The Insider

Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai today said he had information that President Robert Mugabe was determined to confront the people by bringing back the militias to cow the nation instead of solving the current crisis and warned him that this would not be tolerated.

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A Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front mole told United States ambassador to Zimbabwe James McGee that Mugabe knew he was going to lose the March 2008 elections, five days before the poll, according to a report in BusinessWeek which raises, once again, the issue that a United States hedge fund bankrolled Mugabe’s violent campaign in the presidential elections run-off.

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The Movement for Democratic Change today said the new maize and sorghum price set by the government at US$390 a tonne is a prescription for disaster because it will be cheaper for traders to import cheaper grain from the region rather than to buy locally.

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Mutsvangwa says Mutasa is misleading Mujuru that she will succeed Mugabe- Zimbabwe’s Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Christopher Mutsvangwa, who is also the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front legislator for Norton, says ZANU-PF Secretary for Administration Didymus Mutasa is destroying the party and is misleading Vice-President Joice Mujuru into believing that she will succeed President Robert Mugabe.  In an interview with The Herald, in which the paper said he was speaking as a war veteran, Mutsvangwa also said that Mujuru should not be deceived by post-independence titles of office and she should stop deluding herself because she did not down a Rhodesian helicopter during the liberation war. He said Mutasa, now currently number four in the ZANU-PF hierarchy after Mugabe, Mujuru and Simon Khaya Moyo, was an opportunist who had joined the liberation struggle at the last moment but had been sowing seeds of disunity all along. Mutsvangwa claimed that Mutasa misled Edgar Tekere who was Mugabe’s number two to quit the party and form the Zimbabwe Unity Movement.  That was the end of Tekere’s political career. He also claimed that Mutasa misled Simba Makoni, who was also ranked as one of Mugabe’s potential successors, into quitting the party and later forming the Mavambo-Kusila-Dawn party. Makoni has been languishing in political oblivion since. Mutasa was now misleading Joice Mujuru to think she would take over from Mugabe as she is currently number two but he warned her: “We all know each other as comrades from the shared war effort. She should not be deceived by the post-independence titles of office. She was accorded them much later in our shared lives. “Zvekare hapana comrade akanga akatakura pfuti mbiri mbiri ari mumwe. Taingove mumwe neimwe. Kupedzisa nekukanda pasi manyepo ekudonhedza helicopter yemuvengi akaumbwa naWebster Shamu kumupembedza kuti abviswe kuvamwe macomrades. Ngatisanyengedzwe nePovho nemagwara atavakudyidzana nawo mushure mekupera kwehondo yerusununguko.”

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One puzzle of the world economy is that for 200 years, the world’s rich countries grew faster than poorer countries, a process aptly described by Lant Pritchett as “Divergence, Big Time.” When Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations in 1776, per capita income in the world’s richest country – probably the Netherlands – was about four times that of the poorest countries. Two centuries later, the Netherlands was 40 times richer than China, 24 times richer than India, and ten times richer than Thailand.

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“Unfounded reports and speculation on the re-introduction of the local currency continue to undermine the government’s effort to restore confidence and macroeconomic stability,” Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa said as he tried to reassure his audience that the Zimbabwe dollar was not coming back.

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Zimbabwe’s biggest platinum miner, Zimplats, has closed down its Bimha Mine, the largest of its four mines, to safeguard its employees and equipment following an underground collapse of the mine last month, the company’s chief executive Alex Mhembere said today.

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It has nothing to do with saving the Iraqis as President Barack Obama has publicly stated. It is purely business, big business, US$25 billion worth of business as TomDispatch reports:

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