Posts by Charles Rukuni

Central bank governor Gideon Gono was cut out of the Marange diamonds when the military moved in in November 2008, according to one of the United States embassy cables released by Wikileaks. One of Gono’s chief buyers Tendai Makurumidze, known as Gonyeti, was arrested and three of his vehicles were seized. Trading which had been dominated by Gono who was bringing freshly printed Zimbabwe dollar notes shifted to foreign currency.

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South Africa’s Minister for International Relations and Cooperation Maite Nkoana-Mashabane has made headlines for calling President Robert Mugabe “the crazy old man” but what seems to have gone unreported is that her host United States ambassador to Pretoria Donald Gips seems to have thought very little of her strong statements on Zimbabwe and Mugabe.  In the comment to his cable following his meeting with the minister on November 2, last year Gips wrote: “The Foreign Minister made strong statements on Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe, but our sense is that her department does not have the lead within the SAG (South African government) on the Zimbabwe agenda.”

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Four prominent Zimbabwean businessmen living in South Africa discussed with United States officials ways to ease President Robert Mugabe out of power and replace him with a “technocratic” Prime Minister who would run the country and get it back on its feet.

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Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai last year requested Western governments to help bring about change in Zimbabwe because progress by the inclusive government had been too slow. He held a meeting with ambassadors of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, and a representative of the European Union on December 24 and told them that he needed their help because ZANU-PF was now using a strategy of reciprocity, using western sanctions as a cudgel against the MDC, according to the latest cables released by Wikileaks.

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The international community’s concern that Zimbabwe is a threat to the region is unfounded because most of the countries in the Southern African Development Community can take care of themselves.

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