Denford Magora's Latest Zimbabwe News Blog

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, takes a walk in Stockholm, flanked by Steve Rylander and Swedish Development Cooperation Minister Gunilla Carlsson. Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga and James Maridadi are behind the leaders The Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, Morgan Tsvangirai, was in Sweden yesterday and was received for an audience at the Royal Palace in Stockholm. The Swedes, though, have remained quite on the subject of the grants and credit lines, which the MDC-PF government needs to ensure its very survival. At a press conference with the Swedish Prime Minister, Tsvangirai repeated that his government urgently needs direct assistance to the coalition government. It is looking increasingly like Tsvangirai will come back empty-handed, to face The Solution and try to carry on the fight for control of the levers of power. This will much be harder now, especially since Mugabe has already started asking in private, :What do I need them for?" That the Prime Minister has been received l...

Not long ago, Dr Simba Makoni spoke about what he called the "classic Yes Minister style" of Zimbabwe's government. For those who do not know, Yes Minister is a British comedy set in Whitehall, the seat of the government of the United Kingdom. In the comedy, people like Sir Humphrey actually run government business, telling a minister what he can and can not do, getting up to all sorts of tricks to ensure that their agenda (which they say is the national agenda), carries the day. Dr Makoni mentioned the issue of speeches, for instance. When he took over at the Ministry of Finance, he found that his speeches were written for him by the civil servants.  Worse, these speeches would not be given to him until just before he got into his car to go to the function where they were to be delivered. To get around this, and being a fully technologically literate person, he asked for a computer to be put into his office. He also demanded that the computer be given Internet and intran...