Denford Magora's Latest Zimbabwe News Blog

While crime rates in Zimbabwe increase and while the police are more eager to crack down on political dissent, it emerges this morning that they have diverted attention from their their "core business" of policing in Zimbabwe and are now instead into farming. The Zimbabwe police have taken over a farm in Marondera, where they are busy plundering timber from a vast cultivated field of gum tress left behind by the previous owner. Their attempts at farming crops have, by their own admission, failed dismally. Harare, Zimbabwe, 22 December 2009 The Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) has "moved from its core business as police" and is now busy plundering timber at an invaded farm in Marondera, cutting down vast tracts of gum trees and selling the timber to tobacco farmers to allow them to cure their harvests. The police were given the nearly 3 000 hectare farm by Mugabe under the Land Reform Programme and they are openly boasting that the former owner of the farm was "in...

Harare, Zimbabwe, 01 December 2009 The MDC-T co-Minister of Home Affairs has called "categorically" for the removal of "illegal sanctions" placed on Zimbabwe. Giles Mutsekwa, whose foot is now permanently housed in his mouth, told a send-off ceremony for policemen that they were all super chaps, who would be even more super had they not been operating in an environment "sadly characterised by illegal sanctions". "I wish to categorically call for the immediate removal of these illegal sanctions, as their continued existence is affecting the ZRP's ability to diligently discharge its mandate," Mutsekwa said. Perhaps the Minister could tell the country how exactly it is that the "illegal sanctions" are preventing the police from restraining themselves and not beating up protesters? This, of course, was a response to the calls by Mugabe for the MDC-T to call for the lifting of sanctions. Mugabe is getting what he wants. But will Tsvangir...

Zimbabwe riot police, seen here smiling as they beat up a protester while he is held from behind by one of their own, continue to behave pretty much as they please, enforcing draconian and undemocratic laws. Morgan Tsvangirai has said nothing about the Ministry of Home Affairs in his list of grievances against Mugabe. It has taken SADC Ministers to raise the issue and be bluntly honest about it. But that is all there will be to it. Harare, Zimbabwe, 15 November 2009 When Morgan Tsvangirai was asked recently how the Home Affairs ministry sharing arrangement with ZANU PF had worked out so far, he replied that the two co-ministers (one each from MDC-T and ZANU PF) were working "fantastically well" together. This he said even as his own party members continued to be treated unfairly by the police, being arrested for reporting violence against them by ZANU PF supporters, even as MDC-T MPs and officials were arrested, even as Tsvangirai's own close advisers like Gandhi Mudzingw...