Airstrip One

Zimwatch: Interesting Developments

On Thursday, Thabo Mbeki claimed that Robert Mugabe would soon reopen negotiations with the opposition in Zimbabwe. This annoucement was treated with scepticism by the Movement for Democratic Change and was not substantiated by ZANU-PF.

Now Mugabe has flown to South Africa on a not so secret visit amidst rumours of sickness. The South African government has denied that he is there in an official capacity.

The schizophrenic regime still oscillates between relaxing the crackdown and its more normal thuggery and victim mentality. On the one hand, Dumisani Muleya was arrested for offending the Office of the President recently and was savagely beaten up today.

DUMISANI Muleya, the chief reporter of the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper was recovering Saturday after being savagely attacked by three unidentified men outside a Harare hotel on Friday night.

Muleya, once denounced as a “terrorist” by President Mugabe’s garrulous chief spokesman Jonathan Moyo, was left with a cut to the top of his left eye and had to receive some stitches, a colleague Mthulisi Mathuthu said.

”He was outside a Harare hotel and a car just stopped in front of him and three men came out,” Mathuthu said. “They then started beating him repeatedly and he sought urgent medical attention from the beating.”


However, the Daily News started publishing again, a small reversal of the repression that the free press has suffered over the last eighteen months.

Perhaps we should hope that the Republic of South Africa will be renamed the Retirement Home for Zimbabwean Monsters.

(23.03, 25th January 2004)