HARARE – The festive season has become a ginormous nightmare for the majority of civil servants as President Robert Mugabe’s stone-broke administration is failing to pay them not just their promised end-of-year bonuses, but their December salaries as well. Under-pressure Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa, had the unenviable task of announcing on Christmas Day, of all…
HARARE – Damaging discord has once again emerged in President Robert Mugabe’s Cabinet, with two ministers Patrick Chinamasa and Patrick Zhuwao reading from entirely different scripts on the country’s contentious indigenisation framework. So wide has the gulf between the two bigwigs become that Chinamasa, who is the minister of Finance, apparently walked out of a…
HARARE – With factionalism still festering in Zanu PF, despite contrary claims by its top leadership, businessman Energy Mutodi says the ruling party’s recently-held conference failed to end the deadly factional wars and predicted the party’s demise. Closing the party’s conference held in Victoria Falls early this month, President Robert Mugabe claimed that his party,…
HARARE – Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa is pressed between a rock and a hard place as he tries to revive the economy at a time his Zanu PF party is engaged in deadly and bloodletting factional fights to succeed President Robert Mugabe. Over the past few months, the lawyer-cum-politician has been the most active of…
JOHANNESBURG – Former South African President FW De Klerk has criticised a campaign to remove a statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oxford University’s Oriel College. Mr De Klerk said South Africa’s white Afrikaner population had many reasons to dislike Rhodes but “never thought of removing his name from our history”. Campaigners say the statue venerates…
DALLAS – Eight people are reported to have been killed in Texas in new tornadoes, raising the death toll to 26 in a week of storms in several US states. Five people died when their cars were reportedly blown off a motorway in Garland, near Dallas. Another three bodies were found in nearby towns. Officials…
HARARE – Filling up the Harare International Conference Centre (HICC) has proved to be a tall order of late but not for Friday night’s tantalising bill powered by Mafikizolo, Oliver ‘Tuku’ Mtukudzi and Jah Prayzah. Despite the rather steep admission fee-$15 for the standard ticket and $25 for the VIP one-and the heavy downpour that…
HARARE – As dawn breaks and the sun paints the horizon crimson and orange, a group of dishevelled men and women trudge up from disused mine shafts in Penhalonga carrying picks and crow-bars. Their muddy limbs and toothy grins are proof that their hard toiling in the dead of the night has been fruitful. “Working…
LAGOS – An Islamist-led insurgency has kept more than one million children out of school in four West African states, the UN children’s agency has said. More than 2,000 schools were shut, while hundreds had been attacked, looted or set ablaze, Unicef said. Boko Haram’s six-year insurgency has devastated north-eastern Nigeria, and has spread to…
ISTANBUL – The number of migrants and refugees crossing into Europe by land and sea this year has passed one million, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) says. The number represents a fourfold rise on the total last year. The vast majority crossed by sea, with more than 800,000 travelling from Turkey to Greece. Most…
