A season of fear has returned to Zimbabwe and it is unlikely that the patchwork performed on the fraying coalition government will reverse its impact, at least not in the short run.
Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) last night ended its boycott of the new unity government but will give President Robert Mugabe a month to fully implement a power- sharing deal, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said.
SOUTH Africa has again postponed the target date of its land reform programme. In its post apartheid election manifesto, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) had promised to redistribute 30 percent of agricultural land in its first five years in office. But by 2001, some seven years later, less than two per cent had been distributed.
A SOUTHERN African Development Community (Sadc) ministerial team that assessed the implementation of Zimbabwe's troubled power-sharing arrangement recommended that Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono should be reassigned to save the coalition government from collapse.
Fearing a resurgence of xenophobic attacks, around 2,500 Zimbabwean migrants have taken refuge in government buildings in De Doorns, a farming town about 140km from Cape Town, South Africa, after some of their shacks in an informal settlement were attacked and demolished, said a police official.
The ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) has once again proved that when left to its own designs, it abuses the political process even when wise counsel dictates otherwise.
Zimbabwe's feuding political parties look set to miss a monthend deadline set by the Southern African Development Committee (SADC) to conclude outstanding issues of their power sharing agreement as negotiators are yet to meet.
THE compromise clause in the bilateral investment agreement between Zimbabwe and SA, due to be signed in Harare on November 27, provided security of tenure for all existing and new South African investments in Zimbabwe, but excluded historical claims arising from Zimbabwe's land reform process, Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies said yesterday.
It is a relief that Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) will now rejoin the government of national unity (GNU) after pulling out a while ago.
RICH countries' agricultural subsidies and denial of market access to produce from developing countries were partly to blame for low crop production in developing nations, President Mugabe has said.
IN a move with damaging implications for investment, Zimbabwe plans to grab a 51% stake in foreign-owned firms within 60 days of the gazetting of the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act regulations, documents in the possession of the Zimbabwe Independent show.
President Mugabe yesterday said the Government will not nationalise foreign-owned companies, but will insist on the 51 percent local ownership on all companies according to the country's indegenisation laws.
Scores of De Doorns residents, most of them farmworkers, ripped down shacks belonging to Zimbabweans this morning, accusing them of "stealing our jobs".
Claims that there are no sanctions against Zimbabwe have been further discredited by the refusal by an American company to supply a student at Chinhoyi University of Technology with electrical solutions software because of "US trade sanctions".
The decision to give Zimbabwe no more than a slap on the wrist for the human rights abuses which its army has committed on the Marange alluvial diamond fields in the south-east of the country seriously threatens the future of the diamond industry's initiative to avert consumer boycotts of its gemstones.
