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, 23 September 2009 A few weeks back, I told you that that the National Security Council is no longer meeting and that it is all but disbanded. Tsvangirai had that one meeting, like a baby given a dummy to suck on and shut up, and that was it. In fact, JOC (Joint Operations Command) was never disbanded. Why, only last month, they were deploying truckloads of soldiers to base camps in Manicaland, which has been identified as the decisive battleground in a future election, where Mugabe will be seeking to regain a majority of seats. The people of Manicaland, JOC has now decided, must be taught a lesson. That there are soldiers guarding the Chiadzwa Diamond Fields is a bonus. It means that the shifting of armed men into the province will be easily written off as changes of shifts for the soldiers guarding the diamond mining area. Only when you look closely at the locations of the bases does it become clear: Manicaland is slowly being encircled. Corner to corner, there will ...

Joey Bimha, the Permanent Secretary in the Zimbabwe Foreign Affairs Ministry, has announced that MDC ambassadors are not going to be posted to their missions this year because the government "is broke". They will finish their training and then sit there twiddling their thumbs, possibly until the end of this Inclusive Government. Meantime, Roy Bennett is not sworn in, governors are not sworn in.........this Global Political Agreement is a joke Harare, Zimbabwe, 16 August 2009 While MDC lackeys and apologists prematurely celebrated the "appointments" of ambassadors from their parties, Robert Mugabe has, as usual, been busy plotting and it has now been announced that the candidates for these posts will not be posted to their respective missions. Even before Morgan Tsvangirai was sworn in, I told you on this very blog, in an article entitled "MDC Dreaming" says Zimbabwe Foreign Affairs Officials , (which I wrote early February, after Tsvangirai had announced h...

Morgan Tsvangirai meeting with Hilary Clinton earlier today at the State Department in Washington. They spoke against a background of the Zimbabwe flag and the US flag. Tsvangirai said in Washington (speaking about the reluctance of the world to give Zimbabwe aid and only give humanitarian assistance: “It's insufficient, what you need is to move away from humanitarian support which is largely to deal with food, health, education. What we need are lines of credit to our businesses, some injection into the recovery budget so that the government is able to execute those priority programmes that directly benefit Zimbabweans.” Meantime, back home JOC has decided they will take the gloves off in relation dealing with the MDC-T, whom they accuse of "not holding up their end of the bargain." On Wednesday this week, (yesterday), JOC met in Harare and the resolutions they came up with are disturbing. I really do feel pity for Morgan Tsvangirai, the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, who M...

HERE ARE THREE ZANU PF HARDLINERS: General Chiwenga, Mugabe's top Commander, happily congratulates the president soon after his inauguration at State House on Sunday June 29. Misheck Sibanda, the Secretary to the President and Cabinet, can be seen in the background, partly obscured by the General. These are the men who are causing Tsvangirai endless headaches. But he insists Mugabe, at least, is "not the problem." Zimbabwe's dictator, Robert Mugabe and his security chiefs have refused to disband JOC (the Joint Operations Command, which was at the forefront of strategising Mugabe's retention of power in the chaotic aftermath of the March elections in 2008). Instead, JOC still sits regularly, thumbing its nose at the Inclusive Government. The meetings, some of which I have reported here before, are mainly held in two places: at State House, which Mugabe now uses as his preferred office after moving his family to his mansion in Helensvale, Borrowdale, a minute's ...