Denford Magora's Latest Zimbabwe News Blog

Robert Mugabe and Gideon Gono inspecting farming equipment that was being distributed by the Reserve Bank to farmers all over Zimbabwe last year. Mugabe has now come out in support of the reintroduction of the Zimbabwe dollar and says it will be back by the end of the year. He was speaking after accepting 60 tonnes of maize presented to him in gratitude by the villagers of Zhombe yesterday. Harare, Zimbabwe, 05 November 2009 Robert "The Solution" Mugabe yesterday told villagers in Zhombe that the Zimbabwe dollar will be back by year-end in order to mitigate the suffering of rural people. Mugabe was speaking in the area at a ceremony where he was given 60 tonnes of maize by villagers who said they wanted to thank him because they had managed to get a very good harvest as a result of the inputs they got last year from Gideon Gono and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. Mugabe's said that it was unacceptable that people in the rural areas are now "forced" to hand over go...

Harare, Zimbabwe, 26 October 2009 The highly inefficient and struggling Zimbabwean National Airline, Air Zimbabwe, is set to be privatised, according to the Zimbabwe Inclusive Government (which is still operational, by the way, because the MDC "disengaged" from ZANU PF and NOT Government). Last week, I told you about the airline's failure to pay its workers since February this year, when the Inclusive Government was formed. The airline previously relied on Gideon Gono and the Reserve Bank for funds to pay salaries and operating costs. It emerges now that the airline has a debt totalling US$28 million. They can not retrench staff because they do not the money for the required retrenchment packages. (like other government-owned companies, the airline has an unhealthy and bloated staff complement as a result of ZANU PF patronage). The culture of entitlement at the airline and in ZANU PF generally has seen the workers gang up through their union to resist any move to retrenc...

House of Horrors: Seen here is the entrance to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, with an appropriately torn-up ZANU PF campaign poster in the foreground. It has now emerged that Gideon Gono has not only given money to the independent media, but he has also bought a journalist at one of the independent newspapers a house, throwing objectivity into the dustbin. On Gono, therefore, the public no longer has a watchdog in the mainstream media Several impeccable sources are now confirming that the Reserve Bank Governor, Gideon Gono, has essentially put all the media in his back pocket. Gono allegedly bought a house in Bulawayo for a reporter on the staff of the Zimbabwe Independent, owned by Trevor Ncube and all the stories on him that are published in that paper are written by Kumbirai Nhongo, the former Business Editor of Zimbabwe Television, who is Gono's spokesman at the Reserve Bank. These stories are then given a byline belonging to a staffer on the The Independent. I spoke to my frien...