Those predicting a free and fair election next year were left re-evaluating their optimism after an opposition candidate was stabbed to death last Friday. Jabulani Chiwoka, an MDC candidate in next year’s rural district council elections, died from stab wounds after suspected Zanu PF thugs attacked him at a beerhall in the Svosve communal area of Marondera. Another party activist, Tafiranyika Ndoro, is in a Marondera hospital recovering from stab wounds.

The disabled are becoming increasingly marginalised, with the state and civil society neglecting their basic needs, says The forgotten tribe, people with disabilities in Zimbabwe, a new report. Data for the report, recently published by Progressio, an international development agency, in collaboration with the Zimbabwe National Association of Societies for the Care of the Handicapped, was provided by a 2006 survey based on interviews with experts on disability, and disabled people themselves.

Robert Mugabe is to lose vital support from one of his few remaining allies on the world stage, China. One of the Zimbabwe president's oldest diplomatic friends, China told Lord Malloch Brown, the Foreign Office minister, that it was dropping all assistance except humanitarian aid according to a report in the Telegraph. The move follows a decision by China, a permanent member of the United Nations security council, to work more closely with the international community in bringing pressure to bear on "rogue regimes".

Without better uptake of condoms among older men, the promotion of later sexual debut and discouragement of cross-generational sexual partnerships may do little to limit the spread of HIV in African countries, according to epidemiological modelling carried out by researchers from Imperial College, London.

Police in Bulawayo reportedly abducted six women and a baby from the organization, Women of Zimbabwe Arise during early morning raids on August 24. WOZA coordinator Jenni Williams said the group received an alert around four in the morning from the children of the arrested women, saying police officers were going door-to-door arresting the activists.

In a tacit admission that the Zimbabwean crisis has gone out of hand, South Africa’s Home Affairs Minister broke new policy ground by saying they were considering issuing temporary residence permits for those who had fled the country. On Tuesday Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula is reported to have said the government needed to adopt a new approach to deal with Zimbabwean citizens flocking into South Africa and that allowing them to work until the political problems had been resolved was a possibility.

An MDC senior official who spent 174 days in prison on trumped up charges of terrorism is facing another battle as a free man. Morgan Komichi was released on the 9th August but when he reported for work on the 15th he was told that he had been suspended on allegations of absenteeism. This is despite his lawyers having written to his employer, the Zimbabwe Power Company, a subsidiary of the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority, informing them about the arrest.

Koni Benson from the International Labour Research and Information Group in Cape Town argues that contrary to stereotypes in the South African mainstream media, there is solidarity and a common agenda between South Africa's poor, and asylum seekers and migrants in the region, notably from Zimbabwe, and amongst women's groups, with roots in the liberation struggles.

The dominant story in the mainstream press in South Africa is that the South African poor act out of desperation when migrants and refugees are violently attacked. That the 'problem' is competition for scarce resources and that SA must first get its house in order, and solve the poverty crisis; and then desperate South Africans will stop lashing out at desperate asylum seekers.

This story of displaced frustration and resentment does not fairly represent the range of opinions, and even more importantly, the organised actions of the poor and working class in South Africa who invest precious resources in directly supporting refugees and migrants, especially in the case of Zimbabweans right now.

In fact, new research is showing that while xenaphobia is rampant and often played out amongst the poor in South Africa, it is also precisely some of the poorest South Africans living in shack and townships who have been most sympathetic to the struggles of Zimbabweans worst affected by the current crisis.

South African movements of the working class have mobilised around the politics playing out in Zimbabwe right now. In fact, the issue of Zimbabwe has captured the attention and has been prioritised by grassroots activists in South Africa. These are groups of people, many of whom are unemployed, and struggle with the challenge of solidarity within the same neighborhoods and the same city to fight for basic survival like water, housing, electricity, and health care. Yet they are taking a stand about Zimbabwe. Why?

This support is not only forthcoming out of sympathy for the hardships inflicted by the power wars of Mugabe and the like, but rooted in the belief that, like during repression of activism during the liberation struggle in South Africa, international solidarity is decisive right now for Zimbabweans who are resisting an 'elite transition', which will not change the structures of inequality in any meaningful way for the poor.

At the recent 'Towards an Africa Without Borders' conference in Durban, one Bulawayo debt cancellation activist argued for solidarity between the poor in South Africa and in Zimbabwe, because our interests are in the same pot. South African activists at the conference likewise argued that 'we see our problem as rooted in poverty and elite deal-making, which sees no international boundaries'. In this view, President Mbeki and his SADC counterparts will not act against the Mugabe regime in defence of the Zimbabwean people. Rather, they are angling for an 'elite transition' similar to the ones in South Africa, Namibia, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where those who have the backing of the rich and powerful, work out among themselves how to divide the power and money. From this perspective, the majority of the people are excluded from the process, and, inevitably, the resulting system leaves them at the mercy of the oppressors and exploiters and trapped in the associated poverty and social crises.

With this motivation to mobilise, over 2,500 people come out in protest in Durban to criticise the Mugabe regime. Abahlali baseMjondolo has hosted members of the Combined Harare Residents' Association (CHRA) in shack settlements, worked with the Zimbabwe Crisis Coalition, and written comparisons of Murambatsvina and shack demolitions in South Africa. In Cape Town, People Against Suppression and Oppression of People (PASSOP) have held regular pickets. The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and the Social Movements Indaba have appointed Africa desks to better address the issues. These movements have an impressively clearly defined 'enemy', and it is not displaced Zimbabweans crossing the border in search of survival.

In Cape Town, for example, women from a range of grassroots organisations from seasonal women farm workers, to refugee women, to anti-eviction activists, to unionists, to wellness centre organisers came together after the violent attacks on women activists in Zimbabwe in March, to analyse the relationship between state and domestic violence and speak out on the way elite politics were being played out across women's bodies.

They argued: 'We see no distinction between domestic and state violence, or between Zimbabwe and South Africa when it comes to responding to the attack on our sisters... the violent the victimisation of everyday women through demolition of houses and businesses in Operation Murambatsvina, and as political and feminist activists has a specific dynamic where women are hardest hit, and attacked on multiple levels at once.'

They collectively wrote a solidarity statement and in April held a picket on the days the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) convened a stay away. 'We write this statement to acknowledge and listen to the pain of Zimbabwean women and to support their quest to become full citizens which we in South Africa are also fighting for. We recognise that in the context of poverty, displacement, violence, and exclusion state oppression adds another unbearable layer to women's oppression which we are determined to fight together...we in South Africa know too well the gap between the hard earned theories set out in law, and the reality of women's access to justice in practice.'

Most interestingly these women welcomed Zimbabweans into South Africa, arguing: 'We recognise the national boundary between us and Zimbabwe as a colonial creation and just as we were welcomed into Zimbabwe during our struggle, we welcome Zimbabweans fighting for a free Zimbabwe into South Africa.'

These organisations of the working class may be small and weak but they are adamant to support Zimbabweans worst affected by the ongoing power struggles. Their perspectives and actions are being overlooked in official talk about Zimbabwean refugees 'flooding' across the border and the rhetorical questions of how South Africa can possibly help because of poverty issues 'at home'. In fact, the South African poor are arguing that the meltdown in Zimbabwe shares its roots with the same forces rapidly entrenching poverty across the region. It is precisely this support by struggling South Africans for Zimbabweans attempting to organise for an alternative Zimbabwe that is being ignored in the press. They are falling further and further off the radar of the South African imagination in which the poor are continually painted as inherently xenophobic.

* Koni Benson is a researcher at the International Labour Research and Information Group in Cape Town.

* Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Why were we colonized? And were we ever really decolonized? These are the central questions that should be at the core of liberation discourse in Zimbabwe and Africa at large, in order to start dealing with neo-colonial ‘ghosts’. These ghosts are real enough when they take the form of dictatorships, exploitative neo-liberal capitalism and repression of our growing resistance to these.

Torture, assault, unlawful detention and other violations of human rights are increasing rapidly in Zimbabwe, according to a new report. The report, by the independent Human Rights Forum, highlighted the government crackdown on the country's political opposition. Monitors said they collected evidence documenting 5 307 human rights violations in the first six months of this year - nearly double the number during the same period a year ago, the report said.

The South African government is dusting off a 2002 plan to deal with a feared mass influx of Zimbabweans into South Africa, amid a growing official recognition that economic migration is snowballing towards crisis. Last week Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad told a media conference in Pretoria that the Zimbabwean influx was “a serious problem” and that it was “vital for South Africa to act”.

More than a dozen activists from the Women and Men of Zimbabwe Arise were finally released on Thursday, but they had been badly beaten. They were arrested on Tuesday while playing a game of netball and mixed soccer when state security agents arrested them at Macheke Stadium in Masvingo. The victims spent two cold nights in police cells in their sports uniform. They were released after being forced to pay admission of guilt fines. WOZA coordinator Jenni Williams said all 16 activists were badly beaten.

President Robert Mugabe has signed the Interception of Communications Bill into law. The Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet Misheck Sibanda announced this in a general notice issued in the Government Gazette of 3 August 2007. The Act will make lawful the interception and monitoring of communications in the course of their transmission through a telecommunications, postal or any other related service or system in Zimbabwe. The Act also provides for the establishment of a monitoring centre.

There are reports that hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans could have failed to register their names with the mobile voter registration teams, after officials avoided certain areas associated with opposition supporters. MDC legislator Editor Matamisa, who first raised the issue of the irregularities with her party, claimed on Wednesday that the mobile registration teams did not bother to visit her constituency, which has close to 10 000 residents who want be added to the voters’ roll.

Repression continues with no end in sight as pro-democrats continue to be arrested and brutalized with impunity, by state security agents. Just this week alone a torture victim from the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) is missing in Mutare; another victim of police brutality, a student leader, has been seriously injured and is in custody in Bulawayo and more than a dozen members of Women/Men of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA/MOZA) were arrested when they were playing sport in Masvingo.

Women in Politics Support Unit (WIPSU), a Zimbabwean non-governmental organisation, is leading a campaign for the achievement of gender parity in choosing candidates for office, while a new report by human rights advocacy organisation Amnesty International shows women are increasingly becoming victims of political repression.

The lifestyle normally associated with an urban society is fast disappearing from Zimbabwe's once bustling capital, Harare. The city's 2.8 million residents are adopting a way of life more akin to the country's rural areas, where drinking water is drawn from shallow pits and electricity is all but unavailable, although the metropolitan area's population density has produced its own quirks, such as untreated sewage spilling onto the streets.

Renewed bickering among Zimbabwe's opposition only months after a vow to bury their differences looks set to wreck prospects of a united challenge to President Robert Mugabe at elections next year. After they both fell victim to a crackdown by the security services in March, leaders of the two factions of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) promised they would no longer be distracted from their primary task of ending Mugabe's 27-year rule.

The growing number of Zimbabweans flooding into South Africa has clearly become a serious problem for the government of President Thabo Mbeki, yet officials there continue to deny there is a problem next door in Zimbabwe. SABC news reported on Thursday that the department of home affairs said “Zimbabweans streaming into South Africa cannot be classified as refugees, as they are not facing persecution in their home country.”

Eight opposition activists were arrested in Mutare on Thursday for allegedly singing political songs that denounced and denigrated Robert Mugabe. Pishai Muchauraya, the MDC spokesperson for the Tsvangirai MDC, said one of the activists, Llyod Mahute the provincial youth secretary, was severely beaten by a Chief Inspector Innocent Rigomeka of Chisamba Police Station. He is being held at an unknown police station and the other seven activists are being held at Mutare Central police station. We could not get a comment from the police.