Vote of no confidence passed for 7 MDC-T sitting MPs in Harare

http://www.swradioafrica.com/

Posted by admin on Sunday, May 26, 2013 in MDC-T | 1 comment

Science and Technology Minister Henry Dzinotyiwei failed the Harare
confirmation exercise
By Staff writer
26 May 2013

Results of MDC-T primary elections and confirmation exercise held in Harare
on Saturday show that party members passed a vote of no confidence in seven
sitting Members of Parliament, while two former DJs are among a group of
people who passed the internal selection process, which started in the
capital this weekend. The winners will ultimately represent their party in
general elections expected later this year.

The sitting MPs who failed the Harare confirmation exercise are:

Science and Technology Minister Henry Dzinotyiwei (Budiriro)
Elias Jembere (Epworth)
Pears Mungofa (Highfields East)
Simon Ruuke Hove (Highfield West)
Margaret Matiyenga (Sunningdale),
Gift Dzirutwe (Glen Norah)
Willas Madzimure (Kambuzuma)
This means primary elections will be held in these constituencies. Below is
the full list of Harare confirmed MDC-T candidates
Glen View South .. Paul Madzore
Glen View North ..Fanny Munengani
Dzivarasekwa ..Solomon Madzore (MP Evelyn Masaiti did not contest)
Harare East ..Tendai Biti
Harare West ..Jessie Majome
Harare Central.. Murisi Zwizwai
Harare South ..Jacob Mafume
Harare North ..Theresa Makone
Hatfield ..Tapiwa Mashakada
Kuwadzana East Nelson Chamisa
Kuwadzana ..Lucia Matibenga
Mbare ……..Eric Nkight
Mufakose .. Pauline Mpariwa
Mabvuku …James Maridadi
Mt Pleasant …Jameson Timba
Southerton .. Gift Chimanikire

Candidate selection continues in Bulawayo and Chitungwiza on Sunday.

Peaceful confirmation process and primary elections

http://www.mdc.co.zw

Saturday 25 May 2013

The confirmation exercise and primary elections held in Harare by the party
of excellence have been a resounding success.

The exercise was held in the context of excellence and best practices. They
were held in a peaceful manner throughout the province. The confirmations
and elections were so peaceful that some constituencies were done as early
as 12 noon.

Those sitting members who were confirmed to represent the party include Hon
Fani Munengami-Glen View North, Paul Madzore-Glen View South, Fungayi Jessie
Majome- Harare West, Lucia Matibenga- Kuwadzana, Paurina Mpariwa-Mufakose,
Gift Chimanikire-Southerton. They were confirmed by two thirds of the
electoral college.

Those sitting MPs who will have to go to primaries are Hon Heneri
Dzinotyiwei- Budiriro, Elias Jembere-Epworth, Pearson Mungofa –Highfield
East, Willias  Madzimure- Kambuzuma, Margaret Matienga-Sunningdale, Gift
Dzirutwe-Glen Norah, Simon Ruuke Hove-Highfield West. This shows that MDC is
a party of excellence which believes in democratic processes taking their
course.

The primaries in Dzivarasekwa where the Youth Assembly Chairperson Solomon
Madzore was battling it out with Alec Masomera were peaceful and Madzore
won. Similarly the primaries for Harare South, Mbare and Mabvuku Tafara were
just as peaceful.

The following won the right to represent the party, in Mbare journalist Eric
Knight, Mabvuku/Tafara another journalist James Maridadi and lawyer Jacob
Mafume for Harare South.

The official statistics of the process will be announced in due course.

Sunday will see the exercise continuing in Chitungwiza and Bulawayo. The
programme will be rolled out to other parts of the country on Monday.

YES; Together we can complete the change!!!

Primary elections gain momentum

http://www.mdc.co.zw

Sunday 26 May 2013

The primary elections have gained momentum as teams have been deployed to
Chitungwiza and Bulawayo after successfully conducting the orderly exercise
in Harare on Saturday.

In Bulawayo confirmations will be taking place in all the constituencies
where the party has sitting MPs and primary elections in the constituencies
where the party has no sitting MPs.

Chitungwiza has a number of rural constituencies which means that primary
elections will be taking place in most parts of the province. The urban
areas that have sitting MPs will have the confirmation exercise taking
place.

The elections in Chitungwiza are harmonised in the rural areas meaning that
not only are the electoral colleges choosing aspiring MPs, but they are also
electing aspiring councillors.

The momentum which started on Saturday will continue and will see the
exercise moving to Matabeleland North and South immediately after Bulawayo.
The teams will descend on Midlands, Mashonaland Central, East and West and
will end with Manicaland and Masvingo.

Zanu PF’s wishful thinking for violent elections within the party of
excellence have been laid to rest. The elections in Harare proved that the
MDC is a party that believes in scientific democratic processes executed
with world class precision.

The confirmation process for avoidance of doubt is the first stage of the
primary election exercise. If an MP is not confirmed, he/she then has to
fight it out with other aspiring candidates.

Harare saw 6 sitting MPs being confirmed while 7 were not confirmed and will
therefore face primary elections.

Solomon Madzore won the right to represent the people of Dzivarasekwa in the
national parliamentary elections. Lawyer Jacob Mafume will represent the
people of Harare South while two prominent journalists Eric Knight and James
Maridadi will represent the people and the party in Mbare and Mabvuku/
Tafara respectively.

YES; Together we can complete the change!!!

New constitution consolidates independence gains: Mujuru

http://www.thezimbabwean.co/

26.05.13

by Thabani Dube

Acting President, Joyce Mujuru has described the recently gazetted new
constitution as one that consolidates the gains of the national independence
and sovereignty.

President Robert Mugabe signed the Constitution Bill into law on 22 May 2013
after it sailed through both houses of Parliament.

Addressing thousands of mourners at the National Heroes Acre today, during
the burial of, Retired Major General Jevana Maseko who died of cancer,
diabetes and renal failure last Monday, Mujuru said:

“He has departed from our midst at a time the nation has just been ushered
into a new constitutional dispensation meant to consolidate the gains of our
national independence and sovereignty,” said Mujuru.

She implored this current generation of the constitutional era and those to
follow to safeguard the liberation history and national values.

“Coincidentally, we lay to rest Maseko at a time when Africa is celebrating
50 years since the founding of the Organisation of Africa Unity, now Africa
Union.

“As we celebrate the accomplishments of the AU, we are also celebrating the
selfless life of the here we are laying to rest today, and of the other
heroes of the liberation struggle,” she added.

Mujuru described Maseko as a fearless freedom fighter and security
strategist.

“Maseko gave all he could for the freedom and development of this country.
He faithfully served this country as a fearless freedom fighter, guardian of
our national security through a distinguished career in the Zimbabwe Defence
Forces and as a dedicated diplomat,” said Mujuru.

Meanwhile, President Robert Mugabe is away in AU headquarters in Ethiopia
attending AU summit.

45,000 die from HIV, 1m infected

http://www.newzimbabwe.com/

24/05/2013 00:00:00
     by Staff Reporter

MORE than 45,000 people died from HIV-related ailments last year with an
estimated 1.2 million living with the virus around the country, a
Parliamentary committee has revealed.

A report by the Parliamentary portfolio committee of Health and Child
Welfare has shown that about 650,000 people are in desperate need of
anti-retroviral treatments, a spokesperson for the Zimbabwe Network of
People Living with HIV (ZNNP+) said Friday.

“Zimbabwe is one of the countries with the highest HIV infection rates in
the world. The estimated number of people living with HIV in the country is
1 242 768 while the actual number of annual deaths is 45 621," Paidamoyo
Magaya told reporters in Bulawayo.

“A total 64,245 mothers in Zimbabwe require Prevention of Mother to Child
Transmission (PMTCT) programmes."

Prevalence rates were in the country’s prisons stood at 28 percent against
the national rate of 15 percent.
“A total 64,245 mothers in Zimbabwe require Prevention of Mother to Child
Transmission (PMTCT) programmes,” said Magaya adding the government needed
to increase funding for HIV and Aids related programmes.

Meanwhile, the newly constituted Constitutional Court has reserved judgment
in a case where a human rights activist wants prison authorities to be
ordered to ensure suspects in detention can receive their life-prolonging
HIV/AIDS medications.

Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku heard the case with the full bench of the
court including the newly appointed Supreme Court judges, Justices Ben
Hlatshwayo and Bharat Patel.

Douglas Muzanenhamo, who contracted the virus some 18 years ago, said in
court documents that he was denied anti-retroviral drugs when detained for a
month in February 2011 on treason charges.

He was detained with 45 other human rights activists including University of
Zimbabwe lecturer and political activist Munyaradzi Gwisai.

The activists were later acquitted of involvement in an allegedly subversive
meeting that studied upheavals in North Africa known as the Arab Spring.

Muzanenhamo, who filed his case last September, said police and prison
officers stopped him receiving daily medication and his immune system
rapidly deteriorated.

Speaking after the hearing one of his lawyers  Tawanda Zhuwarara said:
“Douglas is HIV positive and conditions during his arrest and detention
militated against his HIV status and can be termed cruel and inhuman.

“The state is opposed to the application primarily on the ground that there
were material disputes of fact. Our submission was to the effect that the
court should take a look at the agreed issues which particularly highlighted
the fact that there might have been quite a number of such violations of
(our client’s) fundamental rights.

“So the court has gone into session to probably deliberate on the issue and
then give us a final determination on first of all the issue relating to the
dispute of fact but more importantly whether or not Douglas’ fundamental
rights as according to section 15 of the old constitution were violated via
his detention.”

Mandela too soft on whites, says Mugabe

http://mg.co.za/

26 MAY 2013 16:56 - JOHANNES MYBURGH

Robert Mugabe has criticised Nelson Mandela for being too soft on whites in
a documentary offering a rare look at the Zimbabwean president.

SIn a cosy lunch setting with his wife and children, the 89-year-old speaks
on a wide range of issues from his controversial hold on power, to his
relationships with former British premiers Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher.

The two-and-a-half hour interview, described in detail by British and South
African media ahead of its airing, shows the usually bellicose and
sharp-tongued Mugabe as a loving family man.

Dali Tambo, the son of South African anti-apartheid hero Oliver Tambo,
produced the documentary, which will be broadcast on South African public
television next Sunday.

In the programme Tambo dines with Mugabe's family at his wife Grace's dairy
farm.

The interview comes just months before crucial general elections in the
country which in recent decades has gone from being the breadbasket of
southern Africa to its biggest problem child.

One of Africa's most popular liberation leaders, Mugabe has clashed with the
West over controversial policies which saw white-owned farms violently
seized over a decade ago.

Land ownership a flashpoint
In neighbouring South Africa, where white land ownership is still a
flashpoint, Mugabe says former president Nelson Mandela was not hard enough.

He said former colonial masters Britain – with whom he has had a fraught
relationship over the land grabs – "will praise you only if you are doing
things that please them".

"Mandela has gone a bit too far in doing good to the non-black communities,
really in some cases at the expense of [blacks]," Mugabe said of his former
South African counterpart.

"That's being too saintly, too good, too much of a saint," he is quoted from
the documentary in South Africa's Sunday Independent.

Despite Mugabe's disagreements with former British prime minister Margaret
Thatcher, who died in April, he says he preferred the Iron Lady to her later
successor Tony Blair.

"Mrs Thatcher, you could trust her. But of course what happened later was a
different story with the Labour Party and Blair, who you could never trust,"
said Mugabe.

"Who can ever believe what Mr Blair says? Here we call him Bliar."

Insists on staying in power
But despite having governed for 32 years, Africa's oldest ruler also insists
on staying in power.

According to the Guardian in Britain, the topic of the upcoming vote
unleashes Mugabe's fiery rhetoric as he bangs his fist on an armrest and
insists: "There is a fight to fight."

"My people still need me," he told Tambo.

"And when people still need you to lead them, it's not time, sir, it doesn't
matter how old you are, to say goodbye."

Mugabe is currently sharing power with his rival Prime Minister Morgan
Tsvangirai after violent disputed polls in 2008. No date has yet been set
for this year's elections although Mugabe is pressing for them to go ahead
as soon as possible.

Tambo (54) brushed off criticism that the programme – which will air as part
of his "People of the South" television series that profiles celebrities and
public figures – polishes Mugabe's image ahead of the vote.

He told the Sunday Independent that he had also interviewed Rhodesian leader
Ian Smith for a previous series.

'Charismatic'
Mugabe was "warm, charismatic and very humorous", Tambo said.

According to the Guardian, Mugabe pours out his heart during the meal on his
love for his wife and their "oneness".

In unusual candour Mugabe also explains his affair with Grace while still
married to his sickly first wife Sally – he wanted to give his mother
grandchilden.

"As Sally was still going through her last few days, although it might have
appeared to some as cruel, I said to myself 'well, it's not just myself
needing children, my mother has all the time said, ah, am I going to die
without seeing grandchildren'."

He married Grace, his secretary over 40 years his junior, after Sally Mugabe
died in 1992.

The couple have three children. – Sapa-AFP

Mugabe offers rare glimpse into family life

http://www.thestandard.co.zw

 

Flowers, silver cutlery, and a box of tissues adorn the spotless white tablecloth. The family says grace and “bon appetit!” before tucking into their vegetables.

Picture compilation by Tinotenda Samukange

President R.G Mugabe eating cake (file picture)

Sitting at the head of the table, dad worries aloud about his son’s schoolwork and his daughter’s boyfriends, while mum chortles about confiscating the PlayStation.

This is lunch with the Mugabes, a surreal glimpse of Zimbabwe’s first family as no one has ever quite seen them before. Before the TV cameras Mugabe, wife Grace and two of their children declare their love for each other, discuss philosophy and religion, and laugh about the time Grace punched a British photographer. The result is compelling and at times jaw-dropping. Some might describe it as car crash television.

The gates of Harare’s secretive State House were thrown open to interviewer Dali Tambo, flamboyant son of South African liberation hero Oliver Tambo.
He gives Mugabe a sympathetic hearing and admits he is “totally” braced for the charge that he is sanitising and glorifying him just months before Zimbabwe holds crucial elections.

Indeed, those who blame Mugabe’s 33-year rule for their suffering may find it hard to stomach the climax of the two-part documentary which finds the president, dapper as ever in suit and grey tie with folded handkerchief in breast pocket, lunching with his wife and children in a stately room that once hosted the Queen. In a routine familiar to fans of his long-running People of the South series, Tambo asks his subjects to look each other in the eye and emote.

Wearing dreadlocks and a blue patterned dress, Grace Mugabe, more than four decades younger than her husband, takes his hand and declares: “You’re very loving, you’re kind, you’re generous, you kind of like brought me up and you know that I appreciate everything that I’ve been able to do.”

She continues: “I’ve tried to use [my position] to benefit the less privileged of this country, and whatever I do, I do it to complement the work you’re doing. I’m really happy to be your wife and I feel blessed to be part of your family.”

In a somewhat cringeworthy moment, a stilted Mugabe, who married Grace in 1996, responds: “When I said I wanted to marry her, I meant it. I said to her from that moment on if I had any girlfriends, I would leave them and that’s what I have done to recognise you and you alone as my partner. Whether you believed it or not, that’s what it has been.

“And I valued her, I valued the transformation that you brought to my life and the kids that you gave me and the happiness that they brought and the happiness you brought, and I remain very grateful for that. And that is why sometimes perhaps when you tend to be angry with me or perhaps I’ve not acted as quickly as you thought I should on certain matters, I have not reacted, I just kept quiet and allowed that to win.”

Mugabe has not finished pouring out his heart for the cameras yet. The 89-year-old goes on: “This is how we have lived. I do hope we continue that way and that our children also benefit from our oneness and that you also benefit from the little that you can learn from me, that interaction, and also even our relatives can learn from us how marital life should be, and especially the younger ones, so please continue to love the children but of course, above all, to love this boyfriend called Robert Mugabe.”

There is laughter around the table and Grace rises to give the president a chaste kiss. Earlier in the programme, of which the Guardian has seen a near-complete edit prior to broadcast, the couple share similar exchanges with their children. Son Bellarmine, who bears a striking resemblance to Mugabe and wears a suit and tie to match, says his father always makes time for him. “I also love the fact that if I sleep and I’m outside the blankets, he’ll come and tuck me in.”

Grace, meanwhile, makes merry as she recalls thumping a British photographer outside a five-star hotel in Hong Kong four years ago. “They saw us and started running towards us. I said, ‘No, enough is enough, why are you treating us like this? What wrong have I done?’ … So I ran after him and I caught him. I started beating him. He was pleading with me to get the camera, please, I didn’t answer so I kept on punching him.” There is mirth at the table.

The affair with grace

Dali Tambo’s late father, Oliver was close to Mugabe but it took him three years to land the interview, which will be shown in South Africa on the SABC3 channel at 8:30pm on Sunday June 2 .

His style might strike critics as fawning and sycophantic. But it does win unprecedented access and enable him to question Mugabe on everything from the 1980s massacres in Matabeleland province to starting an affair with Grace while his first wife, Sally, was terminally ill.

Asked what attracted him to Grace, who was a typist in his office, Mugabe blinks often as if holding back tears and offers a most unorthodox reply: “It was not just the fact that one was attracted. After Sally was gone it was necessary for me to look for someone and, even as Sally was still going through her last few days, although it might have appeared to some as cruel, I said to myself well, it’s not just myself needing children, my mother has all the time said, ah, am I going to die without seeing grandchildren?

“So I decided to make love to her. She happened to be one of the nearest and she was a divorcee herself, and so it was. We got our first child when my mother was still alive.”

Tambo asks if Sally, who died from kidney failure in 1992, accepted the new relationship. “I did tell her and she just kept quiet and said fine but she did ask, ‘Do you still love me?’ I said yes. And she said, ‘Oh, fine’.”

From herdboy through prison to President

Sitting on wooden chairs in the gardens of the colonial era State House, Mugabe and Tambo run through the president’s life story, from cattle-herding as a boy with a whip in one hand and book in the other, to dancing the quickstep and waltz with student nurses. As a freedom fighter against white minority rule, he was jailed for 11 years. “When you’re in prison, you say ‘okay, when we get out, these bastards, we are going to deal with them’,” he recalls.

President R.G Mugabe

Initially, when he came to power at Independence in 1980, Mugabe preached reconciliation but his reputation rapidly crumbled with the violent seizures of white-owned farms from 2000. For this he blames then British prime minister Tony Blair for reneging on promises of funding land redistribution made under the 1979 Lancaster House agreement.

“Mrs [Margaret] Thatcher, you could trust her,” Mugabe continues. “But of course what happened later was a different story with the Labour party and Blair and company, who you could never trust. You couldn’t compare them to Thatcher and the others  . . . Oh, who can ever believe what Mr Blair says? Here we call him Bliar.”

Asked about the condemnation he still faces for the way land reform was handled, Mugabe responds with a South African comparison: “They will praise you only if you are doing things that please them. Mandela [Nelson] has gone a bit too far in doing good to the non-black communities, really in some cases at the expense of them . . . That’s being too saintly, too good, too much of a saint.”

What qualities make an ideal husband for Bona?

Robert Mugabe warmly describes daughter Bona, a postgraduate student, as “very obedient” and “absolutely trustworthy” but chides Bellarmine, whose studies at a private school came to an abrupt end earlier this year. “He has not made me happy in the way he takes to his studies. He should be more serious than he is at the moment.”

Dali Tambo touches a raw nerve by asking Mugabe what qualities he would look for in a future husband for his daughter. Brow furrowed and voice gruff, Africa’s oldest leader would be enough to strike fear into any potential suitor.

“Regarding such approaches, one from a wolf who has come to seize one of my lambs — that’s the feeling.

“But it must be a person of her own choice. My hope would be first, qualities of a good husband will live with her, because he loves her through thick and thin and not just look at her now as she still is that flower, attractive, blooming. She will have kids and quite a lot of what is now the real charm will disappear and the face will start having wrinkles. So he should not pit her at that time against up and coming younger ones, which is what most people do and as a result we get lots of divorces.”

During the interview, Mugabe takes out the rosary beads that he always carries — “I went to war with it” — discusses God and claims he is still a Marxist, though not in “absolute terms”.

Mugabe misunderstood, ill-judged — Dali Tambo

During the interview, which lasted two-and-a-half hours, the Zanu-PF leader claims that upcoming elections will be peaceful but does not sound like a man ready or willing to let go. Banging his fist on an armrest, he unleashes the old fiery rhetoric: “There is a fight to fight. The British are calling for regime change, that I must go. That call must not come from the British.

The Guardian

Dali Tambo . . . . his documentary on Mugabe will air in South Africa on June 2

“The sanctions are still on us and what man is there who, when his own house is being attacked, will run away and leave the family and the children still under attack? It’s a coward … My people still need me and when people still need you to lead them it’s not time, sir, it doesn’t matter how old you are, to say goodbye.

They will say you are deserting us and I am not a deserter, never have been, I never have thought of deserting my people. We fight to the finish: that’s it. I still have it in me here.”

People of the South makes no mention of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and will do no harm to Mugabe’s attempts to rebrand himself, which have already led to signs of a softening in western opinion. Tambo, who grew up in exile in north London, said his show is “not Hardtalk” and he makes no apologies for humanising a man he believes has long been demonised.

Describing Mugabe as “warm, charismastic and very humorous”, he said: “I feel, honestly, a pride in that man and I think that he has been misunderstood and ill-judged by a lot of the press. He’s made mistakes but in general he’s going to go down in history with a very positive perspective from Africans.”

Sanitising Zanu PF – Zimbabwe Vigil Diary: 25th May 2013

‘We are sorry and we pass our condolences to his family’ said MDC T MP for Mazowe Central Shepherd Mushonga. Who was the noble soul he was lamenting? None other than Elias Kanengoni, the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Organisation who died unexpectedly at his farm in Concession.

The Vigil is sorry that Mr Mushonga is saddened by the death of this weekend farmer who, although a public servant, was a member of the Zanu PF central committee. Why are we going on about this hypocrisy? Well, the Vigil thinks that the demand for justice is not going to go away however hard the MDC tries to reassure Zanu PF.  There is simply no way that Zanu PF can escape being called to account – if only by a South African-style truth and reconciliation process.

The Vigil’s reflections on this were prompted by a sycophantic fawning television documentary on the Mugabe family made for the SABC by Dali Tambo, son of South African liberation hero Oliver Tambo. ‘Flowers, silver cutlery and a box of tissues adorn the spotless white tablecloth’ reports the British Guardian newspaper, which was given a preview of the programme. ‘Mum chortles’ as the first family tucks in . . . ‘You're very loving, you're kind, you're generous’, she gushes to the President.

Tambo, says the Guardian, makes no apology for humanising a man he believes has long been demonised. Describing Mugabe as ‘warm, charismatic and very humorous’, he said: ‘I feel, honestly, a pride in that man and I think that he has been misunderstood and ill-judged by a lot of the press.’  (Mugabes under the spotlight – Zimbabwe's first family filmed at home – http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/24/zimbabwe-tv-lunch-with-mugabes). 

The sanitising of Mugabe drew some critical comments from the readership of the article. Here is one we found particularly illuminating: My father managed a 5 star hotel in central London in the late 80's. Mugabe used to stay at the hotel. When his motorcade would leave for Heathrow, it included a dozen trucks from the likes of Harrods, and after check out, a handler from the High Commission would come to the hotel with a suitcase of cash and pay for anything missing from the inventory of the rooms they used in exchange for not pressing charges of theft or going to the press. Everything from TVs to cutlery to chairs would be missing and loaded on to their trucks.

Other points

·         The Vigil salutes Comrade Mugabe as he leads a delegation of 50 to yet another conference – this time to the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (held in Yokohama!) The jaunt will be paid for by increasing pension contributions (see: Mugabe trip gobbles millions – https://www.zimbabwesituation.com/old/may25a_2013.html#Z9).

·         The Vigil eagerly awaits Industry and Commerce Minister Welshman Ncube’s promised mid-year launch of the ‘Leather Sector Strategy’. Glad to see there are still some animals around (see: Trade deficit to widen to US$3 billion – https://www.zimbabwesituation.com/old/may25a_2013.html#Z15).

·         After months of dreary weather we were grateful for warmth and sunshine today. London was awash with German football fans for the Champions League final between Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich. Some joined in our dancing and we told them we were sure the Germans would win!

·         The Vigil was charmed by Josephine Mudzingwa Siziba, the ‘Queen of North Shields’ whose positive attitude to life in the UK is so encouraging to people forced into exile by Mr Tembo’s idol (see: The Queen of North Shields – http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01xt726). Watch it quickly because it will drop off BBC iplayer in a few days.

·         We ask your prayers for Vigil management team member Josephine Zhuga whose grandchild was stillborn. On the same day her other son was involved in a head-on collision on his way to pick up Josephine to put her on the train to South Yorkshire to visit the family who had lost the baby. We are relieved to say that her son was not seriously injured and has been discharged from hospital and her daughter-in-law is out of intensive care.

For latest Vigil pictures check: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zimbabwevigil/. Please note: Vigil photos can only be downloaded from our Flickr website – they cannot be downloaded from the slideshow on the front page of the Zimvigil website.

FOR THE RECORD: 34 signed the register.

EVENTS AND NOTICES:

•         Zimbabwe Yes We Can open meeting.  Saturday 1^st June at 12 noon. Venue: Strand Continental Hotel (first floor lounge), 143 Strand, London WC2R 1JA. For directions see Zimbabwe Action Forum entry below. Anyone who is interested in finding out about Zimbabwe Yes We can is welcome at this meeting.

•         Zimbabwe Action Forum (ZAF). Saturday 1^st June from 6.30 – 9.30 pm.  Venue: Strand Continental Hotel (first floor lounge), 143 Strand, London WC2R 1JA. The Strand is the same road as the Vigil. From the Vigil it’s about a 10 minute walk, in the direction away from Trafalgar Square. The Strand Continental is situated on the south side of the Strand between Somerset House and the turn off onto Waterloo Bridge. The entrance is marked by a big sign high above and a sign for its famous Indian restaurant at street level. It's next to a newsagent. Nearest underground: Temple (District and Circle lines) and Holborn.

•         ROHR Coventry Branch meeting. Saturday 1^st June from 1.30 – 4 pm. Venue: Hillfields Evangelical Baptist Church, Waterloo Street, Coventry CV1 5JS. For more information contact Hilda Gwesele 07939127819,Tafadzwa Mushakwe 07551873256, Esinati Mbuluku, Tendai Vheremu and Sarah Bwetu.

•         Zimbabwe Vigil Highlights 2012 can be viewed on this link: http://www.zimvigil.co.uk/the-vigil-diary/467-vigil-highlights-2012.  Links to previous years’ highlights are listed on 2012 Highlights page.

•         The Restoration of Human Rights in Zimbabwe (ROHR) is the Vigil’s partner organization based in Zimbabwe. ROHR grew out of the need for the Vigil to have an organization on the ground in Zimbabwe which reflected the Vigil’s mission statement in a practical way. ROHR in the UK actively fundraises through membership subscriptions, events, sales etc to support the activities of ROHR in Zimbabwe. Please note that the official website of ROHR Zimbabwe is http://www.rohrzimbabwe.org/. Any other website claiming to be the official website of ROHR in no way represents the views and opinions of ROHR.

•         Facebook pages:

-         Vigil: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8157345519&ref=ts

-         ZAF: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Zimbabwe-Action-Forum-ZAF/490257051027515

-         ROHR: https://www.facebook.com/pages/ROHR-Zimbabwe-Restoration-of-Human-Rights/301811392835

•         Vigil Myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/zimbabwevigil.

•         Useful websites: www.zanupfcrime.com which reports on Zanu PF abuses and www.ipaidabribe.org.zw where people can report corruption in Zimbabwe.

Vigil co-ordinators

The Vigil, outside the Zimbabwe Embassy, 429 Strand, London, takes place every Saturday from 14.00 to 18.00 to protest against gross violations of human rights in Zimbabwe. The Vigil which started in October 2002 will continue until internationally-monitored, free and fair elections are held in Zimbabwe. http://www.zimvigil.co.uk.

Bill Watch - Parliamentary Committees Series 11/2013 of 26th May [Committee Meetings 27 to 30 May]