The Zimbabwean, the only newspaper available to Zimbabweans internationally, goes online on Monday at www.thezimbabwean.co.uk. The publication, which was launched on February 11 with simultaneous weekly editions in the UK and South Africa, has been hailed as a major step in bridging the information gap between millions of Zimbabweans in the diaspora and their troubled homeland. It is also a vital source of independent and accurate information to Zimbabweans at home who have been snapping up the 10 000 copies shipped in weekly from Johannesburg in a matter of hours.

Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe has established that transmissions of SW Radio Africa are being deliberately jammed. Although government has denied jamming SW Radio Africa's broadcasts, a report by the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) revealed that the jamming appears to emanate from Zimbabwe using Chinese equipment at Thornhill in Gweru. According to the IBB report, three jammers are being used to jam the three short wave frequencies used by SW Radio Africa. "One kHz tone is used to jam the broadcasts; and is continued till the transmitters become too hot; then 'noise' is used to avoid over driving the jamming transmitters. ...", says the report.

The incumbent will be creating innovative campaigning strategies aimed at decision makers and other audiences, resulting in concrete and long lasting change for the human rights situation in Zimbabwe.

The Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA)-Zimbabwe is dismayed by yet another Supreme Court judgment upholding certain sections of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) as constitutional. The Constitutional challenge brought by the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ) against the Minister of State for Information and Publicity in the Office of the President and Cabinet as well as the Media and Information Commission (MIC) sought the nullification of sections 39, 40, 41, 65, 66, 69, 70, 71, 76, 79, 80, 83 and 89 as well as paragraph 4 of the Forth Schedule of the Act as unconstitutional. The case was heard on March 3, 2004, with judgment only being delivered on March 14, 2005, over one year after the matter was heard.

President Robert Mugabe's ruling party has used threats and intimidation against opposition supporters ahead of this month's key elections which now cannot be free and fair, said Amnesty International. The London-based rights watchdog, which sent a fact-finding team to Zimbabwe last month, said in a report that, although the level of violence was lower than in the run-ups to previous polls, the playing field was far from level.

Reporters Without Borders called on Zimbabwe's government-controlled Media and Information Commission (MIC) to "immediately" issue an operating licence to the company that publishes The Daily News and The Daily News of Sunday and to accredit all of its journalists, after the supreme court quashed the commission's 2003 decision refusing to do this. The press freedom organization hailed the court's ruling on this point as "a victory" while deploring the judicial system's slowness and the fact that the court refused to recognize the unconstitutionality of Zimbabwe's press law.

President Thabo Mbeki said this week that he has every confidence in Zimbabwe's ability to hold free and fair elections, and that the country's new electoral law is the first to adhere to SADC's principles and guidelines governing democratic elections. As President, not only of the most powerful nation within the SADC group, but also the nation which chairs the SADC organ on defence, security and politics, and which for this reason is to head the observer mission to Zimbabwe, his comments deserve the most serious attention.

President Mbeki is quoted as saying:" I have no reason to think that anything will happen … that anybody in Zimbabwe will act in a way that will militate against the elections being free and fair." Like other commentators around the world, we have to say that we are astounded at the President's remarks. Indeed dumbfounded.

"The Electoral Institute of Southern Africa (EISA) has been observing elections in the SADC Region for the past seven years and in the process has been involved in over 20 electoral processes. The organisation has amassed a wealth of knowledge and experience in the observation of elections in the SADC region and beyond. EISA observer missions gather information for the purposes of assessing and documenting key aspects of the electoral process with a view to promoting peer learning across the region. It is in this spirit that the organisation planned and hoped to observe the 2005 Zimbabwe Parliamentary Elections.

Our interest in observing the election was made known in writing to the Zimbabwean Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Following the statement of our intentions, EISA communicated with the said ministry on a regular basis hoping to receive an affirmative response. Unfortunately, an invitation to observe the elections has not been forthcoming."

The most frequently violated rights in both 2003 and 2004 were those associated with freedoms of expression, assembly and association, rights and freedoms protected under Section 21 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe. according to a report by the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum.

The Forum's report said statistics for both years indicate marked increases in violence and other human rights violations associated with elections, by-elections, stayaways and demonstrations by members of civil society.

"The Public Order and Security Act (POSA) was widely used in this respect against citizens demonstrating in support of a new constitution or for food security and affordable food. POSA has been used to arrest and detain hundreds of people in the period under discussion, with the Miscellaneous Offences Act (MOA) serving as a back-up for law-enforcement agents in the on-going harassment of certain members of the public and various political parties."

* To read the report's overview, click on the link below. For a full copy of the report, email [email protected]

Amnesty International South Africa and CIVICUS together with partner NGO's are organising The Zimbabwe Solidarity Rally which will be held on the 12 & 13th of March 2005 in which thousands of people and organisations will be marching to the main border posts of Zimbabwe in the neighbouring countries of Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia. This demonstration is part of a series of civil society activities and events aimed at putting an end to ongoing human rights violations in Zimbabwe.

This women's centre provides a documentation centre, an Internet café, lectures on gender and development, and publications. Its aims include acquiring, compiling, analysing, maintaining, and disseminating material on women, gender, and development issues. The documentation centre holds over 5,000 printed and audio-visual documents catalogued according to themes like violence against women, rape, women's access to land, women and the environment, and women in politics and decision-making.
Contact Isabella Matambanadzo [email protected]

Zimbabwe’s ministry of foreign affairs confirmed on Monday that the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Parliamentary Forum will not be invited to observe the country’s election in three weeks' time. The forum -- comprising representatives of all SADC states, including Zimbabwe -- has traditionally observed elections in SADC countries. It observed Zimbabwe’s last major election in 2002 but unlike other African observer missions, produced a scathing report condemning violence and other unfair practices during the poll, which saw President Robert Mugabe winning a fifth term to rule the country. Mugabe and his government have apparently not forgiven the forum for breaking ranks with other continental missions three years ago. The forum was last week omitted from a list of countries and organisations invited to observe the March 31 poll.

There is no chance of the upcoming Zimbabwean election being free and fair, experts said at a meeting in Johannesburg on Tuesday. "An atmosphere of fear pervades the whole country," said Andrew Moyse, co-ordinator of the media monitoring project of Zimbabwe. "There is no chance that a free and fair election can be held in Zimbabwe." Arnold Tsunga of Zimbabwe's lawyers for human rights added: "All the legislation being pushed through now pertaining to the election is an exercise in deception."

Reporters Without Borders have condemned the announcement by the Zimbabwean government's Media and Information Commission (MIC) on 25 February that it is closing the independent Weekly Times for a year for "violating the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act." "As usual, the Zimbabwean authorities find any old pretext for gagging independent media that might spoil things for them at the height of an election campaign," the press freedom organization said, calling it "the second serious press freedom violation in two weeks," after three foreign press correspondents were forced to flee the country.

Zimbabwean society is for obvious reasons under the current circumstances looked upon mainly from a political perspective. But as relevant is the socio-economic framework, which as a result of the recent policies has resulted in a steady decline of the economic productivity and a deterioration of the population's living standards. To illustrate the challenges for any government in Zimbabwe, these two articles highlight some of the current socio-economic aspects. By doing so, they raise relevant issues, yet ones that have tended to be neglected given the almost exclusive concentration on political events. While this is understandable, the articles fill the gap in our knowledge and add insights into important sectors of society. These include information on the Zimbabwean economy and the present constraints of the decline, which together help us to understand the structural legacy that any future government will have to deal with. What is more, the elections in Zimbabwe in 2005 provide an ideal moment to discuss such matters. This Discussion Paper thereby makes a substantive contribution to the analysis of the overall picture in Zimbabwe. It is one of the results of a Conference at The Nordic Africa Institute, which was co-organised by the project on "Liberation and Democracy in Southern Africa" (LiDeSA).

Even before the ballots are cast in Zimbabwe's legislative elections next month, controversy has surfaced over the fairness of the poll. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has argued that recent reform of the country's electoral laws has been too little and too late. They contend that repressive legislation governing public assembly and free speech remain on the statute books, and together with growing political violence, will serve to undermine the poll's legitimacy.

The International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors, journalists and media executives, has condemned the intimidation and harassment by the Zimbabwean authorities that has led to a foreign journalist fleeing to South Africa. According to information provided to IPI, the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) correspondent for Zimbabwe, Jan Raath, has been forced to leave the country after considerable pressure from the police and out of fear he would be arrested. On 14 January, eight policemen and two government officials raided the offices of Raath, where he worked with a number of other foreign journalists. Over a period of two days, police carried out an intensive search of the offices without the official documentation proving they had legal authorization to carry out the search.

It's election season, and candidates are at it again, promising voters the moon.  It happens all over the world and Zimbabwe is no exception.  It supplements our time-honoured campaign tradition of buying rounds of drinks and entertaining potential voters.  But in Zimbabwe in 2005, vote-buying has taken on a whole new dimension as ZANU (PF) aspirants vie with each other and with potential opponents to donate money and goods to their bemused constituents, long before the voting begins.  Rural schools have become prime targets for parliamentarians' largesse and computers one of the main items dispensed.  They are dumped here and there, with or without all the necessary components, in schools which may not even have the electricity required to operate them.

"The upcoming election has already been spoiled because of the unfair electoral conditions. But that does not mean to say that we shouldn’t be actively engaged in working for a better Zimbabwe. You are not going to help matters if you just sit at home on Election Day 31st March. It is high time that we remember that individuals can, and do make a difference especially when they unite under banners of love, peace and justice. Hundreds of Zimbabweans have written to Zvakwana over the last months saying that this general election should not take place. There is no point in voting because the ruling party just steals your vote. But if we all stay at home and silently accept defeat then we will be allowing the regime to walk all over us. There is so much you can do to protest this flawed election and to make your voice heard." Read the latest Zvakwana Newsletter online and find out what role to play in the elections in Zimbabwe.

The International Federation of Journalists has condemned the Zimbabwe government for unleashing "a new wave of intimidation and terror against media" in advance of hotly contested elections to take place on 31 March. The IFJ was responding to the arrest of three foreign correspondents in Harare. "For the last two years, Zimbabwe's media have been in a state of censorship and paralysis," said Aidan White, the General Secretary of the IFJ. "These latest arrests signal a new wave of intimidation and media terror by the regime of Robert Mugabe. Journalists around the world rightly condemn these latest attacks".