News

  ZANU PF politburo member and National Assembly Speaker, Jacob Mudenda, has berated colleagues in the ruling party for lack of discipline and unbridled ambition, describing the ongoing vicious debate over President Robert Mugabe’s successor as taboo and premature, saying “no new sun rises before the old one sets”. Addressing South African media at the African National Congress’ (ANC) 105th anniversary celebrations in Johannesburg, Mudenda said the succession debate was premature and that party members…

  The Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission (ZHCR) has called on political parties to dissuade their supporters from engaging in violence ahead of the forthcoming 2018 harmonised elections.Leaders of parties that fan political violence as a way of forcing people to vote for them face prosecution, said the human rights body. This was said last Friday during the appointment of Mrs Makanatsa Makonese to the post of executive secretary of the organisation that has been vacant since…

Divisions have once again emerged in the MDC-T over whether party leader, Mr Morgan Tsvangirai should address a joint rally with Zimbabwe People First leader Dr Joice Mujuru in Bikita to garner support for the latter’s candidate for the Bikita West by-election, Mr Kudakwashe Gopo. It is understood that some people within ZimPF want Mr Tsvangirai to address the rally to lure his supporters to vote for Mr Gopo, a development that coalition advocates think…

  STAKEHOLDERS in the media industry have accused the government of stifling citizens’ right to communicate over the internet by increasing the cost of data and making it inaccessible to the majority, who had become dependent on social media platforms for news. This follows the recent decision by the Postal and Telecommunication Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (Potraz) to hike the floor price for data to 2c/MB, which is nearly four times the current data charged…

On Tuesday last week, one of the suspects, Welshman Ncube (32) appeared before Bulawayo magistrate Manasa Musiiwa charged with malicious damage to property, but was acquitted for lack of evidence. It was the State’s case that the complainant in the matter, a police officer, Denis Pfumbirai, of Ross Camp, was on November 26, 2016 driving a newly-acquired police vehicle along 9th Street in Makokoba raiding shebeens in the company of other police officers. When they…

    Harare motorists are set to fork out more for using city roads as the local authority mulls introducing a fee for road maintenance following inadequate allocations from the Zimbabwe National Road Administration (Zinara).Harare City Council was allocated $1,2 million for road maintenance this year, an amount it dismissed as a joke and a far-cry from its requirements. The city said the proposed new road fee would help it maintain roads because depending on Zinara…

  THE Government has blocked a Bulawayo City Council resolution to surrender the running of all municipal schools to parents saying doing so is against the country’s education policy. Instead, said the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education Dr Slyvia Utete-Masango in an interview yesterday, if any transfer were to happen, it has to be to the Government. According to the latest council minutes, BCC revealed that it was going to…

MENTAL patients at Ingutsheni Central Hospital in Bulawayo are developing scurvy due to poor nutrition.   The psychiatric hospital caters for about 2 000 patients and entirely depends on Government’s budgetary allocations, which have not been adequate over the years resulting in critical expenditure shortfalls.   Bulawayo MPs have since called for urgent Government and private sector intervention to address the plight of patients at the referral institution, which is also experiencing drug shortages.  …

    ZIMBABWEANS trying to cross a flooded Limpopo River were among five people who died in an incident that saw five others being rescued, South African media reported yesterday.   News24 reported that bodies of two men were found in the Limpopo River near Beitbridge, while two women and three girls, aged between six and 10, were rescued in the same area on Thursday and Friday.   “It’s suspected that they attempted to enter…