Women continue to join the Zimbabwe Republic Police, despite mixed reactions to their presence.

By Ignatius Banda

Hand-crafted pots and pans, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. / Ignatius Banda/IPS

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Oct 20 (IPS) – At a time when more and more women around the world are taking up jobs in male-dominated domains, 41-year-old Sithabile Ruswa is also making her mark, albeit far from the air-conditioned boardrooms usually reported on.

Like millions of other women [...]

By Stanley Kwenda

"Investment and trade should also depend on the extent of democratisation in Zimbabwe." / Nastasya Tay/IPS

JOHANNESBURG, Sep 23 (IPS) – While investors need assurances about property rights and the protection of investments before they will invest in Zimbabwe’s precarious economy, the state of democracy in the Southern African country should also be [...]

By Fidelis Zvomuya
GURUVE, Zimbabwe, Jul 27 (IPS) – Eleven-year-old Irene Thembo* lies curled like a foetus on a white wooden bench for outpatients at a clinic in rural Zimbabwe. The orphan, whose parents died of HIV-related illnesses, is terribly sick.

Weighing around 16 kilograms, her hair is thin and patchy, her eyes dull. Since the age [...]

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Jul 15 (IPS) – A resurgence of interest in dried traditional vegetables has opened up a market opportunity for women entrepreneurs in Zimbabwe’s second city, Bulawayo.

Urban consumers, who previously shunned dried vegetables as a culinary preference of unsophisticated rural people now view them as an affordable, nutritious convenience food. For some they [...]

By Ignatius Banda

Spot the difference: on the left are cow bones and on the right are salt shakers made by Gift Ncube. / Ignatius Banda/IPS

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Jul 14 (IPS) – "People used to mock me, saying that I am competing with dogs for bones, but these taunts do not deter me," says Sibongile Mararike [...]

By Ignatius Banda

With baby strapped to her back, scrap metal collector Judith Sibanda prepares to leave for "work". / Ignatius Banda/IPS

BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Jun 25 (IPS) – Gugulethu Mkhwananzi is another one of the many unemployed women who have become features of everyday life in Bulawayo’s poor working class suburbs as she moves from house [...]

By Busani Bafana & Pierre Klochendler
BULAWAYO and TEL AVIV, Jun 24 (IPS) – Three days of tense deliberations by members of the Kimberley Process have failed to reach consensus on whether diamonds from Zimbabwe's Marange fields should be certified as conflict-free. Zimbabwe has already announced that it intends to resume exports of the precious stones [...]

By Stanley Kwenda
CHIADZWA, Zimbabwe, Jun 23 (IPS) – Saddled with debts of more than $7 billion, Zimbabwe is anxious to resume diamond exports, suspended in May amidst international condemnation of alleged human rights violations in the Marange diamond fields. But the treatment of people living in the fields themselves suggests the country's record on rights [...]

By Ignatius Banda

Lydia Thembo is one of many women who have no clue about the writing of a new constitution and how they can contribute. / Ignatius Banda

BULAWAYO, Jun 22 (IPS) – As Zimbabwe embarks on writing a new constitution with the countrywide collection of public submissions starting on Jun. 23, not all women [...]

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Jun 16 (IPS) – In a bold attempt to stoke public debate on national healing, an art exhibition is challenging the government to publicly acknowledge one of the most hideous episodes in Zimbabwe's history.

In the early 1980s, the government of then-Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, dispatched the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade of Zimbabwe's [...]

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, May 3 (IPS) – Fourteen months after Zimbabwe's government of national unity was formed, harassment, arbitrary arrest and general intimidation of journalists remains common.

In a statement issued on May 3, World Press Freedom Day, the Zimbabwe chapter of the press watchdog Media Institute of South Africa deplored repressive legislation constraining journalists.
These include [...]

By Vusumuzi Sifile
HARARE, Mar 30 (IPS) – Mary Pamire will never forget the day a group of men took turns to rape her.

In June 2003, Pamire was among scores of people who participated in a mass demonstration organised by the then-opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and civil society organisations, among them the National Constitutional [...]

By Ignatius Banda
BULAWAYO, Mar 22 (IPS) – When there are water cuts in Bulawayo, the plants in 59-year-old Ntombizodwa Makati’s vegetable garden are still watered – but she and her family go thirsty.

Small scale farmers in Bulawayo are able to use recycled waste water for their crops as lack of adequate rainfall affects the region, [...]

By Vusumuzi Sifile

A scene from the play Waiting for Constitution. / Vusumuzi Sifile/IPS

HARARE, Mar 3 (IPS) – A new play, Waiting for Constitution has generated great interest among politicians and civil society groups anxious to get consultations over drafting a new constitution under way.

The play, which premiered in Harare on Feb. 23, dramatises a [...]