Denford Magora's Latest Zimbabwe News Blog

"I am all ears." Obama sent a direct message to Mugabe via the South African President, promising serious engagement once a coalition government was in place. Some puzzling latest news from Zimbabwe : A few days after he was inaugurated, President Obama apparently sent a personal message to Robert Mugabe via the South African president. I have only just learnt of this. Two senior sources in Robert Mugabe's current illegal government have confirmed the fact that a message was sent, but their versions of what the message was vary a bit. Still, I think looked at together, they point us towards the truth. The message to Mugabe, apparently, was that the new American administration wanted " to make its own mistakes" and was not going to pursue the tactics of the Bush years. It is further claimed that Obama also asked Motlanthe to tell Mugabe that the new US president was willing willing to repeal The Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZIDERA), but Mugabe ...

The day the USA election results were announced, we did a post here as we watched Obama's acceptance speech. In that post, we said we thought the best thing Obama could do to strengthen America's profile in the world would be to appoint Hilary Clinton Secretary of State. Mind you, that was before Obama even had a shortlist for any of the positions in his administration except Chief of Staff. This was at a time when most pundits everwhere, including in America, thought even the suggestion was ridiculous! Denford was called a daydreamer by one SA blogger for suggesting this was possible! Our job is to look at events and analyse them. We extrapolate from them what is most likely to happen, how and why. It is called reading a situation. We put emotion to the side, because that is incompatible with a dispassionate examination of the issue at hand. This is an approach that is sorely needed in Zimbabwe today, where we must look coldly at what can be done to save Zimbabwean lives as op...

Here's proof that Barack Obama's internet skills were not just an election gimmick. He now has a blog! It has a countdown to the day he will be inaugurated, a section where ordinary Americans can apply for a job in his new administration, an announcements section and then, what I think is the niftiest feature: a section where ordinary Americans can write in with suggestions about what needs to be done and even just bringing their own personal and community problems to his attention. The man is clearly an avid techie and truly believes in the power of the Internet to help him connect with the American masses. Here in Zim, of course, we are not at that level yet. Our Internet is dominated by the intellectuals and 99% of our voting public have no interface with this medium. It is a useless tool when it comes to mobilising votes. However, most leaders (community and national) do have access and if they did not abuse the Internet to push their own views at the expense of the views o...