Prominent Zanu PF financier in Mashonaland West province, Tom Beattie, is on the verge of losing his citrus-exporting Chigwell Estate near Chegutu as government has resolved to subdivide his land to resettle farmers. Documents in the possession of the Zimbabwe Independent show that Zanu PF has turned its back on Beattie for his "intransigence" and subdivided Chigwell into 16 plots as punishment.

Zimbabwe CSOs (Sustainability Watch Network) has launched an e-newsletter aimed at sharing information and initiating discussions and creating debate on MDGs monitoring efforts by Civil Society in Zimbabwe. The monitoring is based on the Government's implementation of MDGs. The unique newsletter will be used as a tool for advocacy on MDGs by Zimbabwean CSOs interested in MDGs work.

Women's organisations have hailed the Domestic Violence Bill, saying the proposed law would help curb domestic violence which has resulted in deaths or serious injuries to many people in the country. Musasa Project director Ms Ednah Bhala said the provisions of the Bill were comprehensive enough to deal with domestic violence.

The Zimbabwe Mirror Newspapers Group, publishers of The Daily Mirror and The Sunday Mirror on Friday (July 7) nearly failed to produce an edition of its daily. This comes in the wake of reports that the Mirror group "is in deep financial trouble and is saddled with a staggering debt profile that threatens its survival". Sources at the troubled newspaper group told The Standard that of late, the company has been struggling to meet its financial obligations

Zimbabwe may have the fastest shrinking economy in the world, but a small, well-connected elite appears immune to the hardships. According to economist James Jowa, government policies that have allowed the parallel market to thrive, combined with corruption, have led to the skewed distribution of wealth. This means that every evening long lines of people walk home from work in the city centre because they cannot afford bus fares, while a fortunate few cruise past them in expensive cars.

Aids-ravaged Zimbabwe is hoping to double the number of people on antiretrovirals (ARV) in order to reach 70 000 sufferers by the end of 2006, top official, Raymond Yekeye, has said. He said the Global Fund to fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria was to bankroll the programme. Zimbabwe last year failed to reach its target to provide ARVs to 100 000 people.

Benjamin Mkapa, a former Tanzanian head of state, has been asked by regional leaders to help find a solution to the divide between Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and an opposition that rejects the legitimacy of his government. Without a settlement, Zimbabwe's pariah status in western capitals is likely to continue, and financial aid will remain frozen.

The unwillingness of governments, multilateral bodies and big business to promote rudimentary democracy and social justice in Zimbabwe is now glaringly obvious. Renewed solidarity initiatives can be taken with more confidence by grassroots activists on both sides of the Limpopo River and beyond, writes Patrick Bond.

Item: Kofi Annan appears to have been intimidated into not taking a trip to Harare, after Thabo Mbeki raised expectations he would achieve a breakthrough.

Mbeki last week passed the buck to Annan and Robert Mugabe: ‘It’s best left to them, to the UN and the Zimbabwean government and hopefully that will produce its outcome so that we remove this particular matter from the international agenda.’ Mugabe simply refused to give Annan an audience.

Item: Last Friday, the head of the European Commission’s Harare mission and the Austrian ambassador to Zimbabwe wrote a letter to the Herald newspaper firmly stating, ‘There are no economic EU sanctions against Zimbabwe. There have never been economic EU sanctions against Zimbabwe.’

The bureaucrats were right, and they pointed out that for the latest year data are available, 2004, ‘Zimbabwe had a trade surplus of E261 million [R2.23 billion] with EU states.’

Item: A few days earlier, South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma told parliament that Pretoria would not wield targeted 'smart' sanctions against Zimbabwe's rulers: ‘It may not be a very useful tool to use right now because it doesn’t seem to be yielding results, even in the hands of the most powerful block in the world.’

Of course not, but for a simple reason: Pretoria is a smart-sanctions ‘buster’ by permitting the Zimbabwe elite’s shopping visits, real estate speculation and illicit financial holdings. If Pretoria joined in imposing smart sanctions, the results would be immediate and formidable.

Item: big business is again hopping into bed with Mugabe, according to Dianna Games of the SA Institute of International Affairs writing last week in Business Day: ‘Many South African companies believe that Zimbabwe is still a better and easier place in which to do business than many other African countries because of its strong business culture, diversified industrial base and relatively good infrastructure. And many companies are still making good, albeit often declining, profits.’

Pointing out that more than two dozen large SA corporations employ about 20 000 Zimbabweans in mining, retail, franchising, commercial agriculture and banking, Games concluded, ‘There may be no better time for investors to take a long, hard look at the opportunities that Zimbabwe presents right now.’

That was also a point made last year by Tony Hawkins, professor of business studies at University of Zimbabwe and well known to Financial Times readers: ‘South Africa has gained market share in exports, tourism and services. SA’s share of investment in Zimbabwe has also risen as there has been an element of bargain-basement buying by some mining and industrial groups.’

Added Hawkins, ‘SA is also taking significant skills from the country, especially scarce black skills in health, education, banking, engineering and IT. It would be too much to say that SA has benefited in net terms, but there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that it is securing some gains from the crisis.’

Reflecting business confidence in Mugabe’s ability to hold on, two large multinational firms – South Africa’s Implats and the French bank BNP Paribas – last week announced, respectively, a R1.7 billion platinum investment (36% of which represents a gift to government for crony ‘empowerment’) and a R332 million credit secured by future nickel export revenues.

Another new Mugabe ally is the brutal dictator of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who visited Zimbabwe in March and whose country’s oil began flowing to Zimbabwe last week. Nguema wants the British mercentary Simon Mann extradited from Harare, where Mugabe’s forces are holding him after he transited Harare in a 2004 attempted coup bid.

Is pressure being applied by the West, as Mugabe often claims? Aside from an arms embargo on the government, the EU’s smart sanctions apply to just 100 key ZANU(PF) leaders, and take the form of travel bans and a threat to freeze any assets they place in European banks. There are similar provisions in the US, but these countries together provide in excess of R1 billion in aid to Zimbabwe, largely for food and humanitarian relief.

No one calls for that aid to be turned off because it feeds millions of people for whom Zimbabwe’s own farms – especially the small-scale and peasant sectors – generated maize surpluses, prior to the more general meltdown of the country’s agricultural infrastructure. The starvation threat has less to do with the takeover of white farms and more to do with the general lack of access to rural transport, fuel, pesticides, fertilizers, farm implements, electricity and the like.

What about a renewed diplomatic initiative from the West? A good reflection of the US imperial agenda in Zimbabwe may be last week’s report in a Harvard University journal authored by Todd Moss and Stewart Patrick of Washington's Centre for Global Development.

Moss and Patrick argue against existing sanctions: ‘The US and EU may need to review their sanctions legislation to ensure that it does not create a legal problem or disincentive for re-engagement or private investment.’

They also argue that a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe government will ‘have to deal with an inherited external debt of some $5 billion. Clearing arrears will be the first step, but the arrears accrued within the past few years account for nearly half the current debt stock, suggesting that some special dispensation may need to be found with the multilateral institutions and the Paris Club of creditors.’

In contrast, the position advocated by civil society campaigners, such as the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development and Zimbabwe Social Forum, is that the vast but useless 1990s loans advanced by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank should be completely cancelled.

Indeed, following the lead of the Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube, Zimbabwean civil society may need to more publicly advocate serious sanctions, given the lack of pressure from opportunistic politicians and businesses.

Patrick Bond, director of the UKZN Centre for Civil Society in Durban, is coauthor of the book Zimbabwe's Plunge - and author of Uneven Zimbabwe. This article first appeared in The Mercury on June 7.)

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

The Zimbabwe report by the African Commission was first not considered because the AU accepted Zimbabwe's argument that it had not been given an opportunity to respond. A year later the AU again failed to adopt it on the grounds that it had not been translated into all the organisation's official languages

Sixty-three Women of Zimbabwe Arise members arrested on Valentine’s Day appeared in court again today (3 July) in Harare. They are on trial charged under Section 7(c) of the Miscellaneous Offences Act – conduct likely to disturb the ordinary comfort of the public. The trial has yet to begin however, and has once again been postponed to 11th July 2006.

Standards of learning and teaching in Zimbabwe, at one time the envy of the African continent, have been plummeting, says a report by a cross-party parliamentary committee. "Education is now a preserve for the rich, some students have dropped out of programmes, others will not be able to write examinations, which they cannot afford, while others have had to defer their studies," the committee noted.

Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF on Sunday 2 July said most Zimbabweans are grateful for its rule and dismissed as insignificant a new opposition political party launched at the weekend. Zanu-PF spokesperson Nathan Shamuyarira shrugged off calls by the leader of the newly launched United People's Party (UPP), Daniel Shumba, on the ruling party to resign because it had failed to run Zimbabwe properly.

The economic crisis in Zimbabwe has provided a chance for refugees like Nzabonimpa Ndayahoze to show their value to the country that gave them sanctuary. Ndayahoze is aware of others among the country's 14,000-strong refugee community with professions that might win a work permit, but knows that for most refugees life in Zimbabwe is more difficult, reports the UNHCR.

The Zimbabwe government is reneging on a pledge to invite exiled white farmers back to work the land and is moving to evict the few hundred who survived President Robert Mugabe's six-year ethnic purge. Scores of eviction notices were either delivered or were on their way to productive white farmers last week. The farmers will have 90 days to leave their homes and abandon their businesses.

There is “abundant evidence”, from the records of Zimbabwe’s courts - which are widely dismissed as pro-government - that state agents have carried out torture “on a massive scale”, the country’s leading human rights group said today (27 June). The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, a coalition of human rights groups and legal organisations, has reported over 15,000 violations of human rights in the past eight years.

Oxfam’s programme in Zimbabwe has gone through considerable changes in the past 18 months, in response to a rapidly changing context. Zimbabwe’s economic crisis coupled with the region’s underlying and deepening chronic vulnerability, creates a unique environment and a complex mix of emergency and development needs. Oxfam’s programme is responding to many of these needs, particularly food and livelihoods insecurity and the effects of HIV and AIDS.

GOAL has been operational in Zimbabwe since October 2002 and has mainly been involved in food distribution to combat the food shortages that have affected the country since 2000. Land reform measures introduced by the Government have rendered large amounts of prime farmland unproductive, and, as a result, contributed to the food shortages. Other factors such as poor rainfall, the collapse of the economy and the high rate of HIV/AIDS have played a part in turning what was once a food exporting country into a country dependent on foreign food aid for its survival.

Just when it seems life could not conceivably get any tougher for Zimbabweans, it invariably does. The country has been in economic decline for the past eight years, and real crisis for at least the last four. Fuel, electricity and water are now being rationed in the capital, Harare, and most basic household items are in short supply or extortionately priced. How do people cope?

The trial of the six trustees of the independent radio station "Voice of the People" (VOP), began at the Magistrates' Court, Rotten Row, Harare. The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (OBSERVATORY), a joint programme of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), have sent a trial observer to monitor whether the proceedings comply with international standards for fair trial and whether the charges comply with international human rights law.

The Mail and Guardian newspaper reports that about 200 displaced white farmers from Mashonaland West province have turned down an offer of farms by the government, saying there was no guarantee the government would not in future turn back on the offer and evict them again.