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Chofamba

November 28, 2007

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Ian Smith denied our African humanity

BORN at the height of the national liberation struggle in the late 1970s, I grew up in post-independence Zimbabwe. Save for hazy memories, I cannot claim to possess a concrete self-consciousness of life under Ian Douglas Smith’s white supremacist Rhodesian Front government. However, having been born to young and unemployed school-leavers of peasant background, my life as a toddler was to be circumscribed in a brutally physical way by the paranoid security policies of Smith’s government. I spent my early childhood in one of Smith’s concentration camps in a small village called Chibuwe in Chipinge district, on the country’s eastern border with Mozambique. This was a major operational zone for the nationalist guerillas fighting for black self-determination. In order to cut off the guerillas from accessing logistical and political support from the masses, Smith’s government herded African villagers living within such areas into concentration camps, which they euphemistically called ‘prote

MDC must be more forthright about its values in this govt

Mugabe swears in Tsvangirai as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe. I'm not sure that Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC have a clear strategy to counter the infidelity of Mugabe and Zanu PF in this marriage. Why does the MDC think this arrangement can work only if they are willing to prostrate themselves before Zanu PF in supplication? I think they're seriously undermining themselves by giving Mugabe and Zanu the semblance of power and authority. I say 'semblance' because even though Mugabe's authority is still constitutionally enshrined, we all know it is worth no more than hot air since his position is really underpinned by nothing other than the GPA and the MDC's willingness to subscribe to it.

Is big money distorting American democracy?

President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle applaud supporters after results showed he had been returned to the White House for a second term . Copyright Craig Warga/New York Daily News . For a presidential election that centred on fiscal prudence, it is a telling irony that the just ended race for the White House between President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney was also the most expensive in US history . The two candidates spent well over a billion dollars each. The independent research group Centre for Responsive Politics estimated the entire election to have cost $5.8 billion, more than the entire GDP of Malawi. These staggering figures do not include the very significant contributions of independent groups which cannot be legally tied to a candidate but can generally support their cause or policies. According to the New York Times, these independent groups spent at least $522 million on television advertisements and other efforts to

Tsvangirai’s Prime Ministerial baby mamas

Lothario: Tsvangirai has been linked with a string of women since his wife's tragic passing in a car accident in 2009 There's something incongruous about how Zimbabwean independent media journalists at home and in the Diaspora are reporting the debacle surrounding Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's marriage-that-allegedly-never-was . Whilst the state-controlled Herald has, predictably, gleefully reported on the 'union' and its attendant soap operatic saga, the independent press has bizarrely preoccupied itself with efforts to ‘uncover’ the ‘truth’ about the origins of claims that Tsvangirai had married his lover, Locadia Tembo, a wealthy businesswoman hailing from a traditionally ZANU PF family and whose sister is an MP in President Mugabe’s party. Newzimbabwe.com published a story entitled The curious case of Tsvangirai’s marriage on Thursday which sought to reconcile the gaps between the Tembo family’s claims of a marriage between their daughter and

Permanent election mode hurts economy: Mzembi

THE Minister of Tourism and Hospitality Industry, Walter Mzembi ( WM ), was recently in London for the 2013 edition of the World Travel Market, a leading global tourism expo. Journalist Chofamba Sithole ( CS ) got a few moments with Mzembi just before his address to members of the Zimbabwean community at Zimbabwe House. He addressed the political processes inside the ruling party, Zanu PF, vis-à-vis the challenge of delivering on its election manifesto pledges, as well as on international re-engagement. Tourism and Hospitality Industry Minister, Walter Mzembi CS : In terms of governmental focus on delivering on your manifesto pledges, your party has gone into election mode after the general elections, and there has been criticism that this has taken your eye off the ball. Do you feel that this was a priority to engage with at this moment, and assure the people that the government really does mean business? WM : We are a very constitutionally compliant nation; electi

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