Itai Dzamara, a reporter with the Harare-based independent weekly The Independent, and the paper's general manager, Raphael Khumalo, were arrested January 14 after presenting themselves to police at Harare Central Police Station. The arrests followed the publication of a story in the January 9 edition of The Independent co-authored by Dzamara alleging that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe had commandeered an Air Zimbabwe plane for his trip to East Asia. Dzamara was charged with criminal defamation before being released. Khumalo was released without charge. Dzamara will likely appear with three other Independent journalists in court on January 29. Police arrested Independent Managing Editor Iden Wetherell, News Editor Vincent Kahiya, and reporter Dumisani Muleya on Saturday, January 10, also in connection with the January 9 article.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has promised the government will deal firmly with corrupt financial institutions involved in an upsurge of fraud, the official Herald newspaper says. "We will not allow lawbreakers and corrupt characters to get away with their illegal activities. We will deal with them," the paper quoted Mugabe as saying after donating computers to a school in the central town of Kadoma.

Lobby group the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) has vowed to frustrate any talks on constitutional reform between the ruling ZANU-PF party and the opposition. It argues that only Zimbabweans - not political parties – have the right to decide on the matter. NCA chairman Lovemore Madhuku told IRIN he would consider negotiations on constitutional reforms between the two parties an "illegitimate process", even though the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) had its roots in the NCA and the labour movement.

Organisations dealing with child abuse in Zimbabwe say most of the victims suffer in silence as they are intimidated by the perpetrators, who are usually close relatives. Mr Lovemore Nechibvute, director of Child Line Zimbabwe, an institution that offers psychological support to orphans and vulnerable children said their organisation had received 1400 cases of minors, who have been sexually abused in 2003 alone.

With most of the attention focused on farm occupations, it could be argued that relations between blacks and whites elsewhere in Zimbabwe have gone relatively unobserved. Ironically, the troubles of whites seem to have empowered sections of the black middle class. David Coltart, a prominent lawyer and opposition member of parliament, contends that race relations are good at grass roots level, with the political and economic difficulties of the past three years having drawn people together. "It's amongst the monied elite that strains begin to show," he says.

A legislator and top Harare businessman was hauled before the Harare Magistrate's Court to explain his role in a multi-million dollar scandal that has hit Zimbabwe's financial sector. Phillip Chiyangwa becomes the first politician suspected of involvement in the financial sector crisis that has seen a run on deposits by panicking depositors.

The incumbent's primary tasks will be to manage programme-funded grants, including providing technical assistance regarding planning and implementation and monitoring and evaluating achievement of programme outputs.

Almost two years after Zimbabwe's government declared a state of emergency over HIV/AIDS to allow the importation and manufacture of generic anti-AIDS drugs, accessing antiretrovirals (ARVs) remains a pipe dream for almost a million people living with HIV/AIDS in the country. With an estimated HIV prevalence rate of 27 percent, Zimbabwe is one of the countries worst hit by the epidemic.

Zimbabwe's already strained health sector will come under even greater pressure after one of the country's biggest nursing schools failed to open. Harare Central Hospital has an annual intake of 180 nursing students, recruited three times a year in groups of 60. This year the nursing school could not open its doors to new students, due to a crippling shortage of tutors.

The station manager of Radio Dialogue FM, Father Nigel Johnson, was arrested on January 2 in Bulawayo – approximately 450km from the capital Harare - whilst filming footage for a music video.

In 2001, Steve Connolly, MD of New Holland Publishers, asked Geoff Hill to interview ordinary Zimbabweans and find out what was really happening in the country. Over the past two years, Geoff sought the views of more than a thousand people -- mostly black -- in Zimbabwe and among the three million exiles now living in South Africa, Botswana and the UK. Geoff spoke to people inside the ruling ZANU-PF party; victims of the Matebeleland massacres of the mid-80s; opposition figures; Mugabe's childhood friends; people who had been tortured and some who had committed acts of torture and murder for both ZANU-PF and the opposition MDC. What emerged was a picture of a country that had gone astray. The resultant book, “The battle for Zimbabwe” looks at what went wrong in Zimbabwe, how to avoid the same thing happening in South Africa and what the world could do to bring Zimbabwe back into the fold.

Zimbabwe's only private newspaper, shut down at home by President Robert Mugabe's government, issued a defiant one-off edition in the Nigerian capital Abuja for the opening of the Commonwealth summit. You can read the full edition by visiting the page: http://www.zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID=8164

Children in Zimbabwe are to become the latest victims of President Robert Mugabe's destruction of the economy, with fees at state schools about to go up at least 10 times. When the new school year begins next month many families will be faced with paying nearly half their income to send just one child to school.

Robert Mugabe squandered millions last week in a desperate bid to address the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) after being denied the opportunity at the Commonwealth summit in Nigeria. Mugabe and his cronies lived it up at one of the city's plushest hotels - La Réserve, a spa on the shores of Lake Geneva. According to The Times of London, rooms at La Réserve start at £380 a night, with the presidential suite costing £4 500.

President Thabo Mbeki was due in Harare this week on his Mission Impossible - to try to find a solution to Zimbabwe's growing crisis. The precise nature of his mission is unclear. A senior South African official said he would try to place "back on track" talks between the ruling Zanu-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Zimbabweans trying to leave the country in search of economic opportunities are having to deal with government officials whom they allege are turning their plight into profit, IRIN has learnt. Rising incidents of graft by public officials has coincided with Zimbabwe's worsening economic conditions, according to the anti-corruption watchdog, Transparency International (TI). It ranked Zimbabwe as among the world's most corrupt countries in a report released in October.

Since 2000, when Zimbabwe took a plunge both economically and politically, freedom of expression has become a victim as the government intensifies efforts to control and influence the flow of information, says the The State of the Media Report, an assessment of the media environment carried out by the Media Institute of Southern Africa-Zimbabwe Chapter (MISA-Zimbabwe). The report looks at the operational environment of media practitioners and media organisations. Particular attention is paid to media and freedom of expression violations as these demonstrate the extent to which the media is free or otherwise in a given state. "The repressive media environment currently prevailing in Zimbabwe reflects on government's attitude and policy towards the media, a negative attitude that has been buttressed by the promulgation of repressive laws such as the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) and the Broadcasting Services Act (BSA)," says the report.

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has warned that Zimbabwe's humanitarian and economic crises could dramatically reverse its impressive post-independence education gains. To mark the launch this week of the global report, "State of the World's Children", UNICEF Zimbabwe on Friday called for urgent attention to be paid to keeping children, especially girl children, in school.

The book focuses on how the media covered the 2002 Presidential and Mayoral elections. It depicts the struggle to suffocate the truth and the efforts by the private media to get it heard. This translated to a media war- and ultimately Zimbabweans witnessed a monumental battle by Government to coerce the electorate to vote for the ruling party. An informed electorate will not vote for corrupt and incompetent government- and certainly not for one that undermines their constitutional rights. At the time of the 2002 elections the crisis afflicting the national economy was a source of increasing hardship for most of the population, politically motivated state sanctioned violence became a plague across the nation, and laws guaranteeing democratic practice were trampled underfoot by a government determined to retain control of power. Please send orders and enquiries to the Project Coordinator, MMPZ, 15 Duthie Avenue, Alexandra Park, Harare, Tel/fax: +263 4 703702, E-mail: [email][email protected]

Martin Chimenya, a journalist for the Voice of the People Communications Trust (VOP), was arrested on 8 December 2003 in the city of Masvingo, 293 kilometres south of the capital, Harare. He was charged under Section 79 (1) of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) for allegedly practicing as a journalist without accreditation. Under this section, journalists are not allowed to work without a licence from the Media and Information Commission.