogwana to explain the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of was could turn out to be Zimbabwe's biggest corporate fraud.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to continue to allow unsuccessful asylum seekers from Zimbabwe to remain in the UK, and to continue the suspension of forced removals to Zimbabwe. Deadline to sign up by: 18 April 2008.

Zimbabwe's veteran President Robert Mugabe, accused of allowing attacks on his political opponents, appealed on Thursday to his supporters not to engage in violence in next year's elections. In a keynote address at his Zanu-PF conference in the capital, Harare, Mugabe also urged the party to remain united in the countdown to the parliamentary and presidential elections.

Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is in trouble: already split into feuding factions, it now risks being deserted by its key allies ahead of next year's elections. Labour movement and civil society groups are concerned over the 'compromises' the MDC has made in low-key talks with the ruling ZANU-PF party, and a growing intolerance within the opposition party, underlined by reports of intimidation and violence against members, analysts say.

Both Houses of the Zimbabwe Parliament this week approved the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa. The next step is for Zimbabwe’s instrument of ratification to be lodged with the AU, at which point the Protocol will come into force for Zimbabwe. After that women’s organisations will need to monitor the Protocol’s incorporation into domestic [national] law and its implementation.

The new Southern African Development Community (SADC) Tribunal in Namibia has finally held a hearing in the case brought by Zimbabwean white farmer Mike Campbell against the government of Zimbabwe. The farmer is seeking an interim order blocking the government from interfering with operations on his farm. There was a three-hour preliminary hearing, after which the President of the SADC tribunal Judge Onkemetse Tshosa, said they would deliver a ruling before the end of the week.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) on Thursday said it had commenced demarcating voting constituencies for next year’s House of Assembly election, with Harare, Bulawayo and the two Matabeleland provinces that back the opposition set to get 67 constituencies.

A Zanu PF businessman severely assaulted an MDC activist in Marondera last week after an MDC rally. Regina Silas had attended a rally by the opposition party at Dhirihori Shopping Center near Marondera town, when Isiah Mpazviriho beat her up, accusing her of bringing agents of “western imperialists” near his business. Mpazviriho is understood to own a general store at the shopping centre and is an influential family member of the clan that heads the village.

Robert Mugabe on Tuesday courted controversy by announcing that only friendly nations would be invited to observe the polls. The presence of foreign observers at the elections is one of the conditions the MDC is insisting on at the talks. Mugabe’s statement Tuesday revealed that he has not given in on this issue.

Thousands of Zimbabwean war veterans gathered in Harare on Friday to lead a "million-man march" in support of President Robert Mugabe's bid to extend his rule despite a severe economic crisis blamed on his government. Mugabe (83) and in power since Zimbabwe's independence from Britain in 1980, is seeking re-election in presidential and parliamentary elections set for March 2008 after some senior officials in his Zanu-PF party failed to stop him from running.

The country is far away from staging free and fair elections because voters in Zimbabwe still don’t enjoy broad freedom to criticize government, to publish their criticism and to present alternatives, according to a political analyst. The government recently published new electoral laws that it said would provide a better electoral framework. But Cape Town based political analyst Glen Mpani said only when the ruling Zanu-PF regime guarantees basic human rights, values tolerance, allows equality before the law and the due process of law, will people talk of free and fair elections.

President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda has accepted a mediatory role in the diplomatic impasse between Britain and Zimbabwe, his office has said. Museveni assumed the responsibility following a request from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Sunday. Brown reportedly made the request during a meeting on the sidelines of the just-ended Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Uganda’s capital, Kampala.

Miriam Madziwa writes that each time the Zimbabwe dollar tumbles, women's survival chances take a corresponding knock, as it means more sexual favours to seal deals with men, who by virtue of their jobs or connections are able to make or break women's survival attempts

With her unkempt hair tucked into a woolen hat, a faded T-shirt, skirt and a pair of torn canvas shoes, Nokhuthula Tshuma* does not fit the stereotypical profile of a commercial sex worker. As an informal trader earning a living selling agricultural produce from rural areas to urban residents, it is difficult to link her to sex work and its inherent dangers.

Yet, the mother of three, like thousands of impoverished Zimbabwean women struggling to feed, clothe and educate their children in a hyperinflationary environment, is at great risk of infection. Each time they embark on a business trip, the women expose themselves to vulnerable situations.

As the Zimbabwean economy crumbles, shortages of basic goods have presented numerous opportunities for enterprising women to make money. The same shortages of goods and essential services such as transport coupled with endemic corruption mean the women traders have to operate according to business rules defined by men.

One such rule is to offer a “favour,” really a bribe, to secure scarce commodities and free passage by police officers. For these impoverished and desperate women, the bribes take the form of offering "a little bit extra" to male service providers and suppliers in order to remain in business. These extra favours are invariably sexual.

For the cash-strapped women, sex offers an easy and cheap, albeit risky, means of supporting their families. In return, they are able to secure scarce goods as well as discounts on transport and accommodation and their businesses flourish.

A few experiences gleaned from a cross section of informal Zimbabwean women traders illustrate the magnitude of the dilemma these women contend with in trying to meet economic needs and safeguarding their health.

Tshuma lives in the southern half of Zimbabwe in the coal-mining town of Hwange. Twice a month, she makes a 400 kilometer round trip to Lusulu in Binga district. Lusulu is a thriving agricultural area where Tshuma barters basic goods such as soap, sugar and salt, which have disappeared from shop shelves, with maize. Normally she is away from home for a week.

If she were to pay for all her transport, food and accommodation expenses when she is away from home, she would make very little profit. So to boost her profit margins, she pays using what is known as "bottom currency," to pay off bus crews to secure seats on overcrowded buses, truck drivers to ferry bags of maize back to Hwange, and lodge owners to discount her accommodation costs.

Beauty Phiri started selling dried fish six months ago soon after government's clampdown on prices saw butchers' refrigerators going empty. An astute entrepreneur, Phiri saw a viable business opportunity selling dried fish to protein-starved Bulawayo residents. She sources her fish fresh from the Zambezi River in Binga from both Zimbabwean and Zambian fishermen.

She points out that it did not take her long to figure out that she had to sleep with the fishermen for her to get in order to meet her requirements quickly. Women fishmongers openly admit that fishermen prefer to deal with "generous women."

On the extreme end of the age scale are poor girl pupils in remote rural schools, such as Lusulu High School. Pupils walk an average of 20 kilometers to get to school from their homes, so many become “bush borders.” Bush boarding is an informal set-up where pupils build their own huts and have to find their own food and other basic requirements.

Many pupils come from poor families who are unable to send regular supplies of cash and food to the borders. In desperation, female students resort to illicit affairs with teachers, police officers and other rich villagers. Statistics from Lusulu indicate that annually, an average of 50 female students drop out of school after falling pregnant.

Thanks to HIV and AIDS awareness campaigns, most women who find themselves in such situations are aware of the inherent dangers of their survival tactics. The women know that HIV and AIDS have reduced the life expectancy of women in the country to 34 years, and that the pandemic is decimating families and drastically reducing mortality rates.

The sad reality though, is that the poverty forces these women to engage in risky behaviour in order to survive anyways. Some women still are not making the connection between granting sexual favours and the increased risk of infection.

Another worrying fact is that when women travel a lot, their partners are likely to turn to mistresses called “small houses” in Zimbabwe, during their absence. These "small house" occupants in turn often have numerous partners in an attempt to balance their ever-increasing monthly expenses with their incomes.

These bleak scenarios aptly portray how Zimbabwe's economic meltdown, characterised by hyperinflation now at almost 15 000 percent, is fuelling the vulnerability of women to HIV infection and erasing the gains of concerted HIV and AIDS awareness and behaviour change campaigns. The black market, a phenomenon triggered by acute shortages of basic goods and services, is forcing desperate women to forget lessons learnt from these campaigns.

The instinct to meet basic needs has erased survival skills painstakingly acquired over the years. Each time the Zimbabwe dollar tumbles, women's survival chances take a corresponding knock, as it means more sexual favours to seal deals with men, who by virtue of their jobs or connections are able to make or break women's survival attempts.
Even more disheartening is the realisation that efforts to break the vicious circle will come to nought until the economic free fall stops.

* Not her really name

* Miriam Madziwa is a freelance journalist based in Zimbabwe

* This article is part of a series produced by the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service for the Sixteen Days of Activism on Gender Violence

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Zimbabwe's seven-year economic crisis has forced private companies to make some difficult decisions about workplace programmes for HIV-positive staff. How do you provide life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) medication, care and support, when you're struggling to keep your business afloat? "We are meeting real challenges in carrying out HIV/AIDS programmes at workplaces, and this inevitably comes from the macroeconomic problems that the country is going though," Nyika Mahachi, the HIV/AIDS programme advisor at the Zimbabwe AIDS Prevention Support Organisation (ZAPSO), told IRIN/PlusNews.

The chief executives of the Financial Gazette and Zimind Publishers Jacob Chisese and Raphael Khumalo respectively, were arrested for allegedly increasing cover prices without the approval of the National Incomes and Pricing Commission. They were questioned over the price increases at Harare Central Police Station where they explained that the high costs of newsprint, film, printing plates and fuel necessitated the increases.

Zimbabwe has launched the first commercial biodiesel processing plant in southern Africa, underlining the region’s resolve to move to cleaner and renewable sources of energy. This comes amid concerns about the impact of fossil fuels (coal, petroleum and natural gas) on global warming as well as depletion of the world’s petroleum reserves.

The National Constitutional Assembly say 7 of their members were seriously injured on Wednesday after police crushed their demonstration in Harare’s city centre. The group was marching to Parliament in an attempt to denounce constitutional amendment 18 which harmonised presidential and parliamentary elections. Teera Musiya, one of their activists, sustained a deep cut on the head and blood was said to be ‘gushing’ out as he was ferried inside an NCA truck.

Zimbabwe and China have relations dating back to the southern African country’s 1970s liberation struggle when Beijing provided arms and training to the black nationalist movement fighting the white minority government of Ian Smith. The friendship was rekindled when President Robert Mugabe, shunned by former friends in the West over the political crisis in his country, adopted a "Look East" policy forging stronger ties with countries like China, Malaysia, Indonesia and India.