No fuel for an old fool

How a minister tried his best to solve the fuel crisis, was bitterly disappointed, and put his trousers back on.

This is extremely serious, so no giggling at the back of the blog, please. On this superbly written site, we take everyone, even chronic old hasbeens like Zimbabwe's state security minister Didymus Mutasa, seriously. Mind you, this week it's been a bit difficult.

Many of you will have seen the honourable Didymus on television the other day. Many of you will have found him and what he said amusing. Many of you will have fallen off your chairs and rolled around on the ground kicking your legs in the air and howling with laughter.

If you didn't, and you read on, you will.

Campaign clash

Zimbabwe's two main political organisations, the governing Zanu-PF party of Robert Mugabe, and the Movement for Democratic Change, led by Morgan Tsvangirai, both launch their 2008 Presidential Election campaigns this week.  In the same town. On the same day. In the same stadium.

Zanu-PF will hold its opening jamboree in the 10,000-seater Mucheke Stadium in Masvingo, from 8.0am to 1.0pm, this coming Saturday. Two hours later the MDC will kick off its campaign with a rally in the stadium from 3.0pm to 5.0pm.

Observers and local residents are describing this absurd conjuncture as a recipe for violence, murder and mayhem, forecasting clashes between the more extreme MDC activists and the hired Zanu-PF bullyboys.

It's not cricket!

Zimbabwe's cricketers make us proud - but our minister bowls himself out for a duck

Colleagues, friends...or traitors? The danger grows

As our state spies struggle to stop the stream of anti-Mugabe reports hitting the world media, we look for betrayal from within

On occasion during these past couple of months I've sensed that my friends and colleagues who work for our state-controlled media have been avoiding me. I was offended...until one of them met me recently, and told me why. Now I'm grateful.

The reason is, those very same friends and colleagues have been paid by our insidious secret police, the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) to betray the names of writers and jouranlists who contribute anti-Mugabe material to the foreign media. None of us have been named yet. But how long can that last?

The grim truth behind the failure of the strike

The two-day protest this week has so far been an apparent flop. But there's a good reason for its failure - the best reason in the world

Other Zimbabwe sites and blogs are expressing disappointment in what they describe as a poor turn-out for the nationwide strike here yesterday and today. You can almost sense criticism in their words. Can it be, they seem to ask, that we Zimbabweans are not sufficiently determined in our protest? Are we a weak people who tacitly accept the tyranny that dominates us and persecutes us?

They are wrong, they are so wrong. There is indeed one good sound crystal-clear reason why we are not out on the streets in angry crowds. If we do get out there, if we mount a full-scale protest, we will be killed. Death is the official order of the day. This is no wild allegation. I have seen the evidence that proves the truth of what I am saying. And I will share it with you now.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...

Tomorrow is a momentous day here in Zimbabwe - and so is the day after. But will the two-day strike succeed - and is there further action in the pipeline?

I am writing this on the day before the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) calls us out onto the uncertain streets for a two-daqy national strike, so perhaps by the time you are reading this you will know the answers to the questions I'm asking

Questions like - will it succeed? Will the people take to the streets in mass protest? Will this be the spark that sets the country alight in revolt against the Mugabe regime? Or will it be, as it was back in April, just a damp squib? Will the very real threat of violence from our state militias force us to admit that peaceful protest against this government is an impossibility?

Look out - two-fisted Jocelyn is on the warpath again!

The Commander's wife wants to increase her family, and she's found a very odd way of going about it

Of all the colourful characters in the mixed bag of villains, bullies and charlatans who constitute the ruling class of our beleaguered country, my favourite is Jocelyn Chiwenga (right), the noisy and occasionally violent wife of the Zimbabwe National Army C.O., Constantine Chiwenga. You remember Jocelyn - she's the bruiser who challenged MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai to a fist fight.

I'm pleased to tell you that once again Jocelyn is living up to her image. Although this time, rather worryingly, at the centre of her knockabout shenanigans is the diminutive figure of a four-year-old orphan boy, called Tanaka Jones.  Jocelyn is attempting to adopt Tanaka - and for a very specific and intriguing reason.

Starvation in the ranks

Mugabe needs the military, but the military need to eat. Today they will go hungry on parade, and they don't like it.

As international observers continue to ask how long Zimbabwe can survive before the combined effects of inflation and bad governance send it spinning into anarchy, there comes news that perhaps the very core of Mugabe's authority is beginning to turn on him.

It is in the rank and file of the army that trouble is brewing. The ordinary troopers are, in a word, starving. Last week there were near riots at KG6, the headquarters of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, when the only food available to the troops was sadza. What's that? ask my non-African readers.

Big Fight Night at the SADC summit

In the blue corner, President Robert Mugabe. In the red corner, the other leaders. Ding ding - Round One!

From the gooey ovations and the bland communiques one might think the recent Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit in Lusaka, Zambia, had passed off in peace and brotherhood. The truth is very different - and it may spell the end of SADC's cast iron support for the Mugabe regime.

Two independent sources have confirmed to me that near the end of a closed meeting an unholy row broke out between Robert Mugabe and the man chairing the session, Zambia' President Levy Mwanawasa. Apparently it was a one-sided screaming match, and guess which of the two was doing the screaming.

One certain way to escape Mugabe rule

You can leave Zimbabwe for the prosperity of South Africa - if you're dead lucky

Forget about visas, forget about bribing the border guards, swimming the Limpopo and surviving the gangs waiting to rob, beat and kill you. There is a way to cross safely from the poisoned land of Zimbabwe to the Promised Land of South Africa. All it takes is for you to be dead.

Sorry about the attempt at morbid humour. But it is a fact. Corpses are currently crossing the boundary at Beitbridge by the hundred every week. And the reason for this extraordinary cross-border traffic lies once again in the appalling national chaos into which Mugabe and his men have led us. And this is it.

Chicken blood, chanting... and now a missing man

The man who witnessed the magic ceremony involving a minister has been kidnapped - and may be dead

My account posted on August 10 of State Security Minister Didymus Mutasa's cleansing ceremony, in which he tried to discover if he would become President with the aid of chicken blood, chants, and inhaling fumes under a blanket, now has a disturbing, even tragic sequel.

How to make a mint in modern Zimbabwe

While many of us struggle to get by, some people are quietly doing very well

Perusing some of my previous entries on this blog and on The First Post I fear I may have given my readers the impression that life for everyone in Zimbabwe is a constant struggle against poverty and deprivation. Not so. There's a goodly chunk of our population who are doing rather well.

For a start, they've just had a pay rise of some 600 per cent, lifting their total income to more than Z$35m a month. I'm not going to convert that figure into US dollars or pounds sterling, because in the time it takes me to work it out, our inflation rate of 7,600 per cent will have made the result meaningless. Let's put it this way. The salary for a member of this fortunate body of workers is currently five times more than the salary of a senior state medical doctor.

(Have you guessed who I'm talking about yet? Read on)

The sun has set on the Sunshine City

Once Harare was a jewel in the crown of Southern Africa. Today it is a sad and depressing slum. What happened?

I took a walk around my city today, the Sunshine City as we used to call it, the City of Harare. I should have stayed at home, because what I found was enough to break my heart. The Sunshine City has gone, possibly never to return. In its place - ruin, squalor and despair.

More misery for white farmers and their staff

Despite court orders and brave stands, the Jouberts and their workers are finally thrown off their land

This is the continuing story of one white farmer and his family. New readers start here. Back in April I announced the first raid by police on Portwe Farm, home of Mr. and Mrs. Joubert and their 83-year-old mother Ellen Maud Dolphin, in the Bubi district in Matebeleland North.