Denford Magora's Latest Zimbabwe News Blog

This was the moment a one-year old lion lunged at Charles Smith's throat, with the camera rolling. He was bitten in the leg and on the shoulder and it appears the lion was going for a killer bite to the neck. The incident happened in Limpopo Province, on the Zimbabwe/South Africa border. Harare, Zimbabwe, 06 September 2009 A journalist with the British newspaper, The Telegraph, has been mauled by a lion in Limpopo Province in South Africa, on the border with Zimbabwe. He was bitten on the shoulder and on the calf. The reporter, Charles Starmer Smith, was filming a travel documentary at the Legend Resort in the province. The lion in a captive one, which the owners of the resort found as a cub, wandering the backroads, dehydrated and starving. They took it in with the intention of eventually returning it to the wild. That it is named Mapimpan, "Little Baby" in Shangaan, also served to reassure Smith. The lion is barely a year old. Smith describes the incident as "a blu...

Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition Coordinator, McDonald Lewanika (to your far left as you look at the screen), Vice-Secretary General of ZCTU, Gideon Shoko and Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum Director, Abel Nkomo in Brussels last week, where they are urging the European Union to maintain pressure on the Inclusive Government in order to ensure that real reforms are implemented. Their presence here has angered Mugabe, who is now responding by cracking down openly and brutally on protesters. More is yet to come, undoubtedly. Robert The Solution Mugabe has abandoned all pretence of tolerance towards freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. Police today dealt roughly with members of the WOZA group, led by Jenni Williams, when they tried to protest in Bulawayo. Three protesters were hospitalised as a result of the police action. According to Woza, the protesters were "attacked" and beaten by police at the Chronicle offices as well as en route to the protest focal point. Members of Wom...

I happen to have been tagged by Solomon over at Nigerian Curiousity to take part in a continental "meme" on the subject of why I blog about Africa. This great idea was started by Theophile Kouamouo. The welcome message on the screen of my mobile phone is that classic Apple pay-off line: Think Different. I have always been very clear on this, at least to myself. I believe that the world has come full circle and it is once again Africa's turn to take up the mantle of leading the world as it did during the amazing age of the pharoahs. And I believe the task which falls to my generation is to bring this about or to take Africa so far down this road that no tyranny will ever be able to compel her make an about-turn. I blog about Africa because I actually do believe that true democracy and the freedoms that come with it are essential prerequisites for the greatness of any nation or continent. Greece proved this. As did Rome, which rose only after casting off its Etruscan tyran...