A Facebook and Twitter campaign has been started to find Zimbabwean human rights activist Paul Chizuze who went missing on 8 February. According to a press release sent out by his colleagues and friends which has been posted on Facebook: 'Over the last three decades, Paul has been either employed by, or active with, the Legal Resources Foundation, Amani Trust Matabeleland, The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, ZimRights, Churches in Bulawayo, CivNet, and Masakhaneni Trust. Paul has worked tirelessly as a paralegal to track activists in jail and offer them support.'

The consolidated Ballot Update is a creation of the findings from 210 long term observers deployed by the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) in 2011. The Update seeks to provide an analysis of the human rights situation in Zimbabwe and implications for free and fair elections. 'While the GNU has brought a semblance of normalcy to the country, on the political scene, it has been a mixed bag of successes and failures to implement its letter and spirit. This update is a synthesis of data from observers deployed from April to December 2011.'

The Zimbabwean president is amazingly still going strong.

Zimbabwe's trade with the European Union increased by 36 per cent last year, reaching 664 million euros from 488 million euros in 2010, the European Union Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Mr Aldo Dell'Ariccia, has said. Meanwhile, trade between the two partners is set to receive a further boost as Zimbabwe is now very close to completing the ratification of an Economic Partnership Agreement with the EU. There are concerns, however, that Zimbabwe's full EPA ratification will pose further challenges for local industry.

The power imbalances underpinning the structural layout of public worlds have reflected economic inequalities in areas characterised by those lacking political capital.In Zimbabwe, the scene is ripe for private waste sanitation companies or toilet capitalists.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has said that he reserves the right to disregard efforts by South African President Jacob Zuma to mediate disputes in the nation’s troubled coalition government. Mugabe also repeated his pledge to hold elections this year, even if it means defying Zuma and other regional leaders who say new polls should be held only after a new democratic constitution is in place. 'This year we must have elections, they must take place with or without a new constitution,' Mugabe said in interviews aired by the state broadcaster on the eve of his 88th birthday.

A group of about 50 Zanla war veterans last week allegedly stormed Matopo Hills in Matabeleland South Province, but were blocked by Chief Masuku after they attempted to dig up the remains of Cecil John Rhodes from the tourist resort area. Rhodes was buried on World’s View (Malindidzimu Hill) in Matopo National Park following his death in 1902. According to sources, they reportedly claimed the remains of the former colonialist were causing poor rains in the region. National Museums and Monuments director Godfrey Mahachi described the move as illegal. 'All I can say is that the reason why we are keeping Rhodes’ grave is that it is part and parcel of the history of Zimbabwe,' he told NewsDay.

The European Union has lifted some more of its sanctions against top officials and institutions in Zimbabwe. An EU diplomat said the bloc was ending measures against 20 entities and 51 people - including the justice and foreign ministers. However restrictions on President Robert Mugabe continue.

A Harare court on Wednesday 15 February dismissed an acquittal application by a group of activists arrested a year ago for watching footage of the people’s revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. The six, including former MDC-T MP Munyaradzi Gwisai, were among more than 40 people arrested last February after watching the video at an academic meeting, which was raided by police. After their initial arrest some in the group, including Gwisai, were tortured in police cells and kept in solitary confinement at Chikurubi maximum security prison in Harare for weeks.

Zimbabwe has suspended 29 NGOs in what has been described as a renewed clampdown on aid workers ahead of elections President Robert Mugabe wants held this year. The veteran ruler’s Zanu-PF party, at its annual conference last December, tabled a report claiming that there were 2,500 NGOs operating in the country, and most of them were pushing a 'regime change agenda'.

In parallel narratives Simon Bright tells the stories of Rhodesia’s transition to Zimbabwe and the personal journey of Robert Mugabe, using one to explain the other and finally suggesting why Mugabe chose the road he has.

As a biography it has everything - first-hand accounts of Mugabe’s early life with a desperately poor Catholic mother, what he was like at school, the effects of a Jesuit education and his rage against his absent father. As his star ascends commentators reflect on early landmarks, particularly his attendance of Ghana’s independence celebrations in 1957.

It’s clear the highly intellectual Young Turk was admired and respected through the 1960s and 70s: Bright traces the origins of the esteem through fascinating archival film interviews. The parallel story of the transition is equally well researched, as are later episodes of importance, notably Lancaster House, the Matabeleland genocide and the growing role of global business in Africa’s economies.

But it’s the behind-the-scenes jostling for power which Bright exposes that is the most riveting, and from it Mugabe emerges as unquestionably one of history’s most canny, devious leaders. It is a haunting film, the music an achievement in itself, a mix of liberation, folk and contemporary sounds. Simon Bright was co-producer of the pivotal 1996 Zimbabwe liberation film ‘Flame’.

* This brief is courtesy of the director and Spier Films.

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The Health Ministry in Zimbabwe said it has recorded two suspected typhoid deaths, as an outbreak of the disease appeared to worsen. The ministry was awaiting laboratory analysis to confirm if the deaths were the result of the bacterial disease that is spread through contaminated food and water. Since the start of the outbreak in late October, 2,716 cases have been identified, mostly in two crowded townships with limited and run-down sanitation infrastructure near the capital Harare.

Zimbabwean homosexuals claiming asylum in the United Kingdom are more than likely to be turned down because the African country has a thriving 'gay scene' and is 'not the worst place in the world to be gay or lesbian', a court ruled. A Zimbabwean asylum seeker, known by the initials LZ, arrived in the United Kingdom in 1999. She claimed asylum in 2009, stating that she feared persecution as a lesbian back home. The UK Home Office turned down her asylum bid leading to the case reaching the Upper Tribunal of the Immigration and Asylum Chamber.

The Zimbabwe Association of Community Radio Stations (ZACRAS) has condemned what it believes is an attempt by the Mugabe regime to target community radio initiatives in the country. Speaking to SW Radio Africa’s Behind the Headlines programme Gift Mambipiri, the ZACRAS chairperson, said police officers from Gwanda visited Mvelo Zondo, a committee member of the Ntepe rural community radio station. The officers wanted to know the project’s ‘agenda and activities’. The police officers who were from the Law and Order Section told Zondo that they had been led to believe that 'Ntepe was established with the goal of disseminating information which undermines the President'.

President Robert Mugabe will not sign the draft constitution into the new supreme law of the country as long as it disqualifies him from contesting the next elections, a senior Zanu PF official has declared. Mugabe, who turns 88 next week, has already been endorsed as the Zanu PF Presidential candidate for elections set to take place later this year or in 2013. The Constitution Select Committee (Copac) last week published the first draft of the long awaited new supreme law of the country which has many sections which Zanu PF is strongly opposed to. Section 6.4.2 of the draft disqualifies from standing in Presidential elections, any person who has already held the office for 10 years, meaning that President Robert Mugabe cannot contest the next polls.

Zimbabwe must hold elections before the end of June 2013, but the reforms needed to ensure appropriate conditions are critically wanting, says the International Crisis Group. 'Opportunity for a calibrated, full removal of sanctions before the next elections, geared to broad progress on reform, such as perhaps existed three years ago when the Global Political Agreement (GPA) was fresh and the Inclusive Government formed, has probably passed. But a chance to promote progress and break the current deadlock still exists through a coordinated approach that distinguishes types of sanctions and focuses on specific reforms needed for those elections. It should be seized.'

Thousands of Zimbabwean households are feeling the effects of lost remittances from family members forcibly returned from neighbouring South Africa since that country resumed deportations of undocumented Zimbabwean migrants in October 2011. Makaita Gwati, 60, from rural Chirumhanzi, about 90km from the provincial capital of Masvingo in southeastern Zimbabwe, relied on the income her son and daughter sent from South Africa to support the rest of the family, until both were deported in November last year. 'I counted on them for money to buy food and other essential items, but now that they are here and they can’t find jobs, I don’t know how we will survive,' Gwati told IRIN.

With global funding for HIV/AIDS on the decline, Zimbabwe's innovative AIDS levy - a 3 percent tax on income - has become a promising source of funding for the country, with a dramatic increase in revenue collected in the past two years. The levy was introduced in 1999 to compensate for declining donor support, but low salaries and the poor performance of industry meant not enough money had been collected - until recently. According to recently published audited financial statements for the year ending 31 December 2010, a total of US$20.5 million was collected in 2010 against $5.7 million the previous year.

Activist Jenni Williams and a group of 13 other women, who were assaulted and arrested Tuesday at a demonstration by activists from the Women and Men of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), were finally released Friday 10 February when they appeared in a Bulawayo court.

Zimbabwe’s independent media regulator says it has asked law enforcement agents to bar the distribution of unregistered foreign newspapers. The ban appears targeted at a weekly newspaper published by Zimbabwean journalists exiled in the UK. South African newspapers such as The Sunday Times and the Mail&Guardian had also taken advantage of the lack of independent media to launch Zimbabwean editions that proved popular.