Swedish PEN has decided to grant the Tucholsky award of 2004 to the Zimbabwean writer Yvonne Vera, who is presently living in Canada. Yvonne Vera (born 1964) grew up in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and never wanted to leave her country. Nonetheless, she has lived for many years in Toronto, Canada. It was while living there that she wrote her doctoral thesis on African writers like Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Soyinka, Ruth First and Breytenbach. She recently decided to leave Zimbabwe again. The Tucholsky award (150.000 SEK or ca 15.000 Euro) is every year given by Swedish PEN to a writer or a publisher who is being persecuted, threatened or in exile from his or her country.

Zimbabwe, where more than five million people face famine, claimed this week that it had enough food to feed its population and would not seek aid supplies this year. The claim was dismissed as ridiculous by agricultural experts and aid workers who said it was an attempt by the regime to secure full control over food supplies before next year's parliamentary elections.

With young people in Zimbabwe most at risk from HIV/AIDS, a new project is seeking to empower youth representatives to make a difference among their peers. The District Response Initiative (DRI), which works to reduce the effects of HIV/AIDS on rural youth in seven of the country's most impoverished districts, is already using trained peer educators to encourage HIV/AIDS awareness at youth-friendly clubs and centres. Now the DRI has drafted youth office-bearers - teenagers appointed as young parliamentarians, governors and councillors by the ministry of youth - into the cause.

On March 21 the state-run Herald Newspaper ran a lengthy analysis explaining why Zimbabwe's ruling party beat its rival, the Movement for Democratic Change, in a by-election in Zengeza township, one of the opposition's urban strongholds in Harare. With characteristic zeal, the newspaper stated: 'African liberation movements which freed people from the yoke of imperialism and colonialism would always get support from the people and that, in Zimbabwe's case, Zanu-PF has that solid track record.' Political parties justify their claim to power in different ways. Some promote a vision, others recite accomplishments in office. African liberation movements often evoke the struggle they waged against foreign or minority oppression, especially when they have been in office too long to remember the ideals they once espoused or can no longer defend the record they have built.

Zimbabwean men have become increasingly involved in caring for AIDS patients, challenging the stereotype that caring for the terminally ill is women's work. For 48-year-old Luckson Murungweni, until recently it would have been inconceivable that he would one day be actively involved in caring for the chronically ill, let alone those dying from AIDS. Now his attitude is different and he has become the focal point of a home-based care project in rural Goromonzi, some 35 kilometres east of the capital, Harare.

Service delivery at city council hospitals and polyclinics has been disrupted by a nurses strike in Zimbabwe's capital Harare. The nurses went on strike on Monday over a salary dispute with the city council, demanding a second 100 percent salary hike after receiving a similar increase in January. Chairman of the Harare Municipal Workers' Union, Cosmas Bungu, said the 100 percent salary increase awarded to council workers in January this year was not enough to keep pace with the rising cost of living. Inflation has hovered around 600 percent in recent months.

Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF party took a step closer to gaining a two-thirds parliamentary majority after its victory in a weekend by-election. The seat for the Lupane constituency in the Matabeleland North province became vacant on the death of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) MP, David Mpala, earlier this year. ZANU-PF candidate Martin Khumalo beat Njabulo Mguni of the MDC by 883 votes in the two-day poll, taking the ruling party to within two seats of a two-thirds majority in the 150-seat parliament, and the right to amend the constitution, should it wish to do so.

Election reporting fatigue appeared to be taking its toll on the media and this was reflected by the way they covered the run-up to the Lupane by-election on the weekend May 15-16, says the Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe in its weekly newsletter. While the private media generally have reported political violence and manipulation of the electorate in recent weeks, there were virtually no stories updating their audiences of the situation in the final week leading to the election, and precious little information about the electoral process itself. The government media, as epitomized by The Sunday News, seemed pre-occupied with campaigning exclusively for the ruling party in its two articles, 'Zanu-PF vows to bury MDC in Lupane' and, 'A choice between barren politics of protest and fruitful politics of progress'.

The spokesman for the president of Botswana, Dr Jeff Ramsay, has threatened legal action against a number of organisations over comments attributed to him regarding Botswana's relations with Zimbabwe. In an article entitled "Tetchy cross-border relations with Botswana", Ramsay was reported as saying: ""Botswana has noted with growing concern openly hostile reports against the government and the people of Botswana, which can only be interpreted as a deliberate and systematic attempt to fuel hatred and xenophobia between our people." The comments were actually made by Bostwana's foreign affairs spokesman, Cliff Maribe.

Rights group Amnesty International on Friday expressed grave concern at the Zimbabwe government's cancellation of a food assessment mission aimed at establishing possible need for relief aid. "The government has told international donors that it will not need food aid this year. On 7 May the government stopped a UN Crop and Food Supply Assessment Mission from evaluating the current harvest. This was followed by statements in the state-controlled Herald newspaper, attributed to the Minister for Agriculture, claiming that Zimbabwe has produced more grain than it needs this year," Amnesty said.

Most Zimbabweans, even white ones, agree that the land acquisition programme that targeted vast white-owned land for redistribution to landless blacks was vital and long overdue. But the manner in which the government of President Robert Mugabe supervised the haphazard take-over was what threw Zimbabwe into chaos. Mugabe chose to turn a blind eye to the brewing crisis and, riding high on the crest of populism, forcibly took back the vast swathes of land. On a tour of Zimbabwe this week, journalists from the East African Standard came face to face with the victims and beneficiaries of the land take-overs that put Harare at loggerheads with London and the Commonwealth.

The government wants to amend the Electoral Act in a move that will further close any democratic space remaining in the country's political system. Under the proposals contained in the Electoral Amendment Bill 2003 which analysts say are clearly targeted at the opposition MDC, it will increasingly become difficult for poor urban dwellers - who are the opposition party's main supporters - to vote because they would, among other stringent requirements, have to produce proof of residence.

Despite warnings of a third successive year of famine, a government spokesman in Zimbabwe said that the country’s food stocks were sufficient and it would not require relief aid from international agencies. State radio quoted Paul Mangwana, the Minister of Social Welfare, as saying that the Government had “ruled out food imports or receiving aid ...because the country has produced enough food for its requirements.”

At least 64 opposition supporters have been arrested this week in Zimbabwe's western region of Lupane ahead of legislative by-elections at the weekend, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said. A senior party official and lawmaker from a neighbouring constituency, Abdenigo Bhebhe, said 20 were arrested early Tuesday after they clashed with ruling Zanu PF party supporters while they were putting up campaign posters at a shopping centre.

The central Nigerian state of Kwara has agreed to lease farmland to white Zimbabwean commercial farmers who are planning to emigrate to the west African country, according to a government spokesman. "The Zimbabweans were here last week. We held fruitful discussions with them before they left for home. It is true that we have agreed to lease some farmlands to them," state government spokesman Tajudeen Kareem told AFP.

Fifty-seven people died of malaria in Zimbabwe last week, bringing the toll to 500 since the start of the rainy season this year, government medical officials said on Tuesday. Medical experts have attributed the rising number of deaths to the heavy rain in most parts of the country, coupled with a lack of funds and chemicals to carry out routine spraying.

"When they were interrogating me, they kept asking about ‘Zvakwana!’," says activist Gorden Moyo, describing his recent detention by security officials in Zimbabwe. "I told them I don’t know what it’s about.” Moyo is one of several campaigners and opposition party members who have been questioned about this underground pro-democracy movement, whose Shona name means ‘enough’. Also referred to in Ndebele as ‘Sokwanele!’, the organisation has Zimbabwean authorities scratching their heads in exasperation. Its central message is that the 24-year rule of President Robert Mugabe should come to an end.

Zimbabwe Finance Minister Chris Kuruneri, who has been detained for almost three weeks on charges of violating foreign exchange and citizenship regulations, was denied bail in the Zimbabwe High Court this week. Justice Ben Hlatshwayo ruled that Kuruneri was likely to abscond if given bail as he had "family connections, friends, and abundant means of survival outside the country".

As the democratic world commemorated World Press Freedom Day on Monday, May 3rd, the Zimbabwean authorities were threatening to close down one of the few remaining independent sources of information in the country, reports the latest issue of the Zimbabwe Media Monitoring Project's newsletter. The government appointed Media and Information Commission demonstrated the extensive control the authorities now have over the public dissemination of information by accusing the new owners of the privately owned weekly Tribune newspaper of publishing illegally in violation of the repressive Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act. But this is only the latest government assault on the democratic ethos of media freedom that the United Nations-sponsored event is intended to promote and safeguard.

In a major climb down, a Botswana newspaper was forced to concede that xenophobia against Zimbabweans was on the rise in Botswana after a fierce riot erupted in Gaborone during which five Zimbabwean buses were attacked by Batswana nationals. The newspaper conceded that relations between Batswana and Zimbabweans were at an all time low because of xenophobia. In an editorial, the paper said "the tendency for Batswana and Zimbabwean citizens to turn to violence against each other at the drop of a hat is now becoming commonplace."