Monday, November 1, 2010

Miss Botswana makes Africa proud in the prestigious world peagent


Alexandria Mills of U.S.A., center, holds hands with Miss Botswana Emma Wareus, left, and Miss Venezuela Adriana Vasini, after crowned as winner of the 2010 Miss World pageant contest at the Beauty Crown Cultural Center in Sanya.



Mis Emma Wareus doing what she knows best

Miss Wareus ,of Botswana has made Africa proud when she clinched the first runner-up in the world peagent.Its indeed an achievement for Africa.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Gokwe falls under a deadly water crisis

Gokwe(ZimEye)-A serious water crisis has hit the growing Gokwe cotton farming town with residents resorting to fetching water from shallow wells, water flowing under bridges and broken water pipes exposing them to health hazards.
Residents of Mapfungautsi, Nyaradza, and Sasame high density suburbs wake up midnight daily to queue at a few water tapes that produce water with the rest resorting to dig shallow wells in the nearby wetland for drinking and other domestic use.

“We find the water we get from the wells we dig (zvitubu) safer to drink than fetching from Sasame river, because of it’s sewerage contamination,” said Sarudzai Muropa of Nyaradza.



“We are taking advantage of this broken pipe which leaks clean water ,but the problem is that because of its proximity to the main road, there is high risk of being crushed by cars.,” a woman identified as Mai Tasara of Sasame said while fetching water underneath a bridge using a cup.

Petronela Kanengoni of Mapfungautsi said for the past two years her tape had not been producing a drop of water.

‘What we do here is that we wake up at around midnight and queue at our neighbour’s tape which produces some drops during the night. We used to get drinking water from a borehole which was drilled by UNICEF during the height of Cholera two years ago but the borehole broke down because of pressure from the Mapfungautsi and Sasame residents,” she said.

Gokwe uses water drawn from a borehole and because of regular power cuts experienced here, the machine is always off.

Gokwe town council chair (MDC-T} Darlington Mudondo said the town was in critical water shortage which could cause another cholera outbreak when the rainy season comes, if it was not addressed.

“We have a perennial water crisis here which we believe will be solved only by finishing up the construction of Gwehava dam whose process is still in progress, because the borehole which pumps water to the entire area is being affected by power cuts and pressure from the growing Gokwe population,” he said.


Gokwe water is still in the hands of the bankrupt Zimbabwe Water Authority (ZINWA) after the council and the water authority failed to reach a consensus over sewer and water hand over and take over. The problem remains unresolved to date making residents to believe that the misunderstanding was affecting service delivery.

Efforts to get a comment from ZINWA Gokwe were fruitless. (ZimEye, Zimbabwe)

Gono-First Lady affair denied, threat to sue


Mendacious lies ... President Robert Mugabe and wife, Grace, said to be preparing for a legal "war" with the Sunday Times newspaper after it published claims that she was having an affair

by Staff Reporter
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe was on Monday said to be preparing to take an unprecedented step to sue both the British and South African Sunday Times newspapers following damaging claims that his wife, Grace, was having an affair with Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono.

Gono, the First Lady and a retired Air Force official named in stories published on Sunday would join in the action, a source said.

Both Gono, 51, and Grace, nee Marufu, 45, strongly deny having an affair, and according to a mutual friend of the pair, “they are ready to go to war” with the Sunday Times.

“There is a major meeting planned for Wednesday which will be attended by lawyers and advisers to the President and Gono,” the source said. “But be in no doubt, we are going to see one of the biggest libel lawsuits ever because this story is a mendacious hatchet job which should never have been published.”

In an e-mail to New Zimbabwe.com on Monday, the source, who asked not to be named, said The Sunday Times’ story was “so sloppy that they lacked the courage to put it in their Zimbabwe edition.”

The story, written by Jon Swain and published simultaneously by the South African and British Sunday Times newspapers, alleged Gono and Grace had been having an affair for five years, and had romped in hotels in Malaysia, Cape Town, a South African house owned by retired Air Vice-Marshal Robert Mhlanga and even on a farm owned by the First Lady.

News of the affair, according to the Sunday Times, was broken to Mugabe on July 26 this year by his dying sister, Sabina. Mugabe’s bodyguard, Cain Chademana, was present in the discussion but “mysteriously died … a matter of dies later”. Citing intelligence sources, the Times said he had been “poisoned under Mugabe's instructions by Mugabe's intelligence men, allegedly employing an undetectable poison.”

But our source, who said she had been in contact with both Gono and the First Lady since the story broke, told New Zimbabwe.com the story was “littered with falsehoods”.

For instance, she pointed out, on July 26, President Robert Mugabe was IN UGANDA attending an African Union summit and therefore could not have met his sister. The Sunday Times also wrote that Sabina died after a short illness.

But our source says around the time she is supposed to have met Mugabe and told her of his wife’s infidelity, she was in a coma and unable to speak.


New Zimbabwe.com has checked her claims which would appear to be backed by comments made by President Mugabe at a funeral wake for his sister on July 29.

Mugabe said Sabina first suffered a stroke in 1995 which “damaged a third of her brain”. Physically she would appear well, but mentally she became somehow confused, Mugabe said.

In devastating remarks which strike at the heart of the Times’ story, Mugabe went on to say: “I last saw her when I visited the hospital [July 24] on my way to Uganda. She could recognise me. I looked at her and she was very frail but at least she could recognise me.”

Mugabe was at the opening ceremony of the AU summit in Kampala, Uganda, on July 25. Lawyers for Gono, the First Lady and Mhlanga will point out that the central plank of the Sunday Times’ story – the said conversation between Sabina and the President -- therefore falls away.

Our source went on to point out various inaccuracies in the story, stating: “If they can’t get the small things right, how can they be believed on the major issues?”

She said: “The story claims Sally Mugabe died in 1996. That’s a lazy lie because she was already four years dead that year.
“The story claims Cain Chademana was a senior police officer and a decorated veteran of Zimbabwe’s independence struggle. That’s a decorated lie because Chademana died aged 36, and therefore too young to have fought in any war. Again, he was never a police officer.

“As a matter of fact, Chademana had an illness known to all those who worked with him and I can tell you it was neither poisonous nor mysterious. Many months before his death, he had taken leave and was nowhere near the President.

“The story claims that Grace and Gideon met at Mhlanga’s house in Johannesburg for trysts. If that were true, why would Mugabe go on and reward Mhlanga with diamond concessions in Marange as chairman of Mbada Diamonds?

“Gono played a major role in organising Sabina’s funeral. You don’t let a man who has been sleeping with your wife organise your sister’s burial; then let him sit a few feet behind you at the burial; especially if that same sister told you he was bedding your wife.

“The Sunday Times story is very sloppy, to say the least. In every paragraph you can find something wrong, if you really want to, and the biggest puzzle is that editors in London and Johannesburg saw no problem with it. Neither did they seek comments from the people whose names they published – a most basic journalism rule.

“They have made a bed, but far from Gideon and Grace sleeping in it, their editors will lie in it. They must prepare to live with the consequences.”

Attempts to obtain a comment from Gono drew a blank as he was was said to be in meetings with a visiting IMF delegation on Monday, while Mugabe’s spokesman George Charamba was unreachable.

The latest threat against the Sunday Times follows a turbulent year for the paper which has run several retractions, including a damaging apology for a story claiming that Transnet -- the company behind South Africa's national transport businesses – was “selling out our sea to foreigners”.

Journalists from the paper have been facing a barrage of questions from South African TV and radio stations since Sunday. One of the editors from the paper told e.tv news channel that they were challenging Mugabe to deny the story, “then we’ll expose him”.

If Mugabe goes ahead with the threatened action, he would join South African President Jacob Zuma who sued Britain's Guardian newspaper for libel and won in March this year.

Zuma accepted "very substantial" libel damages and an apology at the High Court from the Guardian over claims he was a rapist. He sued after publication of an article headlined ‘Get used to a corrupt and chaotic South Africa’ by Simon Jenkins which appeared on March 6.

His solicitor, Jenny Afia, told Mr Justice Eady at the High Court the piece alleged the president was guilty of rape, corruption and bribery arising from his involvement in an arms deal. She told the court: "Such allegations are of the utmost seriousness and totally untrue."

GRACE MUGABE AND GONO ARE LOVERS – BODYGUARD

By JON SWAIN: Harare

When President Robert Mugabe’s younger sister, Sabina, died in Harare after a short illness, pictures showed the 86-year-old president looking devastated at her funeral.

But it may well have been more than the death of his beloved sister that shattered Mugabe and sent his health into what is reported to be further decline.


According to one of Mugabe’s most trusted bodyguards who was present at the time, Sabina Mugabe, 75, warned her brother before she died that he was being betrayed by two of the most important people in his personal and political life: his wife and his personal banker, a pivotal member of his regime.

Sabina told the president that Grace and Gideon Gono, the powerful head of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and Mugabe’s confidant, were secret lovers.Grace, 41 years Mugabe’s junior, has taken lovers before. One lover, Peter Pamire, died in a mysterious car accident. James Makamba, one of Zimbabwe’s richest businessmen and a top-ranking Zanu-PF official, enjoyed her favours but their affair ended in tears, too, when a furious and sexually jealous Mugabe ran him out of town in fear of his life.

But never before has Grace been romantically involved with a politician in Mugabe’s inner circle. And never before has a man so close to the president risked allowing it to happen.The dangers from discovery are high. Zimbabwe state intelligence officials made it known that Mugabe’s detection of the affair had already led to the murder of the bodyguard present at Sabina’s bedside and more trouble would almost certainly follow.

“Once he hears something like that, I think someone will go and meet God,” said one intelligence official.A pillar of the regime who Mugabe personally appointed in 2003 to head the central bank, Gono was a person he absolutely trusted ; furthermore, he was a family friend. The two have known each other since 1995 when Mugabe appointed Gono, then chief executive of a major Harare commercial bank, to be his personal banker.

“Mugabe trusted Gono. He even thought our boss was taking care of the first lady keeping a protective eye on her so that she could not again be adulterous,” said one senior official in Gono’s office who became aware of their secret affair, and who spoke out about it for the first time last month, on condition of anonymity.

Another in Gono’s entourage said Gono and Grace, who are business partners in several enterprises in Zimbabwe and South Africa, had been planning a life together after Mugabe’s death.

Mugabe’s marriage to Grace is itself founded on an adulterous relationship which shocked many Zimbabweans at the time. Grace was working as a junior secretary in the typing pool in Mugabe’s office and married to an air force officer when the two began having an affair. They had two children while Mugabe’s first wife, Sally – who was universally popular – battled a terminal kidney disease. After her death in 1996, Mugabe wed Grace, who is widely loathed and notorious for her lavish shopping sprees.

The Gono source said Grace and Gono first became romantically involved in 2005 and had seen each other regularly since. When they could not find an excuse to meet in South Africa or further abroad, they met at Gushungu Dairy Estate, Grace’s 1000ha farm about an hour from Harare.

They met twice, sometimes three times, a month.

They also met at the Harare home of a woman friend and business associate of Grace who is a Zanu-PF stalwart. They exchanged e-mails, which one official privy to them described as “explicit”.He said Mugabe had always naively accepted as true Grace’s story that she and Gono are related. They are not, although both come from the town of Chivhu, 200km south of Harare.

The enormity of Gono’s betrayal would have come as a devastating emotional shock to Mugabe when Sabina revealed it to him.Mugabe went to visit his sister between 6pm and 7pm on July 26 in the intensive care ward at the Avenues Clinic in Harare. As he sat on her bed with senior police commissioner Cain Chademana, his most trusted bodyguard, at his side, she told him the truth.

Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) officials said Chademana told them of the discussion afterwards and said that the president left the meeting devastated.
“At first, Mugabe did not want to believe it was true, but Sabina told him to ask his men about the affair and make up his own mind,” said the officials, quoting what Chademana had told them.

“It was maddening because Mugabe had encouraged their friendship and sometimes asked Grace to see Gono to discuss mutual business matters.”

In early August, a few days after Sabina’s funeral, Mugabe and Grace left together for China on an official visit.Mugabe took his sister’s advice when he returned to Harare later in August, the state intelligence officials said .

He summoned his bodyguard, Chademana, to tell him exactly what had been going on. Like others in the state security services close to the Mugabes, Chademana had had good reason to believe Grace and Gono were having an affair even before Sabina revealed it in his presence, but had thought it wisest to keep quiet about it.

When Mugabe summoned him in August, “Chademana admitted that he knew something was going on which he had not said before”, said the state security officials.

“Mugabe is said to have gone very silent.”

It was a fatal admission. A matter of days later, at the end of August, Chademana mysteriously died. State security officials handed over his body to his son, Welcome, for burial. No autopsy was performed. The dead police officer was a decorated veteran of Zimbabwe’s liberation war in the 1970s. He had served as Mugabe’s aide de camp for many years and officials in the president’s office let it be known that Mugabe was deeply shocked.

“It will be difficult for us to come to terms with this sad reality,” said Albert Ngulube, the department’s assistant director in a speech at Chademana’s funeral.
“We are not a murderous organisation but peace-loving Zimbabweans who are determined to protect our country.”

His remarks stopped further speculation of foul play arising from the bodyguard’s sudden demise.But CIO sources last week revealed that Chademana was poisoned under Mugabe’s instructions by Mugabe’s intelligence men, allegedly employing an undetectable poison. The instructions were carried out after Mugabe had briefed Happyton Bonyongwe, the director general of the CIO.

It was a desperate measure to keep Grace’s affair with Gono from leaking out and making a mockery of the ageing president.“Mugabe wanted it hushed up at all costs,” said a security official. “Gono is his personal banker, knows Mugabe’s financial secrets and is trusted. And there he is betraying the old man by having an affair with his wife.

“It would be too humiliating and could not be allowed to stand. In addition, Mugabe concluded that Chademana was the source of humiliating leaks about the president’s deteriorating health.”

Mugabe hopes the embarrassing secret of his wife’s infidelity with one of his right-hand men is safely buried with the body of the hapless Chademana in the Warren Hills cemetery outside Harare.

The reserve bank governor’s betrayal presents Mugabe with a dilemma. Throughout most of the last decade of political turmoil and economic meltdown Gono was central to Mugabe’s survival in power.

As the controller of the state coffers, he wielded enormous influence and patronage essentially saving Mugabe’s presidency by finding ways to keep the money flowing when the value of the Zimbabwe dollar had collapsed through hyperinflation.

By dipping into the coffers to fund all Zanu-PF projects, seeing the army generals and the security services were paid and bankrolling the party’s 2008 terror campaign to get Mugabe re-elected, Gono made himself indispensable.

After the reaching of a power-sharing agreement last year when Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai joined a coalition with Mugabe, Gono lost some of his power. But he still remains vitally important to Mugabe and the key figures in his regime and cannot be easily got rid of.

As Mugabe’s personal banker Gono, 50, manages the president’s vast family fortune looted from the country which Mugabe and Grace have stashed away in an opaque network of overseas bank accounts, business ventures and properties, many in the Far East. He also looks after the financial interests of General Constantine Chiwenga, the armed forces chief and others who surround Mugabe at the top and have enriched themselves through their positions.

A measure of Gono’s importance is that Mugabe unilaterally reappointed him to his post last year against considerable opposition from Tsvangirai and, clearly feeling his departure would be highly damaging, he has ever since resisted all demands to dismiss him.

Meanwhile, it looks as if Chademana’s killing could backfire. There are rumblings of discontent within the state intelligence agency where officers, already demoralised by low pay and the killing of Chademana, are talking. Last week several came forward with more revelations which showed the depth of Gono’s betrayal.

One who worked in Gono’s office said he first became aware of his boss’s affair with Grace several years ago when he accompanied him to Malaysia on official business.

During the visit Gono, who had been booked into the Sheraton hotel in Kuala Lumpur, the capital, quickly disappeared to the Berjaya Langkawi beach and spa resort on the island of Langkawi to see her.

The source said that he and his colleagues thought nothing of it until they came to settle Gono and Grace’s hotel bill for the stay and found they were paying for a double room.

Asked how he reacted he said: “In our job we never trust anyone. Even those we are working with we don’t trust. We saw and kept quiet. It is very sensitive.”

At the end of last year, he said, the couple had shared a room at the Cape Grace hotel in Cape Town. Another of Mugabe’s right-hand men, the former Air Vice-Marshal Robert Mhlanga – a key figure in the controversial exploitation of Zimbabwe’s Marange diamond field which is so rich it could make Zimbabwe the world’s top diamond producer – was also said to be aware of Grace’s affair with Gono but kept silent.

Mhlanga has hosted the couple at his Johannesburg house on several occasions during their so-called business trips to South Africa.

“Ask me for another trip like that!” Grace said to Gono afterwards in one e-mail message seen by the official.

More incriminating claims came from the workers at Gushungu, Grace’s dairy farm, an hour’s drive from Harare.

The couple pass off their frequent visits to the farm as business and make a point of arriving and leaving separately.

“At first I did not think anything was going on between them outside business because each time Gono came he bought money with him for the farmworkers,” said one.

“But later on I started suspecting that something was going on each time we visited the house after they had gone.

“No one was allowed inside while they were there. After they left we went back inside. At once it was clear the bedroom had been used for their meeting even though the first lady’s bodyguards had tidied up. They had remade the bed but we could see the sheets had been used. And we noticed the perfume in the bedroom.”

Asked if it surprised him that Gono and Grace were using the farm for an affair, one worker said: “I am not surprised by it. Some others might be. But those who worked at the farm and particularly those who worked in the house will not be astonished.

“It was only going to be a matter of time before someone said it for us. We could not say it ourselves because of fear.”

Saturday, October 16, 2010

GPA not one-man band — Chamisa

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s political party on Friday said they were part of the inclusive government not because of President Robert Mugabe’s benevolence but because they were given the mandate by the people of Zimbabwe in the March 2008 elections.

The MDC-T said it was not bothered if the life of the unity government was not extended beyond February next year.

Hon Nelson Chamisa

The MDC-T said the Global Political Agreement (GPA) was not about President Mugabe.
“It’s not a one-man band,” said Nelson Chamisa, the MDC-T spokesperson.

“It’s not only about Mr Mugabe and what he thinks or wishes.”

Chamisa said his party was not worried whether the life of the unity government was extended or not.“We do not want it (the inclusive government’s life) extended,” Chamisa said. “We wanted out long back but because of the people of Zimbabwe, we have remained. We want to protect them from dictatorship and autocracy.”

The MDC-T was reacting to threats by President Mugabe not to extend the life of the inclusive government because he was disappointed with the MDC formations.

Addressing the Zanu PF National Youth Assembly in Harare on Thursday, President Mugabe said he was disappointed by the propensity of the MDC formations to invite foreigners, particularly Europeans, into Zimbabwe’s domestic affairs.

“The life of this creature called the GPA is only two years,” the President said. “ . . . Some will say let us negotiate and give it another life.
I am reluctant because part of the things that are happening are absolutely foolish and stupid.”But Chamisa told NewsDay the MDC-T was in government because they were overwhelmingly voted by the people of Zimbabwe in March 2008.

“We are not in government on the magnanimity of Zanu PF. We are in government because of the magnanimity of the people of Zimbabwe,” Chamisa said.“We should be chasing away Zanu PF because they are the ones living on borrowed time and borrowed legitimacy.

Zanu PF is a direct beneficiary of the magnanimity of MDC and the people of Zimbabwe.”He added: “They (Zanu PF) were rejected.

They were voted out and they started beating people. It’s a fact and it’s known.

People are tired of political rhetoric. They want jobs, food, shelter and education, not name-calling. It doesn’t serve people.”Chamisa said the MDC-T helped address some of the thorny problems the country faced since coming into the inclusive government.

“It is a fact that we brought functionality. We brought the sanity that the people can now see,” he said.“Of course there are challenges faced by Zimbabweans, but we have managed to open schools and factories. Everything had collapsed under Zanu PF.”

He said the MDC-T had also managed to “debunk the notion that restrictive measures were responsible for our economic problems”.Chamisa said had it not been for the “intransigencies” of Zanu PF, the inclusive government could have achieved greater things.

“We have not made the progress we would have wanted because of the intransigencies of Zanu PF who think everything is economics of power not power of economics,” he said.Chamisa said the MDC-T had sacrificed so much to “save” Zanu PF but “it’s a pity our colleagues in Zanu PF do not reciprocate”.

Monday, October 4, 2010

President Tsvangirai to remain MDC-T leader

”.(Pictured: PM Morgan Tsvangirai – Will not be stepping down from party post)
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Written by Radio VOP
Sunday, 03 October 2010 05:00

HARARE -Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai will remain the leader of the MDC-T until the party achieves its core mission of delivering political change in Zimbabwe, the party has said. The MDC-T was reacting to media reports suggesting Tsvangirai would step down as party president next year in line with the MDC-T’s original constitution that “allows an incumbent to hold office of two five-year terms
The reports said the MDC-T had passed a resolution to the effect that the “movement’s third congress – where a new leader would be elected – would be held after the holding of presidential elections next year”.
The MDC-T said the reports were untrue and aimed at creating problems within the party ahead of the elections.??“The story claiming that President Morgan Tsvangirai is set to step down is false, malicious and misleading,” the MDC-T said.
“For the record, MDC and President Tsvangirai are firmly focused on the party’s agenda for real change; to stabilise the economy; to create jobs; and to ensure that democracy flourishes in Zimbabwe.
“President Tsvangirai’s invaluable soft-power to let democracy sit down; to allow Zimbabweans to reclaim their democratic space and national dignity remains the MDC’s foundation of vibrancy and strength.”
The party added: “Since President Tsvangirai humiliated Robert Mugabe and the former ruling party, Zanu (PF), in the 29 March 2008 elections, the party is clear about its roadmap to a new Zimbabwe.
“The MDC-T said at its 2006 historic congress, the people tasked their newly elected leadership with a specific agenda to take the nation out of a deep crisis of governance."
“The party set out specific benchmarks to measure progress and the people are confident that the MDC remains on the right track. The MDC, working together with the people, will continue to lead until change becomes a reality,” the party said.?
“The issues dominating debate in the MDC are anchored on the people’s agenda for real change; for good governance; for a prosperous Zimbabwe; and for a violence-free society. Anything else, outside these basic needs, has yet to find a place in the dominant discourse inside the party.”
The statement said the MDC-T members were happy with Tsvangirai’s leadership and remain firmly behind he prepares to lead the party in elections expected next year.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Khama the Great(II) shows people driven leadership


President Ian Khama playing snooker with old Naledi resident, a shanty town in Gaborone

Khama the Great(II) has silenced his critics by proving that he really means business about his beloved motherland,gone is the time of Presidents who appear before elections like frogs after the rains to get a ticket to go back to the city and leave the people languishing until next election.This is indeed a dawn of a new era in Africa.Indeed the death and burial of talkshops staged by our dear African leaders is in sight as new crop of African leadership seems to be progressive.I am really touched with this experience where the President goes to almost every village and address the people personally.This inspires the ordinary masses and obviously gives them something to talk about over their traditional opaque beer.Going to them will not make them want to come to the city,but it will improve and indeed boost their self esteem.

Right now elections are still far away but he still dines with both the rich and poor of his country because he is a father for them all.This is great leadership at its best and I urge African leadership to hearken to the call of valuing thier citizens as special,despite their financial status,not to celebrate their suffering under your rulership claiming that you have been President for decades.Its not about the term in Office,but fulfilling your God given mandate to lead us the ordinary masses with ubberima fide.God did not create all of us rich ,just as the hands are not equal,but we can all be happy in our different conditions.
May God bless President Ian Khama,and give him strides to have more wisdom as he leads his people whole heartedly.

To Zimbabwean leadership

We are looking for leaders of the people not gangsters,murderers and thugs.This is a great lesson to you.Other children with responsible fathers(leaders) might not get anything much,but are happy that thier father cares for them.Life is not always about money,but showing that you care for your people.