Police in Zimbabwe on Saturday dispersed more than 100 women who were planning a Valentine's Day march to urge national reconciliation in the capital, Harare. In Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second city, the high court refused to hear an urgent application sought by the Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) to compel the police to allow them to march.

Confusion has again engulfed assertions by President Thabo Mbeki on progress towards ending Zimbabwe's political crisis, with a senior opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader denying it has agreed to an early election. Mbeki said on television on Sunday that the MDC and Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu PF had agreed to bring the next election forward to March next year. His comments follow a recent insistence, also disputed by the parties involved, that Zimbabwe's protagonists were about to start formal negotiations to end the crisis.

It is a few minutes before lunchtime and a disorderly queue of dishevelled youths in ragged clothes has already formed outside the doors of Thuthuka, a drop-in centre for street children in Zimbabwe's second city, Bulawayo. Thuthuka has led Bulawayo's initiative to help its homeless children by also providing life skills education and counselling at the drop-in centre, as part of a city-wide taskforce trying to address the growing phenomenon.

The media’s lack of professional resilience when covering elections was illustrated again by the way in which they handled the Gutu North by-election, says the Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ) in its latest bulletin. "The media generally gave scant attention to the election and, as a result, omitted pertinent information on the electoral process, which the ruling party has manipulated in the past to tilt the outcome in its favour." None of the Press investigated the state of the voters’ roll, said MMPZ, or why the opposition had been refused access to the consolidated roll.

"The Media Defence Fund (MDF) and the Media lawyers Network (MLN) are dismayed by the Supreme Court judgment upholding certain sections of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) as constitutional. The Constitutional challenge brought by the Independent Journalists Association of Zimbabwe (IJAZ) against the Minister of State for Information and Publicity in the Office of the President and Cabinet as well as the Media and Information Commission (MIC) sought the nullification of sections 79, 80, 83 and 85 as unconstitutional. The case was heard on 21 November 2002 with judgment only being delivered on 6 February 2004, fifteen months after the matter was heard. Although the Supreme Court noted that freedom of the press is covered in section 20 of the constitution, we express our disappointment that the court ruled that these sections are still constitutional."

The Media and Information Commission (MIC) has announced that no journalists from the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe, publishers of the Daily News and Daily News on Sunday will be accredited. The Commission, headed by Tafataona Mahoso, said that the journalists would not be accredited since the Daily News and the Daily News on Sunday are not registered.

Almost four years after the government of Zimbabwe adopted the fast-track land redistribution programme, thousands of ex-commercial farm workers find themselves displaced and without employment. In 2000 the government embarked on the controversial initiative that drove thousands of white farmers off their estates, saying it intended to resettle land-hungry black Zimbabweans. More than 300,000 farm workers who had been employed by the former commercial farmers were also displaced in the process.

Following the arrest of a number of key figures for corruption related charges, Zimbabwe’s ZANU PF is apparently infatuated with a so-called campaign against corruption. This comes in the wake of a demand by delegates at the late December 2003 ZANU PF Congress that officialdom deals with corruption threatening to bring the country to a standstill. A move to pacify congress attendees resulted in a number of low-key arrests in the post-congress period, culminating in the high-note incarceration of Philip Chiyangwa. Chinyangwa is the Mashonaland West Provincial Chairman and MP for ZANU PF. The arrest of Chiyangwa, the circumstances surrounding it as well as the attempt by ZANU PF to gain political mileage from it are fully consistent with ZANU PF’s self-gratification, deliberate confusion of issues, and propensity to give the people a raw deal, says this commentary.

The New York Times last Thursday profiled Zimbabwe's health care system, which "like the rest of [the country's] economic and social fabric ... is dissolving." With the economy in "free fall," Zimbabwe is "desperately short of even basic drugs and medical equipment," which is forcing a "once robust" health care system "close to ruin" and is taking a "human toll," according to the Times.

Zimbabwe’s Supreme Court postponed to 18 February a hearing on appeals by the Media and Information Commission (MIC) and the Minister of Information Jonathan Moyo to have The Daily News and The Daily News on Sunday shut down again. On 26 January the Supreme Court declined to grant an interdict sought by the MIC barring the newspaper company from publishing. Chief Justice Chidyausiku sitting in chambers, said that he could not issue the interdict sought by the MIC but had no problems with the appeal for the consolidation of these cases pending before the court. Two appeals were pending before the Supreme Court, both seeking an interdict stopping the ANZ from publishing.

ZANU-PF is reportedly continuing with its violent campaign against supporters of the opposition, particularly in Gutu North where a parliamentary by-election was scheduled for February 1-2. Not only that, the ruling party is also being accused of using traditional leaders to frustrate the campaign activities of the MDC. "Only the private media revealed these barbaric tactics, which the ruling party has unashamedly employed in every election since the entrance into the political arena of the opposition MDC in late 1999," said the Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe in their latest update.

Zimbabwe's Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister July Moyo has been accused of using cash from his own department as collateral for a Z1-billion loan for a company owned by two close associates. Moyo's ministry is said to have deposited the money into a First Bank account to secure a loan for Smoothnest Investments. Smoothnest is partly owned by National Social Security Authority (NSSA) chairman Edwin Manikai, who was appointed by Moyo to head up the NSSA public and private sector pension fund.

State radio said voter turnout was heavy in a parliamentary by-election in southern Zimbabwe where the opposition said balloting was marred by intimidation and vote rigging. The two-day poll ends on Tuesday in the ruling party stronghold of Gutu 240km south of Harare to fill the seat left vacant by the death of vice-president Simon Muzenda last September.

University of Zimbabwe's (UZ) lecturers and non-academic staff on Friday gave the Public Service Commission (PSC), through their employer the University Council, a 14-day notice to go on strike following delays in awarding the workers a salary increment as ordered by the court last year. In September last year, the government was ordered by the Labour Court to award the UZ employees salary adjustments of more than 800 percent backdated to July of that year but nothing has been done by the government.

Zimbabwe captain Heath Streak, while urging Australia to tour his country in May to guarantee the continued success of cricket there, denied the claims of yet another former teammate who said virulent racism was entrenched in Zimbabwe's cricket structure. Writing in Wisden Cricketer magazine this month, former fast bowler Bryan Strang said Zimbabwean children were "learning first hand from coaches and policy-makers that skin colour matters" and that many in the cricket community disagreed with the "politicisation and racialisation of cricket in Zimbabwe".

It is deplorable that Zimbabweans should continue to be displaced from their homes on the basis of their political opinions and beliefs in violation of the Constitution which guarantees every individual's “right to assemble freely and associate with other persons and in particular to form or belong to political parties”, says the latest report from the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum on political violence for December 2003. The report said violence continued in Kadoma Central into December 2003 following the holding of a by-election over the weekend of 29-30 November 2003. "Members of the opposition party, MDC, reported being abducted, threatened and assaulted while votes were being counted. A number of incidents reflected a lack of political tolerance between supporters of the two contesting political parties with MDC supporters claiming that they were abducted to a Zanu PF base at a school in the area where they were beaten."

Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai told his treason trial on Wednesday the state's key witness entrapped him after promising to arrange a meeting with American Secretary of State Colin Powell and other top officials. Tsvangirai, who leads the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), has denied charges of plotting to kill President Robert Mugabe and stage a coup ahead of the southern African country's controversial 2002 elections.

When a lorry carrying farm workers crashed this month outside the capital, Harare, killing 22 people, a number of children were among the fortunate survivors. The tragedy came at the beginning of the new school year, when a rise in school fees had forced many former farm workers - among the poorest of the rural poor - to pull their children out of school. The children on the lorry, aged between 13 and 18, were seeking piecework on neighbouring farms to earn the money to continue with their schooling.

Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) MPs walked out of the chamber en masse in protest against the patently partisan manner in which parliamentary business is being conducted. “Parliament is increasingly being run in an openly oppressive manner, which is in by all definitions inimical to democratic principles,” said the MDC in a press statement. The following day, the MDC reported that its officers had been raided by more than 15 police officers some in riot gear and carried out a search for what they claimed to be subversive material.

"We the people of Zimbabwe cherish the ideals of freedom and justice in our quest for a multi racial, multi ethnic society founded upon the principles of fairness, equity, compassion and brotherhood. In our pursuit of freedom we acknowledge the supremacy of God and the dignity of man in a nation, which envisages equal opportunities for all Zimbabweans. We therefore affirm our commitment to this charter, the Zimbabwe Freedom Charter."