Son of late authoritarian ruler arrested over damage worth £10,000
The eldest son of Robert Mugabe, the late authoritarian ruler of Zimbabwe, has been arrested for allegedly causing damage worth $12,000 (£10,000) to cars and other property at a party in an upmarket neighbourhood of Harare over the weekend.
Robert Mugabe Jr, 31, spent a night in a local police station and then briefly appeared at a court in Harare, the capital, on Monday.
Continue reading...Opposition leader Nelson Chamisa urges world to keep ‘eyes on’ President Mnangagwa amid fears of repression this summer
The leader of Zimbabwe’s main opposition party has warned of violence and repression by the ruling Zanu-PF party to ensure victory in elections scheduled for later this year.
In an interview with the Observer, Nelson Chamisa, president of the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC), called on the international community to have “eyes on” the struggling southern African country despite other crises around the world and to “offer solidarity” to those fighting for change there.
Continue reading...York Theatre Royal
Tonderai Munyevu’s semi-autographical show addresses Zimbabwe’s traumatic history with honesty and humour
Clothes hang in broken rows above the bare stage (Nicolai Hart-Hansen’s design). Dresses, suits, uniforms – they are presences that suggest absences, the “ghosts” of the people in the stories that Tonderai Munyevu and Millie Chapanda are bringing to life through words and music.
The text of Mugabe, My Dad & Me, written by Munyevu, is an assemblage of the events that have shaped his complicated identity as a “gay, black Zimbabwean man”. The narrative is set in motion by a white man’s question: “Where are you from?” Never shrinking from confronting the (overwhelmingly white) audience with the lazy tropes of the colonial mindset, Munyevu sets before us intersecting histories, both personal and political, “bouncing, non-linear” between Zimbabwe and the UK, past and present.
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...After growing up in a Zimbabwe convulsed by the legacy of colonialism, when I got to Oxford I realised how many British people still failed to see how empire had shaped lives like mine – as well as their own
There was no single moment when I began to sense the long shadow that Cecil John Rhodes has cast over my life, or over the university where I am a professor, or over the ways of seeing the world shared by so many of us still living in the ruins of the British empire. But, looking back, it is clear that long before I arrived at Oxford as a student, long before I helped found the university’s Rhodes Must Fall movement, long before I even left Zimbabwe as a teenager, this man and everything he embodied had shaped the worlds through which I moved.
I could start this story in 1867, when a boy named Erasmus Jacobs found a diamond the size of an acorn on the banks of the Orange river in what is now South Africa, sparking the diamond rush in which Rhodes first made his fortune. Or I could start it a century later, when my grandfather was murdered by security forces in the British colony of Rhodesia. Or I could start it today, when the infamous statue of Rhodes that peers down on to Oxford’s high street may finally be on the verge of being taken down.
Continue reading...Presidential challenger Bobi Wine has been protesting against corruption and youth unemployment
As Uganda readies for an election on Thursday, President Yoweri Museveni is doubling down on his main rival and preparing himself for a sixth term in office.
After 35 years in power, he faces a powerful opponent, the popular singer Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, 38, known by his stage name Bobi Wine, who has captured the hearts of a new generation by protesting against corruption and youth unemployment.
Continue reading...Proposed MCC membership for Mugabe and Thatcher’s birthday party plans among stories kept under wraps – until now
John Major vetoed a Foreign Office idea to offer honorary membership of the MCC to Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, saying it was a “dodgy precedent”, records released by the National Archives reveal. The FCO proposed the offer for Mugabe’s 1994 state visit to the UK, stating he was “reportedly keen on cricket”.
Continue reading...17 September 1987: the proposal is virtually assured passage through Parliament which is controlled by Mr Robert Mugabe’s Zanu party
The Zimbabwe government has introduced a parliamentary Bill aimed at creating a stronger presidency and doing away with the post of Prime Minister.
The move came soon after the parliamentary vote to eliminate the special seats reserved for the country’s white minority. Both measures were seen yesterday as part of a government drive to restructure the British-drafted Lancaster House constitution approved in 1979.
Continue reading...After years in exile, my hopes for a joyous family reunion were dashed by the country’s miserable economic situation
My brothers and I leapt out of bed at the first glimmer of dawn on Christmas morning – and there they were. Every Christmas of my childhood that I can remember, the shiny black school shoes were neatly lined up by the door. A new pair for all of us. Then came the new clothes proudly presented by my parents – the fruit of long hours of labour. And then, in our new finery, off we went to church. The long sunny hours of Christmas Day, usually with a brief but refreshing afternoon thunderstorm, were spent at huge family gatherings, feasting on chicken and rice, washed down with an array of brightly-coloured soft drinks – cherry plum, cream soda and Fanta orange.
As the years went by and independence came to Zimbabwe, many things changed. But Christmas traditions remained much the same, with big gatherings to which people travelled many miles, new clothes, lots to eat and drink.
Continue reading...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...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