Denford Magora's Latest Zimbabwe News Blog

The heady days of imagined salutes from Service Chiefs for Morgan Tsvangirai (above) are now long gone as it emerges officially that ZANU PF has refused to disband JOC, according to a report in the inimitable Zimbabwe Independent today. Tsvangirai is still barred from attending Joint Operations Command (JOC) meetings, after he was told that he is in charge of "policy" and not "operations". The refusal to disband JOC was first revealed on this blog more than six months ago and was disputed by MDC supporters desperate to believe their own hype about Tsvangirai's effectiveness in government. Now the truth is out.  And now we have been proved right. Yet again. Harare, Zimbabwe, 18 December 2009 Regular readers will recall the vitriol poured on this blogger by MDC-Tsvangirai supporters in the aftermath of the first (and only) meeting of the National Security Council, which was supposed to replace the Joint Operations Command, a ZANU PF creation that oversaw the viole...

Harare, Zimbabwe 02 October 2009 After the shocking developments of Wednesday, when Commissions and Boards of Directors for Zimbabwe's media were packed full of military men by Mugabe and ZANU PF, it has now emerged that, in fact, Zimbabwe is a military state in the mould of Angola. A senior ZANU PF official who I spoke to yesterday afternoon was quite clear to me about this. He stated quite openly: "There was a military coup in this country on June 27 last year (the date of the violent presidential run-off election between Mugabe and Tsvangirai ). The Inclusive Government changed nothing because Tsvangirai did not negotiate with the military. He negotiated with Gushungo (Mugabe)." Apart from the breach of the spirit behind the Inclusive Government, I was merely now trying to find out what the reasoning is behind putting soldiers in charge of media matters across the board, from Supervisory bodies to the functional boards of directors. This was the answer. Zimbabwe is i...

A clearly excited Morgan Tsvangirai could be seen leaning forward, rising his seat as he shook hands with General Sibanda of the Army and Air Marshal Perance Shiri of the Zimbabwe Air Force on Defence Forces Day. The Generals have now agreed with Mugabe to implement a strategy for containing Tsvangirai which has worked a charm for Mugabe when he started implementing it. Harare, Zimbabwe, 16 August 2009 Impeccable information I received on Saturday reveals that the Service Chiefs of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, far from adopting a conciliatory approach to Morgan Tsvangirai, are actually implementing a plan agreed on with Mugabe at the last meeting of JOC, which was held in Highlands two weeks before the National Security Council met with Mugabe in the chair and Tsvangirai in attendance. Most people reporting on Zimbabwe still take things at face value and this is working wonderfully for Mugabe and not so well for Tsvangirai. Robert "Tsvangirai's Solution to Zimbabwe's Probl...

MDC-T supporters and others accused of being such camp outside the US Embassy in Harare on July 3. Post election violence had got so bad that they fled their rural homes to come and sleep in the open outside the embassy in order to avoid ending up looking like: ...........this victims of last year's election violence, Gift Mutsvungu, whom the MDC-T said "suffered" before he was kille d Often, just a word from Mugabe suffices. In 1985, he told a rally in Chitungwiza: " Ngatichigoborai zvigobo zviri mumunda medu" - meaning, "Let us get rid of the tree stumps in our field. The next night, countless families in the cities were thrown out of their homes by masked ZANU PF supporters. Most had their furniture thrown out, the doors locked and their keys swallowed by ZANU PF supporters. Targets were supporters of Ndabaningi Sithole and Abel Muzorewa. There was a pile of Ndonga (Mwenje) and Dzakutsaku t-shirt at the local dump the by morning. Fast Forward to 200...

Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai have reached an agreement that any new constitution that will be drawn up in Zimbabwe by this new government will guarantee the Head Of State immunity from prosecution for any crimes committed while he is in office. It will mean that Gukurahundi and all the other crimes that took place during Mugabe's tenure will not be prosecuted at all. These would also include the horrific beating of Tsvangirai seen in the March 2007 photos above. The beating and torture he received was described by fellow detainess and his lawyers as "attempted murder". We remember, of course, that the police used iron bars to beat Tsvangirai over the head. The deal between Mugabe and Tsvangirai has raised alarm and unbelievable anger amongst ZANU PF politicians and the top echelons of the armed forces, who now feel they have been left in the cold.  Mugabe moved to quickly to assure them that he knew what he was doing in a meeting at State House on on Wednesday, eve...