With Covid lockdowns blamed for rising rates, MPs and teachers say it’s time to ‘face reality’ and allow younger teens access to birth control
Malet*, 14, stands in the long queue at the maternity clinic in Harare. She is here for her routine checkup. Most of the people in the queue are teenage girls.
Malet fell pregnant the first time she had sex. Her baby is due in two months.
Continue reading...Amnesty is calling for action to help those with no papers who are denied access to education, employment and healthcare
At 45, Philimon Mashava has never had a bank account or a phone in his name.
He has never had a birth certificate and, without documents, Mashava’s stateless existence has meant him missing out on school and countless job opportunities, as employers want some form of identification.
Continue reading...Slip by James Duddridge at funeral of liberation leader derided as evidence of enduring colonial attitudes
James Duddridge, the UK’s minister for Africa, appeared to confuse Zimbabwe with Zambia in a speech at the funeral of Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia’s founding president and one of Africa’s last surviving liberation leaders, in the country’s capital, Lusaka, last week.
Kaunda, who died last month at the age of 97, ruled Zambia from 1964, when it won independence from Britain, until 1991. He was respected across the continent as one of a generation of Africans who fought to free their nations from colonial rule.
Continue reading...Activists believe the case, in which the accused says she acted in self-defence, shows the law fails women
A teenager has been charged with murder in Zimbabwe despite claims she was defending herself against a sexual predator. The action has triggered protests from lawyers and activists, who have raised concerns about how victims of sexual violence are treated in the country.
Tariro Matutsa, 19, said she acted in self-defence when she picked up a piece of firewood and hit 40-year-old Sure Tsuro several times last month. She said he had cornered her as she cooked over a fire at her home in Mudzi, a rural area east of the capital, Harare, exposed himself and aggressively demanded sex.
Continue reading...Tighter restrictions in 12 mostly rural areas come as health service struggles to cope with third wave of infections
Zimbabwe’s government has designated 11 rural areas across three provinces Covid-19 hotspots this week after a sharp rise in cases. The measures come as the country battles to contain a third wave of coronavirus.
Mashonaland West, Masvingo and Bulawayo provinces have been put into strict localised lockdowns to contain the spread of the virus. The government had already declared hotspots in three other regions, the first in May and two others in early June.
Continue reading...Poor families cannot afford healthcare and schooling but good harvests offer some hope, World Bank finds
The number of Zimbabweans in extreme poverty has reached 7.9 million as the pandemic has delivered another economic shock to the country.
According to the World Bank’s economic and social update report, almost half of Zimbabwe’s population fell into extreme poverty between 2011 and last year, with children bearing the brunt of the misery.
Continue reading...Concerns over impact on poorer countries, while richer governments try different containment measures
The Delta variant of Covid-19, first identified in India, has been detected in 74 countries and continues to spread rapidly amid fears that it is poised to become the dominant strain worldwide.
With outbreaks of the main Delta strain and several of its sub-lineages confirmed in China, the US, Africa, Scandinavia and the Pacific, concern increasingly is focusing on how it appears to be more transmissible as well as causing more serious illness.
Continue reading...As staff sit idle in treatment centres, anger focuses on government failures to secure supplies as fears of a third wave increase
Hundreds of people are being turned away from vaccination centres in Zimbabwe as the country’s supplies of China’s Sinovac vaccine appear to have run out, triggering panic that the government is failing to acquire new stocks.
While the government said that it had taken delivery of more medicines in recent weeks, centres in Harare have not had any stocks for nearly a week and there is growing anger at the failure to communicate acute vaccine shortages, which are being reported around the country.
Continue reading...Honest examination of French colonial record in Africa and responsibilty in Rwanda key to new strategy, though critics say little has changed
With the golden winter sun slanting across the palm trees and yellow sandstone, the scene was perfect. Emmanuel Macron and his host, Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, walked down the red carpet of the Union buildings in Pretoria as the Marseillaise resonated through the clean, crisp air.
The historic setting was apt. Since taking power in 2017, the French president has sought a broad reset of national strategy, relations and intervention in Africa. He has chosen a very contemporary way to do this: by re-examining the past.
Continue reading...Criticism of priorities as tribute to liberation leader unveiled despite foreign food aid and lack of jobs
The Zimbabwean government unveiled a statue of the liberation heroine and anti-colonialism figurehead Mbuya Nehanda in the capital, Harare, on Tuesday amid controversy about its priorities while the economy and health system collapse.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa vowed that the government would “repatriate Mbuya Nehanda’s skull and the skulls of others from the UK”, and said discussions about this were “on course”. The human remains of Nehanda and others who fought British colonisers are widely rumoured to be held at the Natural History Museum in London.
Continue reading...My friend Irene Owens, who has died aged 102, was a typist, switch-board operator, air-raid warden, nursery nurse and one-woman aid provider to Zimbabwe after she befriended Sally Mugabe, the president’s wife.
Irene, known as Renie to her friends, first visited Zimbabwe in 1980 for a conference with the Moral Re-Armament movement (MRA), of which she was a member.
Continue reading...Infectious hits produced on a shoestring allow Zimbabwe’s aspiring musicians to express their struggles and dream big
Inside a grimy flat in Mbare, Zimbabwe’s oldest township in the capital Harare, about 10 young musicians nervously rehearse their lyrical chants as they wait to be called into the recording booth.
Many celebrated musicians in Zimbabwe have been born out of this old flat. For those here now, this is their one shot at stardom, or at least a future in music.
Continue reading...At the mercy of international markets and denied access to mainstream finance, the enterprising growers face a precarious existence
Moreen Tanhara waits patiently for officials to inspect her tobacco. The 49-year-old has travelled nearly 100 miles (150km) overnight in an old lorry to reach Tobacco Sales Floor, an auction house in Harare. Tanhara sits quietly on one of the fragrant sacks she has brought from Guruve, a farming area north of Zimbabwe’s capital, while on the auction floor workers prepare tobacco leaves for the first sales of the season.
Related: Zimbabwe urged to take action against child labour on tobacco farms
Continue reading...Protais Mpiranya is top of a list of remaining fugitives indicted by an international tribunal
United Nations investigators tracking one of the most notorious killers in the Rwandan genocide believe he is hiding in Zimbabwe and are launching a new effort to convince authorities in Harare to allow the 60-year-old fugitive to face trial.
Protais Mpiranya, the former commander of the presidential guard of the Rwandan army, has been on the run for 27 years charged with war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.
Continue reading...While younger generations remain suspicious, growing numbers of senior citizens are taking up the jab
They may be old, frail, and vulnerable but they are the foot soldiers at the front of Zimbabwe’s Covid vaccination drive. Amid widespread scepticism among the younger population, it is elderly people who are coming out to lead by example.
The queues at the vaccination centres in the capital, Harare, are dominated by older people. At Wilkins Hospital, Felda Mupemhi, 85, grasps her walking stick as she trudges toward a white tent, where nurses are administering the Sinopharm vaccine.
Continue reading...Westworld actor tells Vogue she is reverting to Zulu spelling, saying ‘I’m taking back what’s mine’
The actor formerly known as Thandie Newton has said she will reclaim the original Zulu-derived spelling of her name for use in her professional career, declaring: “I’m taking back what’s mine.”
For more than 30 years, the actor, born Melanie Thandiwe Newton Parker, has been known by an anglicised version of her name since the “w” was dropped “carelessly” from her first acting credit.
Continue reading...Informal games are a lifeline while the Premier League is locked down, but at what risk to players?
Sweaty and tired, the players tussle before the winning goal is scored on a red-dust pitch at the No 1 ground in Mufakose, a township west of Harare. The football fans start up a chant on the touchline, triggering a frenzied response from opposing supporters, who break into rapturous song.
This parched pitch and others like it have become a source of livelihood for some Zimbabwean footballers, struggling to earn a living during the Covid-19 pandemic’s lockdown regulations.
Continue reading...Harare’s drug dealers say business is booming as more young people, some at school, use mutoriro
Inside a tiny room in Kuwadzana, a township in Harare, Solomon Sigauke* and his friends talk animatedly about football and listen to loud music. The misty vapour from the crystal meth fills the room as they take turns on a fluorescent pipe.
Sigauke, 25, has no cigarette lighter so he is improvises, holding a burning candle while his friend Kudzo puffs the smoke from the burning substance, known locally as mutoriro. .
Continue reading...From the Godfathers of Arabic rap to the father of Ethio-jazz, Grammy-winning producer Ian Brennan guides a tour through global music’s greatest
This week I wrote about the glaring lack of international inclusivity in the Grammys’ newly redubbed global music (formerly world music) category.
In the category’s 38-year history, almost 80% of African nations have never had an artist nominated; no Middle Eastern or eastern European musician has ever won; every winner in the past eight years has been a repeat winner; and nearly two-thirds of the nominations have come from just six countries (the US, the UK, Brazil, Mali, South Africa, India). The situation shows little signs of improving.
Continue reading...Priced out of online access, poor children are turning to backyard teachers as Covid closes state classrooms
It’s Friday morning and Help Mabwe is preparing to give the day’s illicit lessons. Round the back of his house the teacher has created a classroom out of some old canvas and some wooden poles.
A few broken chairs and benches, and an ancient chalkboard complete the furniture in Mabwe’s backyard college in Kuwadzana, a township 15km west of central Harare.
Continue reading...