Denford Magora's Latest Zimbabwe News Blog

The Zimbabwe Reserve Bank Governor, Gideon Gono , (above) is apparently refusing to pay a contractor who did work on his chicken farm in Ruwa the US$22 000 he owes for the job . The farm, at Tropicana Lodge, used to belong to Frederick Shava , a former ZANU PF cabinet minister. It is not entirely clear just how Gono came to be in possession of this farm. As most of you know, Gono has other farms, including the well-known Donnington Farm. Information to hand shows that the contractor, Eroku Investments, constructed football-pitch size (100 meters) chicken runs to house Gono's parent stock for his broiler farm business, Luna Chickens . The Managing Director of Tropicana Farm and Luna chickens, the two Gono operations for whom this work was done, has been was given the invoice in November last year at the completion of the work. The contractor has also tried to get Gono's security manager to intercede on his behalf, all to no avail. The contractor has apparently been refused ac...

UPDATE: The goverment of Robert Mugabe has refused to give Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter and Graca Machel visas to enter Zimbabwe on a humanitarian mission. The group, known as the Elders, and set up by Nelson Mandela, a man Mugabe loathes, applied for visas seveal weeks ago but the answer was no. Annan tried to call Mugabe this past week, but the Zimbabwean dictator refused to come to the phone. Carter also tried, with the same result. There were last-minute, frantic efforts that also involved the South African government, former SA president and mediator Thabo Mbeki and others in trying to make the ageing dictator see sense, but he rebuffed all of them. Last night, "a very senior official" from Mugabe's illegal government told Annan point blank over the phone that if he set foot on Zimbabwean soil, he would be immediately deported. The elders have now retreated. Petulantly, Mugabe's refusal to entertain the intervention of the South Affricans is, in his own mind, payba...