Jocelyn Chiwenga, the wife of the commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, assaulted award winning photojournalist Tsvangirai Mukwazhi at Makro Wholesalers in Harare on Wednesday. Mukwazhi was attacked while covering a tour of supermarkets by MDC President Morgan Tsvangirai, who was assessing the impact of the government’s price control war.

The National Faith-Based Council of Zimbabwe (NFBCZ)
Based in Harare, Zimbabwe. Two-year contract (with the possibility of renewal)
For further information and an application form visit (see section "jobs @ Progressio").
Closing date: 19 August 2007
Interviews: End August 2007

Zimbabwe Women's Resource Centre and Network (ZWRCN. Based in Harare, Zimbabwe Two-year contract (with the possibility of renewal)
For further information and an application form visit (see section "jobs @ Progressio").
Closing date: 16 August 2007

Interviews: End of August 2007

Abel Mutsakani, the editor of ZimOnline and former managing editor of the banned "Daily News", is reportedly battling for his life in a Johannesburg, South Africa hospital after he was shot and seriously injured by a gang of three assailants on 23 July 2007. According to reports from ZimOnline, which publishes from South Africa, the motive behind the savage attack on Mutsakani remains unclear. "He is in a serious but stable condition," said Abel Chapatarongo, Mutsakani's deputy at ZimOnline.

The effects of the government's month-old price-control policies, which have brought widespread shortages of basic commodities, are also beginning to tell in the education, health and social service sectors. The government launched "Operation Reduce Prices" in late June in an attempt to cap escalating prices as businesses tried to cushion themselves against the world's highest inflation rate - over 4,000 percent - although some independent economists estimate the actual inflation rate at about 20,000 percent.

A group of nursing mothers were ordered to put down their babies by Zimbabwean police before being beaten for hours. The six women were among 160 people rounded up at the offices of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), an organisation dedicated to constitutional reform, after activists tried to hold a demonstration.

Six senior police officers in Masvingo town are facing demotion after they set free several opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party activists who were arrested during a government crackdown last March. The six, whose names could not be immediately established, will be demoted from the rank of superintendent to inspector with effect from 31 July 2007.

Seventeen MDC activists have now been locked up in remand prison for 114 days (4 months), while over 4 weeks have passed with the High Court failing to make a ruling on a bail application put forward by their lawyers. Alec Muchadehama expressed his frustration Wednesday saying the state was clearly determined to ensure his clients remain in custody. Up until now no trial date has been set with the MDC activists being remanded in custody to 13 August.

Estimates are that in the first three months of 2008 — an election year — 4.1 million people, a third of Zimbabwe's population, will require food aid. Most of it will be provided by the United Nations, but so far, the government is said to be in a state of "denial", refusing to make the obligatory appeal to the UN.

A South African-led initiative to pluck neighbouring Zimbabwe out of crisis this week looked in danger of collapsing as President Robert Mugabe’s ruling ZANU PF party insisted it would not discuss a new constitution with the opposition, Sources told ZimOnline. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) last March tasked South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki to lead efforts to resolve Zimbabwe’s eight-year political and economic crisis by facilitating dialogue Between ZANU PF and the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)party.

We as citizens of Zimbabwe are appalled at the recent attempt of the State to undermine the standing of Archbishop Ncube. We encourage all caring citizens to stand by Pius Ncube in this dark hour, as he has tirelessly stood by us all for many years. We ask him to continue to raise his voice with ours, and to continue to campaign for the many just causes and fair practices that he has worked for in the democracy movement.

The impact of Zimbabwe's sky-rocketing inflation isn't all bad, as it seems to be bringing down HIV rates, the Washington Post reports. Inflation of more than 4,500 percent means bread, milk and other provisions are out of reach for many citizens. But so is maintaining a mistress, visiting a prostitute or keeping a second, or even, a third wife.

Police have seized food earmarked for relief aid from a warehouse in Masvingo as part of the crackdown on the business sector, sources say. Aid agency sources told The Financial Gazette this week that police arrested the manager of a Blue Ribbon Foods warehouse, which stored relief supplies sourced by CARE, an international non-governmental organisation (NGO).

Although many ordinary shoppers may have bought a few reduced items during the government enforced price controls over the last three weeks, the so-called Operation Dzikisa Mitengo (Reduced Prices) has been an even greater opportunity for the elite in the country to loot with impunity. And those authorised to monitor the exercise have also taken advantage of their positions and helped themselves to goods, while applying the law selectively to their advantage.

For the past four days, Zimbabwe has been hit by an electricity blackout that has plunged the country into darkness and exacerbated the suffering of people already reeling from an ever-deepening economic and political crisis. A source from Zimbabwe, speaking to the Cape Argus on condition of anonymity, said power availability had been very intermittent since the weekend and was mostly accessible for periods of four hours in the evenings.

"It is a nasty experience, which I do not want to be reminded of. But if you try to keep it to yourself, it will remain a shock for a long time. I cannot even explain the pain I felt after being told that I was carrying dead bodies in my womb," says Sesedzai Manzanga, a Harare teacher, as she recounts giving birth to a dead set of twins two years ago.

Zimbabwe's second largest city, Bulawayo, warned residents on Wednesday to guard against outbreaks of disease as it was forced to cut their water supply. Authorities said they had decommissioned one of Bulawayo's three remaining dams because water levels were too low, leaving in operation only two of the five dams that supply the southern city of about one million people.

Zimbabwean police summoned a leader of the country's main union organisation to answer charges on Thursday that he called for President Robert Mugabe's overthrow in a May Day speech, the movement said. While there was no immediate comment from the police, a spokesperson for the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) confirmed secretary general Wellington Chibebe had gone with his lawyer to Harare's main police station.

Daughters have become a high-priced commodity in Zimbabwe, where a dowry has become a means of escaping poverty in a rapidly declining economy. "When people are mired in such hunger as we have been seeing in this country for over seven years, they will do anything to survive," Innocent Makwiramiti, a Harare-based economist, told IRIN.

Scarce building materials, earmarked to rehouse victims of Zimbabwe's Operation Murambatsvina, have been diverted to other projects, including work on a mansion for President Robert Mugabe in an exclusive suburb of the capital, Harare. In the winter of 2005, informal homes and markets were demolished in the ZANU-PF government's Operation Murambatsvina, aimed at clearing slums and flushing out criminals, but which left more than 700,000 people homeless or without a livelihood.