A baby born by torchlight

Maternity care in Zimbabwe - please provide cotton wool, water and candles

Thabo Ncube and his childhood sweetheart Stella married two years ago. I met them when they moved next door. They wanted a large family, so were delighted when Stella, 19, learned she was pregnant.

Last Saturday night, right on schedule, she began feeling labour pains. They both knew - or thought they knew - what they had to do. Stella put a few things together, while Thabo telephoned for an ambulance. And, perhaps surprisingly in today's Zimbabwe, the ambulance arrived promptly.

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Mugabe acts - and an old lady suffers

A new law aimed at stopping the resale of goods and food sent to people from abroad may mean starvation for a great-grandmother and her family of 13

Mrs. Silhle Moyo is 82. She is a dignified old lady who lives in the rural Filabusi area in Matabeleland South. A widow, she is bringing up 13 grandchilderen and great-grandchildren who have all been orphaned by the scourge of Aids.

She is someone Zimbabwe should be proud of. But instead one of her country's new laws means Mrs. Moyo and the children have lost their one source of income.

Another day in Paradise

You can't fly, you can't phone, and you can't walk through waving fields of wheat either

I feel it is part of my duty to you, my readers, to keep you up to date with the facts of everyday life here in Zimbabwe, so here we go with three exciting new developments in Mugabeland which go to make it one of the most challenging counries in the world.

Air Zimbabwe - note I resist the urge to call it Scare Zimbabwe - has at last got its priorities right. And they don't include you, even if you've booked your seat, checked your luggage, and passed through security. Last Wedneday scores of travellers had got that far, and were waiting to board the Boeing for a scheduled flight to Singapore. And then - the aircraft was hijacked!

A casual mistake - or an assassination attempt?

It might have been a technical error but it nearly cost the life of the Vice-President

Vice-President Joyce Mujuru, right, and a party of her family and friends had a narrow escape from death recently, and cynical observers are saying that it was almost certainly an attempt to assassinate her.

The incident occured when Mrs. Mujuru chartered an Air Zimbabwe Boeing 737 to fly her and her party from Harare to the resort town of Victoria Falls, where her daughter was getting married. Everyone boarded the plane, and it took off. It's what happened next that raised suspicions.

A night of horror, suffering and tragedy

Many dream of escape to South Africa - but for two young people that dream became a nightmare

To live in Zimbabwe today is to suffer. And many are tempted by the thought of a new life in a better land. But escaping Mugabe's fiefdom is not easy, and it can lead to disaster. This week I talked to Donga, a 28-year-old man, at his home in Figtree, south of Bulawayo. His story is one of heart-rending despair. If you find the bitter truth of what human beings can do to each other disturbing, please don't read on.

Getting ready for the killing fields

How Angola's experts will train our police and military in the art of shooting straight...at us!

Here's a name that should be giving some of us a few sleepless nights - General Francisco Pereira Furtado. The General is Chief of Staff to the Angolan Armed Forces, but he's not in Angola at this time, he's right here in Zimbabwe, and believe me that is bad news.

General Furtado flew in last week, and has been making a tour of our defence establishments. He is, he says frequently, looking for areas where Angolan expertise can "enhance the performance" of Zimbabwe's military and police personnel.

"Enhance the performance"? That's just military double-talk. What it means is, teaching our guys to use their guns.

No food, no fuel - and now, no beer!

Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse, we run out of life's last consolation

It was Heroes Day Holiday on Monday, and, together with my drinking mate Donald Chiso, I decided to celebrate with a bottle, or perhaps two, of the delicious product produced by the Zimbabwean National Breweries. I finished the day a sadder, a wiser, and a thirstier man.

Because, in the words of the old song, "the pub's got no beer." The amber fluid is running out in Zimbabwe, and that's the truth. I know, because I got it from the mouth of a man for whom I have the utmost respect - the barman at my local bar.

"I feel sorry for you guys," he told us. "There's no beer here. And we can't get any - the National Breweries have stopped producing. They say they have no raw materials."

One small financial scandal may lead to a biggie!

How Bank governor Gideon Gono tried to do the right thing - and got it disastrously wrong.

You have to feel sorry for Gideon Gono, right. Being the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe can't be much fun these days, when your only alternative to standing in front of a train is to print more and more paper money worth less and less.

But last week Gov. Gideon had a chance to do the right thing for once, and he took it. He fired someone. That someone was a man called Mirirai Chiremba, divisional head of the Financial Intelligence Inspectorate, Evaluation and Security at the Bank.

Why? Well, Chiremba's first crime was to distort the rates at which he was buying foreign exchange from the black market on the bank's behalf. His second crime, of course, was to let Gideon catch him at it. Dismissal followed almost immediately.

Chicken blood, chanting...and a hearty stab in the back

As Mugabe's acolytes jostle to take his place, some of them employ slightly unorthodox methods to ensure their own success

President Robert Mugabe's ministers are, understandably enough, even more anxious to discover who will succeed him than we are. Which explains why, back in July, our respected State Security minister Didymus Mutasa, right, could be found sitting under a blanket inhaling smoke from a mixture of burning leaves and herbs.

Half of my readers will know exactly what I'm talking about. The other half deserve an explanation. Mutasa was taking part in a so-called cleansing ceremony, designed to satisfy his deepest desires in life.

The game's afoot, once more

With the economy in crisis, more and more people turn to a life of prostitution

Five months ago, Tsitsi Ncube, a pretty 27-year-old Harare woman, would dress smartly but conservatively, and spend her days teaching the children at a good primary school in a middle-class suburb.

Today, Tsitsi has abandoned teaching. Now she wears a red micro-skirt, a tight-fitting top and matching sandals, and spends long evenings as a street prostitute.

I found her in her favourite spot, outside Tipperary's bar on Fife Avenue, Harare, beneath a tree opposite the car park where she can be easily seen in the lights of oncoming cars. It is chilly in Zimbabwe these evenings, and she is shivering.

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