Denford Magora's Latest Zimbabwe News Blog

Below is a realpolitik explanation of the Zimbabwean conundrum as seen by a dispassionate observer, out in the USA. The tone is matter-of-fact, a simple statement of truth. The tone also says I really don't care whether you agree or not, here' how things are and you will soon realise the truth of this. The writer is based in the United States. Politics is not his profession, he happens to be banker. It goes to what I have always said, but he puts it as clearly and as impassionately as any good judge. We can take what he says or not. He does not live in Zimbabwe and is simply pointing out some very uncomfortable truths.  What he describes below is Realpolitik, a concept that is all but lost in Zimbabwe today. It deals with realities, not wishful thinking and wishes. It touches directly the dilema of Zimbabwe, that her people think  prolonging their own suffering is a way of punishing Mugabe.  Anyway,....... . "I think Zimbabwe's situation is a result of more complex iss...

For latest news on the Jestina Mukoko case, please keep checking back on this site. We will be adding stories as she appears in court and as we dig for more information. There may well be more stories if you click on Home.  Or search the archives, (from where you are accessing this story), if you arrived at this story directly. The CIO  who kidnapped Jestina Mukoko beat her with rubber truncheons under her feet and made her kneel on gravel while questioning her , the imprisoned human rights activist has revealed. The assaults, she says, started after she had denied recruiting insurgents and bandits and working with the MDC. Mukoko also reveals that she was blindfolded as she was moved around so that she could not tell where she was. To this day, she does not have the names of the people who abducted her, although she says she will definitely be able to identify them by sight. In her statement, Jestina Mukoko says: "I was blindfolded every time I wet to be driven from one place t...

Perhaps it is important at this point to explain to the world just why Mugabe will never face a coup by his military. There is talk in the news today from Jendayi Fraser about the possibility of a coup and she is careful to say it would happen if the dictator dies in office. Fraser's statement is breathtakingly ill-informed for a top US diplomat, whom I'd expect to be a more informed about the structure of ZANU PF. A coup, Ms Fraser, after Mugabe's death is well-nigh impossible because of the way Mugabe has integrated the armed forces into structures of his party. A coup would be likely if the army were a separate entity in Zimbabwe, whose interests are protected by Mugabe personally. Yes, this is the case in most dictatorships, but not in this new creature that has sprouted in Zimbabwe. Mugabe's dictatorship is perhaps the first since Adolf Hitler's to be a purely intellectual and ideological dictatorship. The closest approximation to it in modern times would be Re...

A familiar old story from Zapiro. Isn't he great? If anyone doubted the seriousness with which the Mugabe regime is treating the "insurgency" case, those doubts ought to have been swept aside by the sight of the abductees arriving at the Magistrates Court on Monday. Gone were the civilian clothes (they appeared in them last time because the CIO hurriedly removed them straight from the Goromonzi farm they use for these purposes to court). Now the detainees were in the green convicts' uniform of Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison. More importantly, though, they were also in leg-irons and handcuffs. This is how you treat high-risk prisoners, violent types: murderers and the like. It is either Mugabe truly believes he has a case or he is putting on a mighty show. His intentions are made even less clear by the fact that, even as he accuses the MDC of plotting an insurgency, he is inviting its leader to be his Prime Minister. No wonder Tsvangirai is being so coy. But, to tho...

Mugabe, seen here in conversation with the Director-General of the Secret Police (CIO), Happyton Bonyongwe and Commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, Constantine Chiwenga An attack on Botswana by Robert Mugabe is looking increasingly likely as it emerges that the Zimbabwean dictator has put in place advanced plans for carrying out a long war from outside the borders of Zimbabwe. What is immediately clear is that, despite Mugabe's bluster, he is aware that an international force would be able to eject from Zimbabwe, if not capture him. So far, Mugabe has managed to get the backing of Angola and Namibia in his advanced plans. It is also emerging that some weapons belonging to the Zimbabwe Defence Forces are currently in Angola. These weapons are not in transit, but are actually being kept there in what sounds suspiciously like a stockpile. It is reliably understood that President Dos Santos has assured Mugabe that if things get bad in Zimbabwe, he would be able to use the route th...

If you are outside zimbabwe, call your relatives here, the ones you can reach, whether on skype or the (shite) cellphone networks and ask them to spread the word in the rural areas that Mugabe has NOTHING to do with the SADC aid being distributed. Most people are in the rural areas now for Christmas and they can spread the truth there. Let's not let the dictator get away with this one again First things first. The ZANU PF militia (also known as the Police in Zimbabwe) has now had some excuse whispered into its ear and, after a few days of embarrassing silence, announced that the Attorney General has lodged an appeal with the Supreme Court against the High Court order to release Jestina Mukoko and her fellow abductees. We now know that they will not be released at all. Mugabe is opposing their application for refusal of further remand in custody. On Monday, when they appear in court, you will hear that the prosecution opposed the application because "the accused face serious ch...

After searching for more than twenty hours, lawyers have found Jestina Mukoko, the Zimbabwe Peace Project Director, at Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison. This is despite a High Court order issued at 9p.m. on Wednesday for their release into a private hospital in Harare. Access to their lawyers is being denied. ( This was something granted to Mugabe himself and other detainees during the Liberation War by Ian Smith, and I wonder...) They are also not allowed to see their relatives or to have medication and food brought in from the outside. Mukoko apparently has medication she should take daily at intervals. When she was abducted, the CIO, the secret police who took her, refused to allow her to even get her spectacles. The glasses were missing when she appeared in public for the first time since her abduction. This was Wednesday at the Magistrates' Court. As for medication, it is almost certain that the state has bought some, which can be used as a tool in the "interrogation...

As I suspected and said in my post below, the police have simply ignored the High Court order to release Jestina Mukoko and her fellow abductees into a private clinic in Harare.  It appears that the mischievous dictator has simply disappeared the whole lot of them again! The order was issued at 9p.m. yesterday. This morning, before the cocks could even crow, the abductees were bundled into the same red VW van that they came to court in and whisked away under heavy police guard. Nobody knows whence they went.  As Mtetwa told Reuters, even the government's own investigating officer was stunned to hear that they had disappeared again. He does not know where they are as well, which makes his job description rather redundant. Beatrice Mtetwa, the lawyer for Mukoko and other detained activists, says, "The long and short of it is that the police haven't complied with the High Court order. I doubt if they will comply." "I have just received information that they were tak...

It comes as a great relief to hear that Beatrice Mtetwa worked through Christmas Eve to secure the release of Jestina Mukoko and her fellow abductees, who had been remanded in custody until Monday, 29 December 2008. Although not being freed, it looks as though the abductees will be able to at least see their families and spend time with them, albeit in hospital. Upon hearing of the torture to extract confessions that Jestina Mukoko and other alleged conspirators in the trumped-up "insurgency" case suffered, a Harare High Court judge immediately ordered the release of Mukoko and others with her into Avenues Clinic and under police guard. The dirty little rag that passes for a national newspaper in Zimbabwe, the Herald, says that they have already been released into the Clinic's care. Which is a surprise, considering Mugabe's legendary contempt for the decisions of his own courts, unless they agree with him. The '"detainees" will remain at the Avenues Clin...

These are the images of Jestina Mukoko arriving At Magistrates' Court today to face charges of recruiting insurgents to topple Mugabe. She and other MDC activist charged with the same crime as her were remanded in custody to Monday next week. She will spend Christmas behind bars. I had hoped this was a flicker of humanity, bringing her to court on Christmas Eve in order to release her on bail to be with her family on Christmas Day. I was dreaming, I suppose.

I see that most of you guys visiting this blog between last night and today are going straight to my post published on 9 December , entitled  Zimbabwe Abductions: The Link To The Insurgency/State of Emergency/"Mutiny" Case . Click on it to read my report and analysis, which is turning ou to be 100% accurate. Jestina Mukoko has now been seen alive, when she was brought to her parents' home by policemen who wanted to search for "subversive" material there. She is in court as I write this. After I published the post above, readers left a few comments there, with some saying what I was saying in there was "too far-fetched." One reader, whose comment never saw the light of day (because it was abusive) accused me of "smearing a good lady." I just wondered when I read that whether the reader understood the difference between stating facts and stating opinion. If you report on reliable information that so-and-so is dead, does that mean you have kill...

MAVAMBO.KUSILE.DAWN   CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR MESSAGE FROM SIMBA MAKONI   During the course of 2008, I witnessed the daily toils that now make for life in Zimbabwe . I have experienced personally, the pain and anguish all citizens, now have to endure, save for a privileged few; pain and anguish that are the result of the vacuum of leadership, and the complete collapse of institutions and services in our country.   The hope and promise held out by the harmonised elections of March 29 2008, were dashed by a party that is unwilling to respect the will of the people. In June 2008, I visited in hospitals, clinics and safe houses, victims of the violence of the ` Presidential Run-Off ’.   I saw, and heard at first-hand, the brutality that has characterised Zimbabwean politics for too long.   In September 2008, I talked to women in a village in rural Masvingo Province , bundles of twigs on their heads, carrying baskets half-full of hacha and masekesa ; hacha and masekesa bein...

We, Zimbabweans in and outside the country, should feel shame at scenes like these. These children and their parents have to scrounge around the edges of dangerous tarred highways, picking up single kernels of corn off the ground in order to have a meal. If this does not show us that all our so-called leaders have  abandoned our people, then I don't know what will. As you do your christmas shopping, remember that more than ninety percent of our citizens are being held hostage not only by Mugabe, but by the world. The world says we "will not come in there with aid until you go" and Mugabe says, "I will not go until you admit you are wrong and say sorry for everything."

Gearing up: Mugabe, speaking in Bindura on Friday. He is now preparing for mass trials of MDC "insurgents" Robert Mugabe, the dictator of Zimbabwe, has now appointed an Attorney General in a move that was immediately declared to be "pointless" by the MDC. But it is not pointless, that's just the point, you see. Mugabe is preparing the ground for the mass trials that we will witness in the new year. More than 40 people have already disappeared off the face of the earth, no doubt held incommunicado by the regime. They only surfaced last week in the video evidence I told you about on December 01 and confirmed by SADC this last week. The new Attorney General advised the government in June when he was still the deputy AG, that it was legal to detain MDC activists without trial. He muse be relishing his new challenge: keeping MDC "insurgents" behind bars, waving cooked-up "evidence" about and demanding all manner of punitive sentences for these ...