Opposition Youths Protest Against Mugabe's Birthday Bash

*Robert Mugabe, with wife and children, cut his 92nd birthday
cake during a  'surprise' Birthday party for him by his staff 

A group of youths belonging to Zimbabwe's opposition have protested against plans to hold another birthday party for President Robert Mugabe in Masvingo this weekend.

Mugabe's staff held a 'surprise' 92nd birthday party for the president on Monday in Harare, complete with an elaborate cake, the official Chronicle newspaper reported.

A photograph posted to Twitter by Morgan Tsvangirai ally, Chalton Hwende, showed a small group of youths holding posters demonstrating along a major street in Masvingo. One of the posters read, "We want jobs not bash" in a reference to the birthday party, due to be held on Saturday in the drought-stricken province.

Said @hwende: "MDC-T Youths today [Tuesday] in Masvingo demonstrated against the hosting of a $800 000 (R12 million) Mugabe birthday party."

Movement for Democratic Change spokesperson, Obert Gutu, said he had heard that members of the party's youth assembly had staged a demonstration in Masvingo but he was unable to give further details.

He hinted that there would be more "activity" in the next few days.

Mugabe's first birthday party was actually not a surprise at all, the Chronicle reported the president as saying. "Every year, I now know that once I strike another birthday, this event is bound to follow," he said.

Footage of the party showed Mugabe and his wife Grace seated on a pink sofa while his staff sang several verses of Happy Birthday. 

Grace Has Replaced Robert Mugabe – Tsvangirai

Zimbabwe’s aging President Robert Mugabe has been “surreptitiously but willingly” replaced by his wife Grace, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai claimed Monday.

  Grace Mugabe, 50, had taken over in a “palace coup” and no one in government was doing anything about the country’s crisis, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader said in an end-of-year message. “No one in government is thinking of solutions to the national challenges as everyone is preoccupied with issues of who will succeed this tired man steering the ship of State,” he said.

  “There is no boldness to confront the national crisis; what with an aged president and everyone around him fighting to succeed him,” Tsvangirai added, highlighting Zimbabwe’s growing unemployment and hunger.

Zimbabwean Presidency: War Veterans Reject Grace Mugabe

WAR Veterans, a key power broker in Zanu PF, have amplified their calls for the party to appoint one of their own as national commissar and for the re-adoption of the women’s quota system in the presidium.

*Grace Mugabe (pix:Independent)

Crucially however, the ex-fighters made it clear that President Robert Mugabe’s wife, Grace, should remain where she is up “to 2018 and beyond”, suggesting they would not back her as party leader.

Grace heads the party’s Women’s League but is widely thought to be angling to take over from her soon-to-be 92 husband.

The Matabeleland and Bulawayo chapters of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA), in a statement this week, took aim at Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko and party commissar Saviour Kasukuwere.

In a resolution which they said reflected the ZNLWVA national executive’s will, the war veterans demanded that “the political commissariat post of the party (Zanu –PF) be held by war veteran members with good revolutionary credentials.”

Since assuming this influential party position Kasukuwere, who is also a local government minister, has been on a collision course with war veterans, especially their leader Christopher Mutsvangwa.

Kasukuwere and Mutsvangwa have fallen out with both individuals reportedly plotting the ouster of the other from their influential and powerful positions.

Be Wary of Unbridled Ambitions – Mugabe Warns Party Leaders

Transcript President Robert Gabriel Mugabe's speech to the Central Committee at the ongoing 15th National People's Conference yesterday.

*President Robert Mugabe 

Cde Vice President and Second Secretary Emmerson Mnangagwa,

Cde Vice President and Second Secretary Phelekezela Mphoko,

The Secretary for Administration Cde Ignatius Chombo,

All Politburo members, and members of the Central Committee here present.

Ladies and gentlemen, Comrades and friends

May I welcome you all to the 15th National People's Conference's Central Committee meeting, which we are holding after our Politburo on Monday.

Comrades, as we meet today, all our departments have been hard at work mobilising people and other resources towards this year's annual people's conference.

We thank the party leadership in Matabeleland North for taking the lead and all the other provincial leaderships for co-operating closely with the host province. We all realise that the responsibility for ensuring an effective conference falls on all of us especially those of us in leadership at various levels of the party. Matabeleland North deserves all our support especially given the background on drought which has affected most of the country.

Cdes, we meet today as the Central Committee to review the party's performance in the year about to end, the year 2015. We are happy to note that there is ample evidence that the party is getting stronger and stronger by the day. What with the resounding victories that we have been scoring in all the recent by-elections. I want to say congratulations.

Those by-elections have been key to testing the strength of the party from the point of view of its membership, the efficacy of its organs, rules and mobilisation strategies and we can say for now, anyway, and I hope for the future also, for now we rule the roost and I hope we do so in the future.

We have gained foothold, nay embedded ourselves, in those areas hitherto perceived as the domain of the opposition. However, we should never allow complacency to set in. We must remain on our toes, remain on the road with meetings taking place in different parts of the country every week.

While credit for the good image and standing of the party is shared by all of us, allow me to single out the Women's League and the Commissariat for working tirelessly in mobilising and keeping the party alive. That is as it should be and should be all the time.

President Mugabe Clamps Down On Gays

THE Zimbabwean government has reportedly clamped down on foreign gays and lesbians attending the International Conference on Aids and STI’s in Africa (ICASA) in Harare and seized their workshop material at Harare International Airport, NewsDay has learnt. 

*President Robert Mugabe and his wife, Grace 

This came as suspected State security agents yesterday pulled down an exhibition stand mounted by the group to display and house its members and sex workers at the conference venue.

The exhibitors were later allowed to display their wares, following massive protests and lobbying by local and international human rights groups.

Addressing a pre-conference workshop for key people, Kene Esom, the executive director of African Men for Sexual Health and Rights (AMSHeR), said the confiscation of most of their material by the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) had disrupted the group’s programmes.

“The material is still held because the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority is still conducting an assessment on them. The challenge is that we have attended many conferences of this nature and we have never been required to pay duty on such conference material, especially when you had bid to host the conference,” Esom said.

“As you can see, it has impacted on the quality of the pre-conference because we have agenda material and information material for interaction, which we haven’t gotten.”

Esom said when Zimbabwe won the bid to host the conference, his organisation made an effort to lobby Health and Tourism ministers, as well as the National Aids Council (NAC), among other stakeholders, to guarantee the non-discrimination of key populations such as transgender people.

[VIDEO] We Are Not Gays - Mugage 

'We Are Not Gays!' - Mugabe Shouts At The UN General Assembly

Speaking at the 2015 United Nations  General Assembly, Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe abandoned his prepared speech to tell his listeners: We are not gays! 


"Respecting and upholding human rights is the obligation of all states, and is enshrined in the United Nations charter. Nowhere does the charter arrogate the right to some to sit in judgment over others, in carrying out this universal obligation. In that regard, we reject the politicisation of this important issue and the application of double standards to victimise those who dare think and act independently of the self-anointed prefects of our time.

"We equally reject attempts to prescribe 'new rights' that are contrary to our values, norms, traditions, and beliefs. We are not gays! Cooperation and respect for each other will advance the cause of human rights worldwide. Confrontation, vilification, and double-standards will not."

Watch The 

VIDEO 

Mugabe Explodes: South Africa, Nigeria ‘Betrayed Africa’

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe blasted South Africa and Nigeria at the African Union summit this weekend, saying Africa would never agree to them getting permanent seats on the UN Security Council.

This was because they had both voted for UN Security Council Resolution 1973 in 2011, which authorised military action against the regime of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

They had betrayed the continent which could never trust them, sources reported him as saying.

Mugabe intervened in a meeting of the so-called “Committee of 10” at the summit on Saturday which was discussing possible amendments to the “Ezulwini Consensus” which stated Africa’s position on reform of the UN Security Council.

The 2005 Ezulwini Consensus was that Africa should demand at least two permanent and five non-permanent seats on the council as part of the protracted, wider reform to make it more representative of the world.

The consensus also demanded that the two permanent seats should come with the same veto powers as were enjoyed by the five current permanent members, the US, UK, China, Russia and France.

This demand for vetoes had effectively stymied Africa’s chances of reforming the council. And so the South African government was calling for Africa to adopt a more flexible approach by dropping the veto demand.

This was what the so-called G4 group of nations - Germany, Japan, India and Brazil - who were also seeking permanent seats on the council had done, as a tactical manoeuvre to try to diminish resistance to their bid.

Last year South African President Jacob Zuma said: “Africa needs to compromise - not reiterate fixed positions as it has done for the past nine years.”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE WHOLE REPORT 

US Congressman's Statement On Zimbabwe

The Statement below was released by Rep. Christopher H. Smith, R-N.J. It was published in the Congressional Record on the future of US-Zimbabwe Relations on June 12, 2015, and addressed to the U.S. Congress Speaker

*President Mugabe 
(pix: ewn.co.za)

Mr. Speaker, Zimbabwe is a country the size of the state of Montana, with a population of nearly 14 million people. However, its mineral wealth gives it an outsized importance. The southern African nation is the world’s third largest source of platinum group metals and has significant reserves of nickel, gold, chromium and dozens of other metals and minerals. Significant diamond reserves were discovered in 2006. Currently, about 40 percent of the country’s foreign exchange is earned from the export of these metals and minerals.

It was the abundance of such mineral resources, and their exploitation, which has driven the relationship between the West and Zimbabwe. Since its colonization by Cecil Rhodes’ British South Africa Company in 1889 on behalf of Great Britain, the area once known as Southern Rhodesia has experienced a tumultuous history.

The white minority gained self-governance in 1922, and a 1930 Land Apportionment Act restricted black access to land, making many Africans laborers and not land owners. In 1964, the white minority government unsuccessfully sought independence from Great Britain, and then unilaterally declared independence a year later under white rule. This move sparked international outrage and economic sanctions, and that regime was never widely recognized by the international community, though the support of white-ruled South Africa enabled the government to limp along.

Robert Mugabe Falls At Harare International Airport

As he left the podium after addressing supporters... 

Mugabe falls after addressing supporters at Harare
International Airport

Zimbabwe's 90-year-old president, Robert Mugabe, fell down a staircase Wednesday as he left the podium after a speech.

There was no indication Mugabe was hurt by the fall, and presidential spokesman George Charamba refused to discuss the incident with reporters.  

The president had just finished addressing supporters at Harare International Airport upon his return from an African Union summit in Ethiopia, where he was elected AU chairman.

Witnesses say Mugabe missed a step and fell while walking down the stairs. The president was helped to his feet by aides, who escorted him to a waiting car while dusting off his suit.

Video of the incident 

Security agents quickly rounded up journalists covering the event and ordered them to delete all pictures of Mugabe's fall.

Journalists have often complained of censorship in Zimbabwe, where Mugabe has ruled with an iron fist for nearly 35 years.

Civil society groups opposed his election as AU chair because of alleged election rigging and human rights abuses.

 -VOANews