Gado considers reactions were Mugabe to die.

Zimbabwe's health minister says the southern African country needs $700 million to restore health services shattered by a decade of political and economic turmoil. At the launch of the nation's biggest health investment and funding appeal, Dr Henry Madzorera said the 'systematic decrease' in basic health care destroyed services once seen as among the best in the region.

Rampant corruption in the provision of life - prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) drugs and other HIV services is threatening Zimbabwe's national AIDS response according to a recently released report by a local human rights group. Commissioned by the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) in March 2010, the report - 'Corruption Burns Universal Access to Treatment' - found that 73 per cent of HIV-positive respondents had been asked to pay bribes by health workers. Most of those unwilling or unable to pay were turned away or given inadequate services.

'Zimbabwe’s Exodus: Crisis, Migration, Survival' is written by leading migration scholars, many from the Zimbabwean diaspora. The book explores the relationship between Zimbabwe’s economic and political crisis and migration as a survival strategy. It includes the personal stories of ordinary Zimbabweans living and working in other countries, and reports the hostility and xenophobia they experience.

In his latest partisan move on Zimbabwe, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma told EU Foreign Affairs Committee MEPs on Wednesday 29 September that 'the international community should lift sanctions against Zimbabwe', and claimed credit for giving leadership 'before anybody else did and the current power sharing deal was facilitated by South Africa'. Before the EU lifts targeted sanctions on Mugabe and his inner circle, they should note that the whole of Zimbabwe is 'a giant crime scene' based on what happened before and after the 2008 elections as well as what is happening on the ground now.

President Robert Mugabe has insisted that foreign investors should embrace Zimbabwe's equity laws, which require them to sell a 51 per cent stakes to locals, or 'stay out'. 'Our resources are ours, they belong to Zimbabweans, they belong to the sons and daughters of Zimbabwe," he said.

The December 31 amnesty deadline for Zimbabweans living in South Africa illegally must be extended, People Against Suffering, Suppression, Oppression and Poverty (Passop) said on Wednesday. The home affairs department recently appealed to Zimbabweans living in South Africa to take up the government's offer to get their documentation in order to 'regularise' their stay in South Africa, beginning last Monday.

As public involvement in creating a new constitution for Zimbabwe draws to a close, a rights group reports the process has sparked increased human - rights violations. The Zimbabwe Peace Project says ZANU-PF supporters were the main perpetrators of intimidation at the outreach program. The Zimbabwe Peace Project said it has monitors around the country and they have witnessed many acts of physical intimidation at public meetings.

Zimbabwe must show greater respect for human rights and political freedoms before the US sanctions on the impoverished African nation can be removed, the U.S. State Department said on Sunday. The State Department said its top diplomat for Africa and other US officials met three Zimbabwean ministers and had praised the economic advances but raised concerns 'that political progress has not been as successful'.

Even dead, they would get me, the man from Mugabe's spy agency, the CIO, had warned. My corpse would be shred into "mince meat" even if I returned to Zimbabwe in a coffin for burial, he told me when our paths crossed in Johannesburg. I had been branded a "sell out", and an enemy of the state for my reports in the foreign media on how the ruling party and its supporters waged their land war against white farmers and then tortured and murdered hundreds of black opposition supporters.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has called for universal testing and treatment for HIV to help combat the pandemic, the local media reported.The state-owned Herald newspaper quoted the veteran leader, who is attending the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, as saying HIV should be treated the same way as diseases such as smallpox where nations vaccinated their entire citizens against it.

South Africa is to resume the deportation of Zimbabweans on 1 January 2011, on the basis that conditions in their home country have improved sufficiently, while those with valid documents will be issued with permits to stay. This is a welcome promise, activists say, but hard to implement and irrelevant to most expatriates.

Leaving your children behind in your home country is by no means easy, but more and more people are moving to crossing our borders in the hope of making a better living. Zoopy TV's newsteam spent a day with Belinda, a Zimbabwean who now works as a domestic worker in South Africa.

Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights have confirmed that 83 WOZA members are being held at Harare Central Police Station. They will spend the night in custody even though police officers are still not sure what charges to prefer or if they even have a case against the activists as most handed themselves in. WOZA members had commemorated International Peace Day by handing over a set of demands aimed at the Zimbabwe Republic Police and the Ministers of Home Affairs asking police to adhere to the protocols set out in the Police Act, the ZRP Service Charter and the ZRP Service Standards and to work together with Zimbabweans to keep our communities safe.

Featuring a rich representation of African poetic and musical voices, Poetry Africa on Tour kicks off at the Cape Town ICC on Sunday 26th September. Further satellite programmes take place in Harare, Zimbabwe, on 28th and 29th, then Blantyre, Malawi, on 1st October before culminating at the main Poetry Africa festival in Durban from4th to 9th October.

Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights have confirmed that 83 WOZA (Women of Zimbabwe Arise) members are being held at Harare Central Police Station.

Zimbabwe's education ministry has backtracked on a new policy, introduced in August 2010, to grant pregnant schoolgirls and the prospective fathers maternity and paternity leave from school, and has opted for disciplinary measures instead. "Learners in all schools may be suspended, excluded or expelled from school for various acts of misconduct of a serious nature," Stephen Mahere, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture, said in a circular.

A recent government directive forbidding unqualified teachers - estimated to comprise as much as 60 percent of the staff complement at rural schools - is causing severe disruptions to education. "It is surprising that the government has chosen to stop temporary teachers from resuming duty this [third] term, when it is well known that they form the bulk of teaching staff in rural areas," said Janet Chikawa, a teacher at a secondary school in Seke district, about 50 km south of the capital, Harare.

Reporters Without Borders condemns the jamming of some of the programmes of Short Wave Radio Africa (SWRA), a London-based radio station staffed by Zimbabwean exile journalists that broadcasts to Zimbabwe. Various sources said they thought Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) was responsible for the interference, which began on 1 September.

Requests to accord national hero status to the late Gibson Sibanda, former trade union leader and MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) founder, have been denied, despite petitions to Zimbabwe’s President Mugabe. Sokwanele’s Glow argues that ‘the definition of heroism’ in the country should not be 'controlled by Zanu PF alone’, given the 'multi-party political reality'.