CHIMANIMANI – Illegal artisanal gold miners who have retained a stranglehold on government-owned Allied Timber’s Tarka Forest Reserve — a commercial pine tree plantation in Chimanimani — may just have become overly aggressive. With the area having been worked and reworked for nearly two decades, the illegal gold miners have evolved their mining engineering from…
HARARE – Zimbabwe is still in danger of losing the war on HIV/Aids despite major medical advances and more than 25 years of effort, if latest statistics are anything to go by. According to the United Nations, Zimbabwe ranks fifth among countries with the highest HIV/Aids prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa. About 1,4 million people —…
HARARE – As Zimbabwe moves from El Nino to La Nina, the number of food insecure Zimbabweans will rise to nearly six million by January 2017 from 4,1 million. El Nino, a climatic condition characterised by droughts which ravaged the country in the 2015/2016 agricultural season, is likely to be replaced by La Nina which…
HARARE – Deep in the arid Masvingo Province lies the remote district of Mwenezi where villagers have resorted to feeding on baboons, shockingly claiming its not out of hunger. The area, which falls under the country’s natural farming region five — characterised by high temperatures and low rainfall throughout the year— last experienced reasonable harvests…
HARARE – President Robert Mugabe is in a fix, despite controlling the security sector, he is faced with an enemy much bigger and one that he swore ever to protect when he was re-elected — the Constitution. On one hand, the police are hell-bent on thwarting dissenting voices, on the other hand the courts say…
HARARE – He walks with a limp and his hand is still in an arm sling, but despite the scars that are still fresh, anti-President Robert Mugabe activist Stendrick Zvorwadza is not scared, at least that is what he says. Now Zvorwadza, 47, is planning to dress up in protective clothing whenever he confronts his…
HARARE – Shunned because of the physical deformities they were either born with or acquired later in life, people with disabilities are often forgotten and ridiculed. Loreen Chikoto was born with dwarfism, a genetic defect that makes her smaller than the average person. When she started dating, people found it odd and when she got…
HARARE – Clad in white caps, face masks, matching T-shirts and armed with brooms and black plastic bags, business executives are increasingly making their presence felt on the streets through clean-up campaigns. This comes at a time when Zimbabwe is facing a challenge in waste management, particularly the urban centres and growth points due to…
HARARE – The announcement by government on police bans on all demonstrations in the capital under the Public Order and Security Act (Posa) violates rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression which is protected under international human rights law, social and political commentators have said. Since June, various groups and political parties have staged…
HARARE – I have always said I want to get pregnant, not fall pregnant. There is a huge difference between these two things. After coming across a very hilarious cartoon of a lady vagrant with her five children being given a pack of contraceptive pills by a savvy passer-by, I realised we had not really…
