Vol 2 (AAC) No 2 |
- ZIMBABWE
- CHINA
The meltdown in Harare means that Beijing is no longer prepared to bail out President Robert Mugabe – diplomatically or politically
Asia is responding to President Robert Mugabe’s calls for solidarity in the time of cholera – but not in the way that Harare had envisaged. The economic meltdown...
Vol 2 (AAC) No 2 |
- ZIMBABWE
- CHINA
President Mugabe's 'Look East' policy fails to make any impact on Zimbabwe's economic decline
Ideological rather than commercial motives led to the 2003 launch of Zimbabwe’s ‘Look East’ policy, but as the country’s economic position has deteriorated, Harare has tried to woo...
After soldiers rampage through Harare, the Reserve Bank Governor delivers cash directly to the barracks
The 1 December ‘mutiny’ precipitated fierce clashes between the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) and the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP), which deployed anti-riot police after several of its members...
The US dollarisation of Zimbabwe’s economy has a caused a crisis over small change. There are plenty of US$100 and $50 notes but not enough of the lower...
Madhouse market economics and avaricious leaders are fuelling catastrophe as cholera begins to spread
The rains have barely broken and already deaths from cholera have been reported in all but one of Zimbabwe’s ten provinces. The United Nations and local doctors report...
Vol 49 No 24 |
- ZIMBABWE
- BRITAIN
Share transfers can provide a means to export foreign exchange from Zimbabwe, as long as you get permission
Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono and Harare businessman Mohammed I. Mohammed are using a British company to siphon tens of millions of US dollars out of Zimbabwe to...
The Reserve Bank Governor has declared war on the currency with disastrous results
Wresting the Finance Ministry from Robert Mugabe and his Zimbabwe African National-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) may prove a Pyrrhic victory for Morgan Tsvangirai and the Movement for Democratic Change...
Vital questions emerge from the US dollarisation of Zimbabwe: where have all the US bills come from? How long can the supply continue? How will they be replaced...
President Robert Mugabe initially responded to the world's financial crisis with more than a touch of Schadenfreude. This has given way to panic as the implications become clear....
Allegations of gem smuggling and hints of top-level trickery prompt
a UN investigation
General Solomon Mujuru, former head of the army and politicalkingmaker, is caught up in a feud over the ownership of one of Zimbabwe’s biggest diamond mines. Mujuru’s company...
Almost a month after the signing of the power-sharing agreement, Zimbabwe is no nearer to a new cabinet.
The ink was barely dry on the accord before President Robert Mugabe left for New York to address the United Nations General Assembly with a 60-strong entourage. Muddles...
Malnourished children are dying in the countryside and the next harvest is unlikely to be better.
Malnourished children are dying in the countryside and the next harvest is unlikely to be better. The combination of the worst drought for a decade and bad government...
Even if the politics fare well, foreign economic support is both essential and uncertain
The much-talked of US$1 billion rescue package for Zimbabwe's new power-sharing government is an illusion, according to British, United States and World Bank officials. There is no agreement...
Negotiations between the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front and Movement for Democratic Change have been deadlocked for the past month over five key ministries: Information, Finance, Home Affairs,...
John Robertson, an economic consultant, says any recovery must start by restoring previous levels of agricultural productivity. 'They have destroyed the farming sector and shown no respect for...
Botswana President Ian Khama's open criticism of President Robert Mugabe's regime has provoked a stream of vitriol from Zimbabwe's state-controlled media. Mugabe's officials referred to Khama's government as...
After months of tense negotiations, Morgan Tsvangirai has settled for much less than his supporters voted for
The agreement reached in Harare on 15 September may not be what Zimbabweans wanted, but it was the best the negotiators could get after various governments had tried...
Mugabe, Tsvangirai and Mutambara have signed the power-sharing agreement but can it really work?
Amid the euphoria and impeccably presented theatre of the signing of the Zimbabwe power-sharing agreement on 15 September, only a Jeremiah would have warned that Monday’s child is...
The businessmen and bankers are ready but donors will adopt a wait-and-see aproach
Private companies may move faster than Western governments, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in returning to Zimbabwe after the political deal. There are plans for hundreds...
The man whose closeness to Mugabe earned him the title of ‘Son of God’ is back at the helm of the ruling party
As the power-sharing talks falter, the star of Emmerson Mnangagwa, Chairman of the Joint Operations Command and Rural Housing Minister, continues to rise. Whatever happens in the negotiations,...
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Gideon Gono’s first five-year term expires in November 2008. The Movement for Democratic Change insists that his replacement take a more conventional view...
As the political talks stutter, the economy continues to implode
and the regime is far from having 'total control'
Robert Mugabe's slogan for his victorious, opponent-free rerun of the presidential election was 'the last battle for total control'. Yet the formal economy is spiralling out of...
The control freaks of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front seem astonished that their diktats go unheard by the world's stock exchanges. Yet when it comes to their...
Investigators are probing multimillion pound payments from Britain through secret accounts to a key ally of President Robert Mugabe
Britain’s BAE Systems, one of the world’s biggest arms companies, has paid over £25 million (US$49.5 mn.) to a company whose majority Zimbabwean shareholder is a long-time business...
The three negotiating teams are to resume talks in South Africa on 3 August after a break to discuss progress with their respective parties. The original deadline for...
As they drag out negotiations with the opposition, the ruling party's acolytes are hiding millions of US dollars in offshore accounts
Leading members of President Robert Mugabe's regime and their business allies are transferring tens of millions of US dollars out of Zimbabwe to safe havens to avoid the...
China and Russia's dual veto of a draft sanctions resolution against Zimbabwe at the United Nations Security Council on 11 July took nostalgic diplomats back to the height...
The government sets tough terms for a power-sharing deal that might end the crisis
The election on 27 June was Zimbabwe's worst. The opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, had formally withdrawn but his name was still on the ballot paper (AC Vol 49...
Foreign mining investors still drop cash into Zimbabwe's empty bucket. Anglo American hit the spotlight in June with its US$400 million Unki platinum project, to be run by...
With an eye to the succession, the top brass of Mugabe's
party are squabbling and squirming
Emmerson Mnangagwa was roped in by President Robert Mugabe to mastermind his bid for re-election, together with his close ally, Legal Affairs Minister Patrick Chinamasa. Together, they persuaded...
The force behind Robert Mugabe's re-election campaign was former intelligence chief Emmerson Mnangagwa, the Secretary for Legal Affairs of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, along with the...
Vol 49 No 14 |
- ZIMBABWE
- GERMANY
Until Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel leant on them, Munich-based security printers Giesecke & Devrient GmbH had a lucrative contract to supply paper for Zimbabwe's considerable demand for new...
The determination of the military to retain power at all costs makes the 27 June election deadly and pointless
The last ditch efforts by the United Nations’ Haile Menkerios and South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki to broker a meeting between President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai...
In Zimbabwe’s state-controlled media – the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (paradoxically modelled on the British Broadcasting Corporation but periodically purged), the Harare daily The Herald, and the Sunday Mail...
It began with the refusal of Southern African governments to allow a shipment of Chinese arms to unload at their ports and cross their territory to landlocked Zimbabwe...
No matter how President Robert Mugabe does his sums, the odds are against him if there is a credible rerun of the presidential election on 27 June
More than 50 opposition supporters have been killed and tens of thousands displaced since the first round. On 4 June, police briefly arrested the likely winner, Morgan Tsvangirai,...
About 150 kilometres south of Harare, Chikomba District has long been the home base of the ruling party’s power elite. These days, however, it shows the same political...
British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) officials are concerned whether the Zimbabwe operations of London-based Standard Chartered Bank violate European Union sanctions, according to emails seen by Africa...
One of Zimbabwe’s most strident businessmen, Mutumwa Mawere, is winning his long battle for compensation with President Robert Mugabe’s regime over the ownership of his company Africa Resources...
Led by its Legal Affairs Secretary Emmerson Mnangagwa, hardliners in the governing Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) cling to power in the face of internal dissent and the government's defeat at the 29 March polls. They insist that President Robert Mugabe will fight a presidential runoff vote against the Movement for Democratic Change's (MDC) Morgan Tsvangirai, probably in June or July, and will win by all means necessary.
After almost a week of political paralysis in ZANU-PF following the 29 March elections, Emmerson Mnangagwa and his allies honed a fight-back strategy for the party that involves...
Legal Affairs Secretary and former Security Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa has led the charge for Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) since he organised the party congress's decision last...
'We will get it done,' Daniel H. Overmyer assured Africa Confidential, leaning in conspiratorially. Overmyer is the President of Castle, Overmyer, Poole & Schubert (COPS), a merchant bank...
New questions are raised about the leadership opposition's leadership
This week as the opposition Movement for Democratic Change’s diplomatic efforts appeared to be paying off with growing condemnation in Africa of President Robert Mugabe and the discredited...
The division of the opposition into three rival components hampers its response to the government’s crackdown and its ability to mobilise against electoral fraud. Activists believe the Central...
The thwarted voyage of the An Yue Jiang – a Chinese freighter with a cargo of ammunition, mortars, mines and artillery bound for President Robert Mugabe’s government –...
President Mugabe has been wounded by his party's parliamentary defeat but his loyalists plan a final orgy of repression
War veterans, 'green bombers' and other irregular armed military units are being despatched across Zimbabwe to crush the opposition Movement for Democratic Change following its win in the...
The parliamentary victory of Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change - winning 99 seats in the House of Assembly to 97 for the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front...
On the fringes of an opposition rally just before the election stood a solitary figure holding a placard, his jacket pasted with Z$10 million bearer cheques. With the...
President Mugabe's disastrous stewardship is dragging the region's economy downwards but the leaders are divided on the remedy
Zimbabwe's elections on 29 March raise some hard questions for the region. Member governments and the Chairman of the Southern African Development Community, Zambia's President Levy Mwanawasa, have...
When Kenya's opposition leader Raila Odinga referred to Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe as 'a dinosaur' last year, his party received an angry phonecall from Futungo de Belas in...
Companies are watching the elections with a particular focus - the implementation of the Indigenisation and Empowerment Act. Announced by President Robert Mugabe on 7 March, the Act...
The presidential contest attracts most attention but the battle for Parliament may decide the outcome
There are four elections in Zimbabwe on 29 March and none of them are going according to plan for President Robert Gabriel Mugabe. The old mixture of coercion...
Economic hardship and growing divisions in the ruling party give the opposition candidates a better chance in the coming elections
President Robert Mugabe, sure of victory in the presidential election on 29 March, chose to hold his 84th birthday party in Beitbridge. The party overlooked the border post...
Whatever may happen in the presidential poll, the legislative elections are crucial and independent candidates likely to swing behind Simba Makoni are thin on the ground. A total...
Simba Makoni's decision to challenge President Robert Mugabe has surprised those who suspected he lacked the courage to see it through. The odds could hardly be higher for...
Voters are eagerly waiting to see how many ZANU-PF dissidents back the latest challenge to President Mugabe
This may prove to be the week that Simba Makoni and his backers started to turn the tide in Zimbabwe's politics. On 13 February, Makoni launched his independent...
Simon Mann, former Special Air Service officer and mercenary, was extradited on 1 February from Zimbabwe to Equatorial Guinea, where he is to face charges of coup plotting...
Only former Finance Minister Simba Makoni can resolve the issue of whether he is going to challenge President Robert Mugabe for the Presidency in the elections now set...
Time is running out for the ZANU-PF defectors to show their hand and challenge Mugabe ahead of the elections
Plots abound ahead of Zimbabwe's election season. The leading plotter is President Robert Gabriel Mugabe, who is determined to win by pressing ahead regardless of the breakdown...
Investigations into the relations between Zimbabwean ministers and Britain’s Barclays Bank may reopen following the admission by several ruling party politicians that they operate accounts with the bank...