The Zimbabwe Nurses Union has called for a return to work after months of strikes over pay and workplace safety, after the appointment of Vice-President Chiwenga as Health Minister. Civil servants have been promised a pay adjustment every three months. However, the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions called for wages to be paid in US dollars and for lightening workplace lunchtime protests on September 1. Teacher unions are also determined to gain pay in US dollars.

Today is the second anniversary of the 2018 national election won by President Mnangagwa and ZANU-PF, and the day set for the Extraordinary Congress of MDC-T. It was chosen therefore for a big street protest, purportedly against corruption.

The first Zimbabwean to die from novel coronavirus infection was Zororo Makamba, on March 23. He was a prominent young man who was recovering from a lung operation. He had contracted the virus in New York. Since then another Zimbabwean has died. Makamba’s family account of his last days demonstrates how totally unprepared Zimbabwe is for the pandemic. Zororo was sent to the Wilkins Infectious Disease Hospital, but his family found that it had no ventilator, its oxygen supply ran out, it had no running water.

March 13, 2020: The new year is already into its third month and the combined impacts of severe drought, long-term economic collapse and now the COVID-19 pandemic are closing off the chances for a turn-around in the economic crisis and for genuine democratic reform for Zimbabwe. Like much of Africa, Zimbabwe needs significant external funding to get onto a growth path, let alone achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. The looming global recession and possible depression means that the people of Zimbabwe will be thrown back onto their own capacities.

Zimbabwe Information Centre (ZIC), Sydney, Australia Interview –

An anonymous ‘senior government official’ is the source for a report in The Independent on Friday January 31, 2020, that the Zimbabwe cabinet has rejected a proposal from Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube for Zimbabwe to become a member of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).

In October 2019 the Chair of EITI, Ms Helen Clark, had visited Harare for two days in response to interest expressed by EITI members, and Mr Ncube had expressed interest in joining EITI in his November Budget speech.