Denford Magora's Latest Zimbabwe News Blog

Residents line up at one of the boreholes dug by aid agencies in the suburbs of Harare. The water shortage has now reached critical levels, with practically the whole city having dried up, except in the city centre, where the Supreme Court had to close down last week for lack of water. It has now been restored, but residents, fleeing overwhelmed boreholes, are resorting to the most basic and unsafe well and stream water for their needs. Put this situation together with the rains that have now started in earnest, then you have a recipe for cholera, with a struggling health sector standing trembling nearby. Harare, Zimbabwe, 17 November 2009 The water shortage in Harare has reached alarming proportions now, with most of the city's suburbs having last seen water a week and a half ago. Only last week, the Supreme Court in Harare closed down because there was no water in the city centre section where it sits. This s coming as rains have also started in earnest in the capital, as shown i...

A dying woman lies outside Parirenyatwa Hospital in Harare, Zimbabwe yesterday, Friday, August 21 2009. The woman was unable to get treatment at the flagship hospital because doctors are on strike for better pay and working conditions. An accident victim is wheeled away from Parirenyatwa Hospital, the man health facility in Zimbabwe, where doctors are on strike and are refusing to go back to work until working conditions and salaries are improved Harare, Zimbabwe, 22 August 2009 While Morgan Tsvangirai is busy trying to hoodwink the world and his delusional supporters outside the country that the country has recovered and is recovering, here is proof that this is nothing but a pack of lies. Doctors who are on strike, joined by nurses this last week, are still refusing to go back to work until their working conditions are improved. Not only are they working for a pittance, but they also complain about the conditions in which they are working, with medical supplies still in short supply ...

With the MDCs controlling both the Education and Health Ministries (David Coltart of the Mutambara MDC is seen above being sworn in by Mugabe in February), ZANU PF now feels free to "take up the cause of the common man", as was explained to me today. The next few weeks will be very interesting indeed. Harare, Zimbabwe, 22 August 2009 Robert "The Solution" Mugabe and his party, ZANU PF, are plotting to unleash massive protest marches all over Zimbabwe in a move designed to directly undermine the two MDCs in government. This morning, a ZANU PF official was telling me that the party has been receiving "thousands" of protests and pleas from desperate parents who are being asked to fork out US$80 for examination fees for their children at government schools. "They want us to do something about Coltart (the MDC Mutambara minister of Education) and the collapse of the health system. The Old Man (Mugabe) agrees". The marches could come in the next two we...

David Parirenyatwa (right), Zimbabwe's Health Minister, seen here with Christopher Dell, then US Ambassador to Zimbabwe. He is struggling to buy medical supplies for his wife, who was injured in a car accident Dr Parirenyatwa, Zimbabwe's current (and illegal) health minister, came face to face with the collapse of the health system last week after his wife was hit in a car accident, sustaining injuries to her leg and ribs. Parirenyatwa first took his wife to The Avenues Clinic, the private hospital in Harare that is still totally functional. When they demanded upfront payment of US$2000, which he could not afford, he took his wife to Parirenyatwa hospital, named after the Health Minister's late father. Sources at the state hospital, once one of the best hospitals in Africa, say the Health Minister's wife is still at the hospital and he was still trying to come up with the money needed to buy special "wires" to mend the fractures his wife sustained in the accid...