African agenda for health care

from the African Executive magazine:

article says the plans to cooperate with locals make the Obama's shift in the health care money a good thing.

Contrast with this Washington Post article:

Lack of funding threatens the future of HIV drug therapy in the developing world: Activists fear a lack of funding will force people to be turned away from help and accuse the U.S. of reneging on pledges (Post, July 29, 2010)


Since I am no longer "on the ground", I cannot judge what's true.

Mutambara criticism

From the Zim Mail:

“Elections next year are unpractical, we first have to come up with a number of reforms to the electoral commission, the media and other institutions.

“They are not confident enough to speak about the national interest, they are just grandstanding,” he charged....


Mutambara said reforms to these institutions were important to avoid a negotiated settlement that saw losers being retained in government. He warned that if this was not heeded, the 2008 situation would be repeated.
...

Grace fingered in Diamond looting

from the ZimbabweMail:

First Lady Grace Mugabe has been fingered as one of the biggest beneficiaries from the diamonds from the controversial Chiadzwa fields after it emerged she is a shareholder in Mbada Diamonds.

Mbada Diamonds is one of the companies that were clandestinely awarded mining rights at Chiadzwa by President Robert Mugabe’s government.

Government sources revealed the First Lady had a substantial interest in Mbada Diamonds together with little known South African company, Grandwell Holdings and the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation.

AU Summit

lots of problems that are worse then Zimbabwe or Mugabe...

Parties still polorized

from SWRadioAfrica:

The constitutional outreach program, meant to gather people’s views on the new constitution, has exposed the deep political polarization and intolerance that still exists between ZANU PF and MDC supporters.

Since the program resumed this week, after a week long break, tension, friction and shouting matches have characterized most of the meetings. Even signaling your intention to contribute a view by raising a hand, has now been politicized by the participants.

When MDC supporters want to contribute to debate, they raise their hands as any other person would do. And here lies the problem. An open palm is a gesture linked to the MDC party symbol. In retaliation, ZANU PF supporters have resorted to raising their hands— fists clenched— a style made popular by Mugabe when sloganeering...

Gold mine output falls

from the gov't controlled Herald, via Allafrica

Harare — ZIMBABWE'S largest gold mine, Metallon says output for June fell significantly due to power cuts during World Cup soccer matches.

Importing coins for cash crisis

SWRadioafrica via AllAfrica

Coins and notes from other countries will have to be brought into Zimbabwe to relieve the serious shortage of cash, Finance Minister Tendai has announced.

The plans were unveiled as part of Biti's Mid-Term fiscal policy review statement which he presented to parliament last Wednesday.

"Under the current multi currency regime, the inadequacy of smaller denominations has posed a number of challenges in transactions...

Refugees from Xenophobia

from SWRadioAfrica:

The Civil Protection Unit has put up temporary shelters in Beitbridge for hundreds of Zimbabweans fleeing xenophobic threats on foreigners in South Africa.

Madzudzo Pawadyira, the director of the CPU, said they had erected three big tents and made available 10,000 blankets, 20 boxes of laundry soap and 1,000 buckets. He said the same measures have also been put in place in Plumtree to cater for those returning through the Plumtree border with Botswana....

Many foreigners living in South Africa’s poorest neighbourhoods have in recent weeks received threats in the wake of the World Cup; two years after a wave of anti-immigrant violence left 62 dead across the country.

Exiled Zimbabwean Everisto Kamera recently told SW Radio Africa that xenophobic sentiments are less common in South Africa’s wealthy suburbs, but are often serious in the poor shantytowns that surround major cities like Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban.

Religious war in Africa?

Not about Zimbabwe per se, but an analysis of what is going on in other states.

From Ralph Peters in the NYPost:

The bombings that recently butchered World Cup fans in Uganda were just the latest in a long line of crazed attacks on African Christians by Islamist fanatics. In the central states of Nigeria -- Africa's most-populous country -- religious pogroms and counter-pogroms between Muslims and Christians have become routine.

In Kenya, al Shabaab terrorists from neighboring Somalia stir up trouble and make grotesque threats. And we all know what bestial acts Sudan's Islamist government has perpetrated against black Christians over the decades.

Throughout the region, patience is wearing thin. Africa's impassioned forms of charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity won't turn the other cheek forever. The coming backlash could be ferocious ....

(Peters here attributes the lethargy of Islam to the Saudis who are building mosques staffed with their own radical immans, trying to impose a "foreign" Islam on local Muslims, one whose religious intolerance leads to their children not learning modern subjects in school, only out of date religious dogma which won't get them jobs that can get them out of poverty, but will inspire them to become suicide bombers)

When Islamist terrorists attack African Christians, they're playing with a fire that burns white hot.

Pushed far enough, Christians will respond -- and it won't be pretty. The African church could become the church-ultra-militant.

Of course, a Christian crusade in response to jihad would be just fine with many Saudis and Gulf Arabs. They don't care about the suffering of individual Muslims -- only about Islam.

Thus the Saudis fund the provocative construction of mosques where there are few or no Muslims, from western Tanzania to eastern Tennessee. Every mosque helps stake a claim for the dar ul-Islam, extending the boundaries of the caliphate about which Islamists fantasize...

Meanwhile, the shared goal of the Saudis, al Qaeda, the Taliban and Somalia's al Shabaab is to prevent Muslims from integrating into non-Muslim host societies. In Kenya, a successful Muslim population that interacted and intermarried would be the worst outcome to Islam's commissars. Massacre would be preferable. And a violent Christian reaction would serve as propaganda to recruit the Islamist foot-soldiers who strap on the suicide bombs.

As radical Islam's hallucinatory ambitions continue to expand, the potential for tragedy on a grand scale soars. Religious strife could tear Nigeria apart, but elsewhere in Africa Muslims would swiftly find themselves on the losing end.

In Islamist extremism, we're confronted with a death-cult, not a faith -- while the vibrant Christianity of Africa pulses with life.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_coming_crusade_Z9uUphPo0KFvXK5i3wzlzJ#ixzz0u7zBrCxx

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-------------------------

StrategyPage has more HERE

Zim leads Africa in Adult Literacy

The daily nation at All Africa.

Harare — Zimbabwe has overtaken Tunisia as the country with the highest literacy rate in Africa despite the numerous problems that continue to dog the country's once enviable education sector.

According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) latest statistical digest, the southern African country has a 92 per cent literacy rate up from 85 per cent.

Tunisia remains at 87 per cent. Post independence Zimbabwe's education was heavily subsidised by government resulting in vast improvements from the colonial system.

Zimbabwean graduates are well sought after throughout the world....

Alqaeda linked group seeking to start war in East Africa?

A long article on Strategypage discusses how the Alqaeda linked terrorists from Somalia are intimidating Ethiopia, the Christian area of southern Sudan, and Uganda...and why the Uganda bombings are part of that strategy.

Of course, behind this is that the plan is to start a religious war, using the local Islamic population (including Somali refugees) to kill Christians and Animists.

I don't have expertise in the area, but they usually know what's going on at that website.

Zimbabwe: Truth vs Deception

an article at the African Executive asks if the widespread US and European actions against Mugabe is due to the fact his policies affect white farmers.

Actually, I think that the press coverage and political action has been less than what is needed to get rid of this thuggish president who has hurt and killed more black Africans than white Africans.

And the shame is that other similar thugs don't get similar treatment to pressure them into democracy.

And not all these thugs are in Africa, you know...

Constitutional outreach points to bloody elections

from the Zim Mail:

...

Analysts have described the upsurge in violence as an indication that proposed fresh elections to be held next year could result in bloodbath reminiscent of the controversial 2008 polls. ...

Terrorist bombing in Uganda: connection with Zim?

A few weeks ago, some suspected terrorists were caught by Zim police trying to go across to Beitbridge.

Now, other stories are being reported.

One, two terrorist bombings in Uganda, killing over 60 folks watching the world cup matches

This might have been local politics, since some of the African Union peacekeepers in Somalia come from Uganda, and there were plans to increase their numbers.

Two: a sting where guys selling a prototype for a 'dirty bomb" were arrested.

Was there a terrorist plot to set off a dirty bomb at the World Cup matches? or was it just a scam to sell a fake bomb to rich terrorists to make a couple million Rand?

Mugabe's justice minister detained in Germany

from the Zimbabwe Mail:

delayed at the airport:
Authorities in Frankfurt knew of Chinamasa’s arrival and he had already been cleared to proceed to Brussels. The Justice Minister is on a travel ban of EU countries and needed a special dispensation from the EU to travel to Brussels.

Railway officials accused of fraud

from SWRadioAfrica

Top executives from the National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) are being investigated for fraud, to the tune of an estimated US$15 million.

Gibson Boston Siziba, a senior auditor with the NRZ, on Thursday filed a police report that implicated the state-owned rail firm’s finance director Patrick Bondayi and former police commander Frank Msutu, who is NRZ senior manager for security operations.

According to the police report, Bondayi allegedly worked with other officials in the finance department to misappropriate funds by over-invoicing of spare parts. Bondayi was reportedly suspended three months ago to facilitate investigations when details of the alleged fraud surfaced.