About 200 people attended the funeral service while family members witnessed the burial in a courtyard
The former leader of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe has been buried in his rural home Zvimba in a low-key private burial after the family snubbed the hilltop National Heroes Acre burial this week.
About 200 people attended the funeral service while family members witnessed the burial in a courtyard.
Continue reading...An unexpected post-Mugabe boom has caught the attention of international art collectors
In a makeshift studio, in an empty house on a ridge with a spectacular view of trees and blue sky, two artists are setting out brushes and paint. Half-finished canvases lean against walls. The bustle and noise of the city is far away.
Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude and Helen Teede are among a new wave of young artists in Zimbabwe who are attracting attention from collectors and curators worldwide. Both now work in a converted house surrounded by forest, a 40-minute drive from the capital, Harare.
Continue reading...Peter Magombeyi, who was overseeing a doctors’ strike, turns up confused and in pain
A doctor and labour activist in Zimbabwe whose reported abduction led to widespread protests by medical staff has been found, disoriented and in pain but alive.
Peter Magombeyi, the acting president of the Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association (ZHDA), disappeared at about 10pm (2100 BST) local time on Saturday. The union leader sent a short message to colleagues saying he believed he was being kidnapped before all communications ceased.
Continue reading...Activists fear Peter Magombeyi was kidnapped by state agents for role in doctors’ strike
Concerns are growing for a doctor and labour activist in Zimbabwe who remains missing more than 48 hours after his abduction by suspected state security agents.
Peter Magombeyi, the acting president of the Zimbabwean Hospital Doctors Association (ZHDA), disappeared at around 10pm on Saturday. The union leader sent a short message to colleagues saying he believed he was being kidnapped before all communications ceased.
Continue reading...The bands played but the funeral of Zimbabwe’s ex-president was a strange affair in a divided nation
At just before 11.30am, the thousands of mourners in the vast bowl of Zimbabwe’s national stadium stood and the casket carrying the mortal remains of Robert Gabriel Mugabe began its short journey across the green grass to the podium where it would lie during the long, hot hours of the funeral.
A military brass band led the procession. Then came the bereaved family and Mugabe’s successor, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, followed by foreign dignitaries, before a small crowd of ministers and officials from the ruling Zanu-PF party.
Continue reading...Foreign dignitaries and opposition leaders attend service for Zimbabwe’s founding president
Thousands of mourners sang the praises of Robert Mugabe on Saturday at the official funeral ceremony for the Zimbabwe’s founding president in Harare.
A military brass band led family members, officials from the ruling Zanu-PF party and foreign dignitaries from across Africa on a short parade across the grass of the national stadium in front of the coffin, which was draped in the national flag.
Continue reading...Family says former Zimbabwe leader will be buried at home, against authorities’ wishes
The family of Robert Mugabe has said he will be buried in his home town in private, in an apparent snub to Zimbabwe’s government, which wants to inter his body at a national monument.
Leo Mugabe, a nephew of the late ruler, said the ceremony would probably be held early next week in Zvimba district, about 60 miles (95km) north-west of the capital, Harare. “That is the decision of the family since last night unless something changes,” he told the Guardian.
Continue reading...I am saddened that your obituary for Robert Mugabe (Journal, 7 September) omits any reference to the work of his wonderful first wife, Sally (though it mentions her name). She was secretary general of the Zanu-PF women’s league, founder of the Zimbabwe Child Survival Programme and a backer of the pan-Africa consortium Akina Mama wa Afrika. She also launched the Zimbabwe Women’s Co-operative in the UK. She was a great feminist, inspiring many of us women’s rights activists and NGOs around the world, and died far too young.
How different she was from her successor, Grace. But why are her unique initiatives for Zimbabwe’s women and children omitted in all these eulogies? More gender bias? She should never be forgotten.
Margaret Owen
Director, Widows for Peace Through Democracy
The man who brought freedom to Zimbabwe was once a hero to many – but he died a tyrant who will not be mourned
Robert Mugabe is dead, never to come back again, and so are millions of Zimbabweans who preceded him, dying from easily treatable diseases, and from the violence that visited anyone who attempted to resist his tyrannical rule.
The dreams of millions of young men and women – who, to this day, roam the streets of Zimbabwe with university degrees but without jobs or any decent income – were extinguished long before him.
Continue reading...Officials and family members are arguing over the arrangements for the burial of Robert Mugabe, the former Zimbabwean president who died in Singapore last week aged 95.
High-ranking members of the ruling Zanu-PF party are understood to have told Mugabe’s close family that his remains should be interred at a hilltop monument outside Harare, the capital, following a ceremony at the nearby national stadium, where dozens of prominent African leaders would be present.
Continue reading...The former Zimbabwean president will always be an African liberation icon, but his brutality will not be forgotten
“Wafa wanaka” – it is said that it is unAfrican to speak ill of the dead. But what choice does one have when the death of a once towering figure raises complex emotions, and not in a good way?
On 18 April 1980, Zimbabwe was born. In a colourful celebration that started the previous night at Rufaro stadium in Harare (then known as Salisbury), the independence flame was lit. Bob Marley sang Zimbabwe, a song he’d written at the invitation of the government. Hope filled the air as Robert Gabriel Mugabe, the nation’s first prime minister, took his oath of office and swore allegiance to the new nation. Julius Nyerere, the leader of Tanzania, prophetically cautioned Mugabe, saying: “You have inherited a jewel in Africa. Don’t tarnish it.”
Continue reading...Series of misunderstandings and protection from other African leaders meant Britain could only wound the regime
Britain’s 40-year effort to find a way to either influence or dislodge Robert Mugabe is one of the country’s great post-war foreign policy failures. It is a story spanning six UK prime ministers, nearly £1bn in aid and every conceivable strategy.
Whether the cause of that failure lies at the door of a colonial mindset in the Foreign Office, a failed land transfer policy, the collective weakness of the Commonwealth, a cowardly African political elite or simply the corrupt thuggery of Mugabe himself will be a matter of dispute for generations.
Continue reading...Final years in power were characterised by financial collapse, violent intimidation and vicious power struggle
Robert Mugabe, the deeply divisive former president of Zimbabwe, was declared a “national hero” by the ruling Zanu-PF party on Friday, as preparations for his funeral got under way in the nation he ruled with an iron first for almost 40 years.
The death of the former president on Thursday night in a clinic in Singapore marks the definitive end of an era in the former British colony.
Continue reading...Robert Mugabe, a hero of Africa’s independence struggle whose long rule in Zimbabwe descended into tyranny, corruption and incompetence, has died at the age of 95. We look back at the life and legacy of one of Africa's most notorious leaders
As the armoured vehicles rolled in to Harare in November 2017, after weeks of political fencing and brinksmanship, Robert Mugabe could not believe he had lost. The senior military leadership who placed the Zimbabwean president under house arrest made it clear they were conducting the politest of coups, while stressing to the outside world that it was not a coup at all. It was merely a corrective action and, indeed, at its end, with Mugabe’s resignation, it was still his party, Zanu-PF, in power.
Mugabe, who has died aged 95, came to power as a result of the gun – wielded by others, as he himself never fought in the field – and fell by those who wielded the gun. And, as he fell, the true depths of the economic mire into which he had plunged Zimbabwe – spending so much time on party and succession battles, and seemingly none on issues of deep impoverishment and national non-productivity – became apparent. Emmerson Mnangagwa, the new president, in stressing an economic emphasis and outreach to the world, seemed to admit that the country was bankrupt and that Mugabe had made it so.
Continue reading...Mugabe, who has died aged 95, took power in April 1980, when the country previously known as Rhodesia was renamed Zimbabwe. He was credited with freeing Zimbabwe from colonialism and white minority rule but faced years of criticism for building a dictatorship and mismanaging the economy
Continue reading...Riot police charge hundreds of protesters in Zimbabwe hours after a court rejected an opposition attempt to overturn the ban on a planned rally. Witnesses reported chaotic scenes, with many protesters beaten with batons, at least three injured and others loaded into armoured vehicles
Continue reading...Demonstrators warned ‘you will rot in jail’ in run-up to planned rally in Harare
Zimbabwe’s main opposition party has gone to court to lift a police ban on demonstrations scheduled for Friday, as hundreds of police armed with automatic weapons, batons and water cannon set up checkpoints on major roads and blocked access to the party’s offices in the capital, Harare.
The police banned the street demonstration planned by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) on Thursday night, after saying it would turn violent, and warned that anyone who took part would be committing a crime.
Continue reading...Government warns of reprisals as protests and strikes planned in country crippled by debt
Zimbabweans are bracing for fresh violence and unrest after the main opposition party unveiled plans for a series of major rallies starting this week and unions called for strike action.
Related: ‘Hungry kids collapse as looters take millions’: life in today’s Zimbabwe
Continue reading...Rising inflation has hit those already struggling with food, fuel and medicine shortages
Millions of people in Zimbabwe face hardship, hunger and chaos as the economy comes close to “meltdown” and drought worsens.
More than 18 months after the military coup that removed Robert Mugabe from power, the new government is struggling to overcome the legacy of the dictator’s 30 years of repressive rule and the consequences of its own failure to undertake meaningful political reform.
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