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    HIV vaccine trial starts in Zimbabwe

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    HIV vaccine trial starts in Zimbabwe

    ZIMBABWE – A consortium of research organisations will embark on clinical trials of an HIV vaccine in Zimbabwe starting with 24 volunteers this coming November.

    Announcing the landmark research, Dr Lynda Stranix-Chibanda, who is leading the research team, said the clinical trials will be conducted at Seke South Clinic and will involve 24 volunteers. If all the regulatory approvals are achieved, the trials will begin as soon as November, she said.


    “The research protocol is currently under review by the regulatory authorities that govern medical research in Zimbabwe, such as the Medical Research Council of Zimbabwe, Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe, and National Biotechnology Authority of Zimbabwe,” she said.

    “This review will possibly be completed towards November 2015. In the meantime, the research team continues to prepare the clinic and an intense training course, interacting with regional colleagues who will also conduct the trial and learning best practice from the more experienced vaccine trial sites.

    “The trial will be conducted in Zimbabwe at Seke South Clinic. We will recruit from the surrounding community, following information and education sessions for various groups in the area,” she explained.

    The trials, to be run under the name HVTN 107, will be rolled out in phases over the next five to 10 years with the initial phase expected to last about three years.

    “This is an early phase trial for very few people. Only 24 people will be recruited in Zimbabwe, although we may need to screen three times as many as that to get the 24 people who qualify to enter.”

    Statistics show that about 15 percent of Zimbabwe’s population is living with HIV while 35 million people in the world have succumbed to Aids-related illnesses so far.

    The vaccine which will be tested in Zimbabwe is an improvement of the Thai vaccine, which after being tested in about 16 000 people in Thailand, reduced the risk of contracting HIV by almost 31 percent.

    In Thailand, the trial was hailed by researchers as successful since its results gave the first supporting evidence of any vaccine being effective in lowering the risk of contracting HIV.

    Mugabe’s 10-point plan to nowhere

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    Mugabe’s 10-point plan to nowhere
    ZIMBABWE – President Robert Mugabe last week provided the prescription for the economic crisis, the same path he has walked since 1980 but failed on implementation. The prescription, a 10-point plan for economic growth, looks like a summarised version of the economic blueprint, the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (ZimAsset) and was presented during Mugabe’s State of the Nation address last week.It focuses on revitalising agriculture, value addition and beneficiation to mining and agricultural endowments, encouraging private sector development, focusing on infrastructure development, restoring and building confidence in the financial sector and modernising labour laws. 

    The plan seeks to unlock the potential of small to medium enterprises, promote joint ventures and public private partnerships, pursuing an anti-corruption thrust and implementation of special economic zones to provide the impetus for foreign direct investment.

    Economist John Robertson said it was “a list which any schoolchild could write” and not a proper plan as it does not stipulate how a turnaround would be achieved.

    “It won’t take us anywhere as it is not attacking the things that caused the problems in the first place,” said Robertson.

    The economist also said the plan exposed a contradiction on the need to attract investments and the continued existence of the Indigenisation Act.

    The empowerment laws stipulate that any business with a value of at least $500 000 should be in the hands of locals.
    Another economist with a leading commercial bank who preferred to remain anonymous said the 10-point plan represented some of the short term goals that could be achieved from ZimAsset.

    mug 01 heroes

    “Given what is happening in the economy, the authorities seemed to have extracted something from Zim Asset to get results in the short term. However, they should have put more meat in terms of implementation. Who is responsible for what and what is the timeline?” the economist said.

    An analyst told Standardbussiness that Mugabe’s plan was “a description of a destination without providing the means to reach there”.

    Other analysts said the anti-corruption thrust was “an old script and there is nothing new” as the country had in the past pledged to fight the graft cancer which has become a plague in the country.

    Every year the Auditor-General’s office publishes reports on mismanagement of resources in state-owned enterprises and parastatals. The culprits have gone scot-free, raising questions on government’s sincerity to rid the country of corruption.

    Robertson said senior officials in government believed that their actions were not corruption but entitlement due to party loyalty.

    Since 1980, government has had over a dozen economic blueprints seeking to lay the path for economic growth, but all of them have not been implemented.

    The Transitional National Development Plan (1986-90), according priority to poverty reduction, was launched with the objective that government would invest money towards increased social sector development, expansion of rural infrastructure and redressing social and economic inequalities such as those created by skewed land tenure systems inherited from the colonial past.

    It was dumped in the 1990s for the Bretton Woods-inspired Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (Esap).
    Esap promised to reduce central government deficit from 10% of GDP to 5% by the fiscal year 1994-95. This did not happen, and the programme was subsequently abandoned.

    The Zimbabwe Programme for Economic and Social Transformation (Zimprest), touted as a home-grown panacea to the country’s mounting economic problems, was launched in February 1998, though it ran retrospectively from 1996.
    Besides seeking to advance the unfinished work of Esap, Zimprest also added socio-political goals such as improvements in the quality of democratic institutions, the pursuit of good governance and the elimination of corruption.

    Zimprest was abandoned for another programme: the Millennium Economic Recovery Programme in August 2001. It was rendered ineffective, largely due to the withdrawal of international donor support in February 2003.

    The National Economic Development Programme was crafted in 2006 promising heaven-on-earth with forecasts that $2,5 billion would be raised within three months. Like previous programmes, it died a natural death.

    In 2008, government came up with a new plan, Zimbabwe Economic Development Strategy, which was billed to run from 2009 up to 2013. Again it suffered a still birth.

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    Rare oil reserves will be discovered in Zimbabwe – Makandiwa

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    Rare oil reserves will be discovered in Zimbabwe – Makandiwa

    HARARE – UNITED Family Interdenominational Church (UFIC) leader Prophet Emmanuel Makandiwa says God has shown him that a rare oil resource will be discovered in Zimbabwe and that the discovery would bring to an end the economic misery in the country.

    Makandiwa said this during his church’s Judgement Night 3 event, reportedly attended by over 150 000 believers at the National Sports Stadium on Friday night.

    During the same event two years ago, Makandiwa also prophesied a gold rush which he said would see phenomenal economic turnaround in 2014. This, however, did not happen.

    On Friday night Makandiwa told his followers that the discovery of oil could be the panacea to the country’s economic problems.

    Despite these hopeful predictions, the country’s economy has continued on a downward spiral with the standards of living continuing to worsen for the majority of Zimbabweans.

    “I am seeing oil coming out of our ground,” Makandiwa said, sending the crowd into wild jubilation. The Standard

    “Just in case you think I am joking, I will tell you the place. No one knows this, but you will know that in this nation there is a prophet from God,” Makandiwa said amid isolated chants of “prophesy papa” and “you are a true prophet Man of God.”

    Makandiwa said he was taken by the spirit and shown the place where the oil would be discovered.

    He said it was a place along some big river. He said he had seen in the prophecy huge machinery sucking up oil from the ground.

    He, however, said it was likely to be in the next generation.

    “… God said if it is found, then is it enough for the problems that we have. I saw a generation, maybe it is the next generation, I saw them in a place and oil was coming from that place. I was made to touch the ground, my whole body
    was filled with oil and God said there is much of it in the place,”Makandiwa said to wild cheers and screams from the followers.

    Dressed in a blue suit and matching tie, Makandiwa walked into the National Sports Stadium at exactly 11:02pm accompanied by his wife Ruth, sending the crowd into a frenzy.

    Thirteen minutes later, he was welcomed to the stage by Pastor Prime Kufa who was the master of ceremony and started ministering to the congregants.

    Makandiwa reportedly performed several miracles with those with cancer claiming to have been healed,while those with various sicknesses also claiming to have been instantly healed.

    Makandiwa also promised to bring back recently lost jobs through his prayers.

    Judgement Night 3 was attended by several businesspeople, politicians and more than 20 000 foreign dignitaries.

    Mugabe’s wife comes out in defense of Cecil’s killer

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    Mugabe’s wife comes out in defense of Cecil’s killer

    ZIMBABWE – Grace Mugabe, the controversial First Lady of Zimbabwe, has surprised her nation by springing to the defence of Walter Palmer, the American dentist who shot dead Cecil the lion.

    Speaking as Zimbabwe prepares to seek the extradition of the 55-year-old, Mrs Mugabe said that Mr Palmer did nothing wrong by shooting the lion.

    “I say the dentist who killed the lion must be left alone,” said Mrs Mugabe.

    Mr Palmer is reported to have paid about $61,000 (pounds 35,000) to kill a lion, and shot Cecil on private land.

    The lion had been lured out of the Hwange National Park, and should have been protected. The guide who accompanied Mr Palmer and the man who owned the land where Cecil was shot will stand trial next month.

    Zimbabwe’s prosecutor-general, Johannes Tomana said he will seek extradition of Mr Palmer for trial.

    But Mrs Mugabe, 50, said at a rally in northern Zimbabwe on Thursday that the dentist had broken no law.

    “He was not to blame. The people of Zimbabwe who allowed him to kill the lion are to blame.”

    At a rally a week earlier Mrs Mugabe said British and American grief over Cecil was hypocritical, as the British Museum has skulls of Zimbabwe leaders from the 1890s.

    Mrs Mugabe is feared by many and is increasingly powerful during internal squabbles over who will succeed her husband, Robert, who is now 91.

    – Daily Telegraph UK

    You will miss Mugabe, Grace tells Zimbabweans

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    You will miss Mugabe, Grace tells Zimbabweans

    Harare – Zimbabwean First Lady, Grace Mugabe, told a gathering at Murombedzi Growth Point in Zvimba that the country would miss the veteran leader when he is gone, according to reports.

    Grace’s remarks came amid continued factionalism within the ruling Zanu-PF party, as many positioned themselves to take over from President Robert Mugabe, 91, when he finally leaves office.

    “There will come a day when [president] Mugabe will not be there and people will regret and miss his leadership,” the state-owned Herald newspaper quoted Grace as saying.

    The first lady said the nonagenarian had made huge sacrifices for the country and wanted the best for the future generations.

    “Not many people are able to make the sacrifices he [Mugabe] makes. He puts his all to represent his people. He is someone who wants the best for the present and future generations,” she said.

    A few weeks ago, Grace made headlines when she told a crowd at a function in Binga, Matabeleland north province, that God was not convinced by the calibre of would-be successors of her husband, which was why he continued to lead the country.

    Chaotic land reforms

    Grace suggested that Mugabe continued to labour in office at the age of 91 because God wanted him to.

    Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980. His Zanu-PF party has already endorsed him to stand in the 2018 presidential elections, when he will be 94.

    According to New Zimbabwe.com, Mugabe’s critics say he has destroyed what was, at independence, one of Africa’s most promising economies.

    They cite policy missteps and his violent and chaotic land reform programme as some of the factors that have caused turmoil in the country’s economy.

    The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) led by Morgan Tsvangirai, however, said on Thursday that it was time for Zimbabwe to look beyond the “Mugabe must go” hype.

    “Mugabe is now ‘yesterday’s’ man and Zimbabweans should start preparing for a post – Mugabe era. Look, the man is 91 and he is clearly not in the best state of both physical and mental health. We now have to develop policies that go beyond the ‘Mugabe must go’ hype,” MDC spokesperson Obert Gutu told News24.

    The southern African country is currently reeling under severe economic hardships which have seen more than 20 000 people losing their jobs in the past month.

    Mugabe’s state of the nation address (Sona) early this week reportedly gave no hope for Zimbabweans as he failed to address issues related to job creation.

    Zimbabwe President Mugabe invited for Summit

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    Zimbabwe President Mugabe invited for Summit

    ZIMBABWE – Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Rajyavardhan Rathore met Zimbabwe President Robert Gabriel Mugabe at Harare on Thursday to invite him to the Third India Africa Forum Summmit to be held here in October.

    An official statement released here said that Rathore met the Zimbabwean President as the Special Envoy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to personally extend the invitation on his behalf.

    “While accepting the invitation, President Mugabe stated that he hoped the Prime Minister would visit Zimbabwe in the near future,” the statement said.

    Earlier, Rathore met Foreign Affairs Minister of Zimbabwe, Simbarashe S Mumbengegwi and invited him on behalf of the External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, the statement said.

    The official statement released here said that speaking after the meetings, Rathore mentioned that this year’s summit would be historic as India had taken the lead to invite leaders of all African nations with whom it had long cherished ties.

    Emphasising the importance of India-Africa engagement, Rathore said that India’s friendship with African nations goes back a long way. Both India and Africa emerged from a similar colonial past and shared similar concerns of sustainable development and inclusive economic growth.

    During his discussion, the Minister also noted that in recent years, India had played a critical role in forging partnerships with the African continent focusing on issues that empowered the region.

    These included support to African countries through scholarships, training, capacity building efforts and developmental assistance.

    The Third India Africa Forum Summit level meeting will be held on October 29, and will be preceded by a Foreign Ministers’ meeting on October 27 and senior officers meeting on October 26.

    Mugabe tours Harare Agricultural Show

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    Mugabe tours Harare Agricultural Show

    ZIMBABWE – President Robert Mugabe and the visiting Mozambican President Fillippe Jacinto Nyusi have expressed appreciation of the quality of agricultural products at the 105th edition of the Harare Agricultural Show.

    The two presidents expressed the sentiments during the tour of several stands at the show earlier Friday.


    President Mugabe and his Mozambican counterpart arrived at the Harare
    Agricultural Show grounds around eleven in the morning to the welcoming song and dance from the Mufakose Traditional Dance Group.

    After a short briefing by Harare Agricultural Show officials, the presidents visited the Julius Nyerere Hall where small scale and communal farmers are displaying their produce.

    The produce includes varieties of vegetables, maize grains, small grains varieties and potatoes.

    The two leaders took interest in the wide range of exhibits and wanted to know the land size that the farmers are using to produce their wares and the yields that they are fetching.

    In the tobacco industry hall the two leaders were told that tobacco production in the small scale holder sector has taken a dip due to the poor prices being offered by the market and the unwillingness by the financial sector to fund production of the crop.

    Contract farming has however expanded.

    At the Southern Region Trading Company stand, Presidents Mugabe and Nyusi were told that the company’s products are suitable for all farm sizes.

    The donated tractor has been of assistance to a whole community through provision of tillage services.

    Seedco, a local seed manufacturing company, has assured the nation that it has adequate seed for the 2015-2016 rainy season.

    At the cattle and livestock section, goats, sheep, horses and other animals were on display.

    The last port of call was the First Family’s Alpha Omega Dairy and Gushungo Holdings stand.

    Police find former Zimbabwe captain Brendan Taylor passed out in random car

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    Police find former Zimbabwe captain Brendan Taylor passed out in random car

    ZIMBABWE –  Former Zimbabwe skipper Brendan Taylor, who quit playing international cricket to play English county cricket, was found sleeping in an unlocked car by local police here on Friday.

    Taylor was partying on Thursday night as his side Nottinghamshire progressed to the semi-finals of the Royal London Cup and then he landed up in the car.

    He was woken by police after a Nottingham man opened his unlocked car to find him sleeping off a long night, reports ESPNcricinfo.

    Taylor had taken shelter in the car having lost his bearings several hours after Nottinghamshire’s quarter-final victory against Durham.

    Nottinghamshire have yet to make a statement on the incident..

    Mugabe ranked 3rd worst African leader

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    Mugabe ranked 3rd worst African leader

    ZIMBABWE – PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe has been judged the most educated African leader by a popular African website which however places him an ignominious third among the continent worst leaders.

    According to the latest rankings published by AnswersAfrica.com, which focuses on African affairs, Zimbabwe founding leader outshines his younger peers with seven degrees to his name.

    Among Mugabe academic credentials are degrees in economics and law obtained with South African and London universities.

    The veteran President, who leads Africa most literate nation, also holds 14 honorary degrees from both local and international universities.

    Three degrees from international universities have however been revoked.

    Other African leaders who top the list of the educated are Benin Thomas Boni, who is ranked second with four degrees, Morocco King Mohammed VI (third) and Malawi Peter Mutharika who is number four.

    But while Mugabe can bask in the glory of topping the list of Africa most schooled, he will not do the same on being rated the third worst leader.

    President Mugabe has helped bring freedom to Zimbabweans only to get power drunk, and has refused to step down since 1980, reads the site.

    It is true that his government has recorded commendable growth in some facets such as education, agriculture and GDP growth, yet, Mugabe inadequacies, overshadow his achievements.

    Mugabe is an odd man when it comes to dictators. He has the illusion of democracy on one hand while he oppresses the white people with the other.

    The 91 year old tyrant has vowed not to step down despite having ruled the Southern African state for 35 years.

    Sudanese Omar Al-Bashir and Swaziland King Mswati III were rated first and second dictators.

    According to the website, Angola Jos Eduardo dos Santos is the continent fourth worst leader while Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, a close Mugabe ally, is fifth.

    South Africa Jacob Zuma, whose country is often viewed a model democracy among African states, is a surprise seventh.

    AnswersAfrica describes him as a scandalous leader who heads a disgruntled native population still yet to enjoy the fruits of its independence.

    While further confirming President Mugabe as the continent and world oldest leader, the website is not so kind in comments directed at the nonagenarian.

    He is so old now that he has a common habit of sleeping off in public sessions or gatherings, reads the site.

    Recently, he slipped off while walking down a few steps after a speech in Harare.

    The site also goes on to name Mugabe, among Africa’s richest, as the fifth most famous African dictator of all time.

    According to the site, Mugabe joins Malawi Hastings Kamuzu Banda who died 1997, Central African Republic Jean-Bedel Bokassa who died 1996 and Uganda Idi Amin Dada who died 2003.

    Answersafrica.com is a website that collects and publishes information about the continent.

    Its opinions are formulated through information gleaned from, among other sources, the IMF and World Bank economic indicators.

    Covered subjects are on politics, business, entertainment, sports and travel, among some interest areas.

    Grace rubbishes country’s liberators

    MUKUDZEI RUKUDZO
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    Grace rubbishes country’s liberators

    ZIMBABWE – Controversial and tactless First Lady Grace Mugabe on Thursday rubbished the contribution of war veterans in the liberation of Zimbabwe saying ZANU-PF belongs to everyone.

    Addressing thousands of people at Murombedzi Growth Point in Zvimba, Grace said some people within the party thought President Mugabe was to stop her from making inflammatory statements but were surprised when he remained mum.

    “They (Mujuru cabal) thought the President would say something to stop me, but he remained quiet because just like anyone, l am also allowed to participate in ZANU-PF because it is my party. While we respect their liberation war contributions, ZANU-PF is not only for those who fought the war, we all deserve to be in ZANU-PF,” said Grace.

    In remarks remarks largely meant to rebuke the Minister of Water, Environment and Climate and Vice President Emerson Mnangagwa who have since fallen out of favour following the expulsion of former Vice President Joice Mujuru, Grace said factional elements would be deposed in similar fashion.

    “They are some who are corrupt and we say down with corruption. When given a duty, you have been made a servant of the people, but some think that when appointed to become Minister, he or she should be rich to the extent of opening bank accounts for their dogs,” she said.

    Her statements are ironic given the fact she recently held a lavish birthday party where her bank account grossed US$2 million in just a month put of donations from people most probably want to curry favor with the First Family.

    Even her donations of 30 000 litres of cooking oil, 50 tones or rice, 30 tonnes of maize-meal, sugar, salt and 6 132 bars of soap is some kind of vote buying and smirks of one keen on building a patronage system.

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