Denford Magora's Latest Zimbabwe News Blog

While little boys and girls like these are being drilled in military fashion and indoctrinated, they are getting no education as Mugabe plays out a complex strategy to show up Morgan Tsvangirai. It means that these kids, who are supposed to build a new Zimbabwe, are not being equipped to do a good job of it. With or without the Inclusive Government, Zimbabwe is regressing and not advancing. It is only getting worse Harare, Zimbabwe, 09 September 2009 Zimbabwe's lost generation is about to be added to this year. Despite blaring headlines in the state newspaper, The Herald, saying "Teachers Commended For Their Stance", these teachers have not gone back to work. The government of Morgan Tsvangirai and Robert Mugabe is in a quandary, because the stoppage of work by teachers reflects badly on both parties. It reflects especially bad on the MDC, which had started pointing to the "return of teachers to classrooms" as one of their achievements since forming the Unity Go...

These school children in Harare will most probably not have any teachers to teach them as schools open this month, with the largest Trade Union for teachers insisting that the strike they have called for will go ahead. But all is not as it appears. This is an extension of the struggle between Mugabe and Tsvangirai, with the state media playing up the strike as "massive" and relishing the troubles faced by MDC ministers who are in charge at the Ministries of Finance, Education and Public Service Harare, Zimbabwe, 31 August 2009 You will recall that I told you a few weeks back that Robert Mugabe and ZANU PF were planning to incite civil servants to make life difficult for the MDC-T in government. The information we got indicated that the ZANU PF component of the Inclusive government was urging civil servants to protest and even march, with a ZANU PF source saying, "Vachaita ekutiza maoffice avaichemera" - "They will end up running away from the offices they were ...

This dying woman at Parirenyatwa hospital earlier this month had to lie out in the sun because doctors were on strike. It now emerges that the doctors' salaries had been topped up by donors but the extra money topped up did not appear in their accounts - it vanished into thin air, apparently misused by the Inclusive Government Harare, Zimbabwe 31 August 2009 It is emerging now that the strike by doctors this month was brought about because the Inclusive government of Morgan Tsvangirai and Robert Mugabe misappropriated funds meant to pay these health workers. It is reliably understood that donors paid money to top-up doctors' and nurses salaries, and that the donors, who are understood to be British, had based their payments on doctors getting a minimum of US$400 each on top of the US$100 "allowance" that was being paid by the broke and moribund Inclusive Government. The leadership of health workers, who preferred to remain anonymous, revealed that, instead of getting ...

Harare, Zimbabwe, 22 August 2009 Well, it was always self-evident to the objective observer. Now, the government of Morgan Tsvangirai has come out in the open about their admiration of ZANU PF tactics. I am talking about the firing of doctors who were on strike, demanding better working conditions and salaries. Here, there is no excuse. This issue has nothing to do with "hardliners" or being forced to do anything by SADC or Thabo Mbeki. This is deliberate policy decision taken by Morgan Tsvangirai's government. The MDC-Tsvangirai controls the ministry of health. That's the first thing. Second, the Prime Minister never tires of telling us that he is in charge of policy formulation and implementation. So now we know what sort of policies he is formulating and implementing. These are policies that refuse to engage the legitimate demands of the doctors who are labouring under slave conditions, putting their lives at risk working in unsafe hospital conditions and for a pit...

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 ...