Latest news with #Zimbabwe
News24
15 hours ago
- Business
- News24
Zim's farmers push on as land grab compensation flounders
For more financial news, go to the News24 Business front page. In a field of paprika plants in the heart of Zimbabwe, fourth-generation farmer Daniel Burger and relative newcomer Miriam Mupambawashe discuss the quality of the crop. Burger, 36, and Mupambawashe, 59, are neighbours and partners in efforts to revive the country's once-flourishing agriculture sector cut down by a ruinous land reform drive in the 2000s. The reform distributed land from the white minority, which still owned most of the best farmland 20 years after independence in 1980, to the black majority. Around 4,000 white-owned farms were confiscated, some with deadly violence. Mupambawashe was among thousands who received land. Though she initially knew little about farming, her small subsistence plot now thrives. Other farms failed or were abandoned, with some new tenants unschooled in agriculture and others -- including politicians who were handed land -- uninterested. There were food shortages and Zimbabwe soon required international aid. "There was a bit of a tough period through the 2000s and, unfortunately, I think it sort of refuelled racial tensions to an extent," Burger told AFP. "But being so passionate about farming was the motivator for me to move forward," he said. Good faith Mupambawashe moved to the area from the southern city of Bulawayo, around 200 kilometres (125 miles) away. "When we first came here in 2001, it was a forest and there was nothing built," she said. "Some of the white farmers were angry but we managed to talk to each other in good faith and move forward." "They never let us down and said, 'You grabbed the farm, let's see if you can do it'. But instead they brought their own tractors and equipment to come and help, which we felt was a nice gesture." It was hard in the beginning, especially after irrigation equipment was stolen, and the early failures were "embarrassing", Mupambawashe said. But today her plot does so well that she only needs to buy in sugar and cooking oil. Burger leases land from her and lends tractors and expertise. His family's land was among the few hundreds that were not seized in the 2000s. Nonetheless, "For a long time we became wound up in compensation," said Burger, vice-president of the Commercial Farmers Union of Zimbabwe (CFU) that represents mostly white farmers. "But it wasn't our purpose. Our purpose was driving agriculture and current agricultural affairs forward," he said. Compensation frustration This year, some farm owners whose land was confiscated received the first compensation payments after decades of waiting. The process has been complex and divisive. The government committed to compensation as part of an effort to settle arrears and reform the economy in order to be able to regain access to international credit lines cut two decades ago. It announced in 2020 the creation of a fund that would pay out US$3.5 billion for infrastructure on farms but not the land, which it says was taken by force by colonial settlers. Unable to raise cash, the government in 2023 changed the offer to one percent in cash and the remainder in US dollar denominated treasury bonds. In April, the first payments were made to 378 of 780 farmers approved for this scheme. Deon Theron, who represents the Compensation Steering Committee group of former white farmers, says the introduction of the bonds has annulled the original deal and negotiations need to start over. The bonds are "unsecured" and there is "limited recourse in the event of non-performance by government," he told AFP. "The general feeling amongst the farmers is firstly frustration that after 20-odd years we still have not received anything," Theron said. But the Property and Farm Compensation Association said its members would take what is on offer. The bonds are under international guarantee, said leader Harry Orphanides, adding that "digging in" and seeking more from the government would be futile. Tenure Mupambawashe and Burger are encouraged by another major government announcement -- the granting of land ownership rights to beneficiaries of the 2000s land reform. The tenure announced late last year replaces 99-year leases and means the new owners can deal with the property as they wish, including putting it up for sale. "It makes us feel settled," Mupambawashe said. "No one could come and tell us to move off the land or take it away from us." "It is just going to catapult us forward as a nation and an economy," Burger said. "We used to be the breadbasket of Africa and we lost it somewhat. But I just look at where we are now."
GMA Network
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- GMA Network
Krishnah Gravidez enters Top 40 of Miss World 2025
For real-time updates, check out our Miss World 2025 coronation night live blog. Krishnah Gravidez is now one step closer to the Miss World 2025 crown! The Philippine bet was named among the Top 40 candidates still in the running for the title during the pageant's finale night on Saturday at the HITEX Exhibition Center in Hyderabad, India. Here is the complete list of Miss World 2025's Top 40: Americas & Caribbean Trinidad & Tobago Martinique Puerto Rico Dominican Republic Argentina Brazil Haiti Jamaica Panama United States Africa Zambia Namibia Uganda Cameroon Botswana Ethiopia Nigeria Somalia Tunisia Zimbabwe Europe Estonia Wales Ireland Montenegro Belgium Italy Northern Ireland Poland Serbia Ukraine Asia & Oceania Indonesia Turkiye India Thailand Australia Lebanon Malaysia New Zealand Philippines Vietnam Krishnah is vying for the country's second Miss World crown after Megan Young, who won the Philippines' first title in 2013. —Carby Rose Basina/CDC, GMA Integrated News
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Young star Jacob Bethell defends missing Zimbabwe Test for IPL as Ollie Pope steals a march in battle to be England's number three
Jacob Bethell has no regrets about snubbing an England Test match to stay in the Indian Premier League — because he got to spend two months learning off Virat Kohli. The 21-year-old starred at No 3 for England in their winter Test tour of New Zealand but missed last week's match with Zimbabwe to continue his stint with Royal Challengers Bengaluru. In Bethell's absence at Trent Bridge, Ollie Pope scored 171 to stake his claim to keep the No 3 spot for next month's Test series with India. However, Bethell believes missing the Zimbabwe match was worth it after his IPL experience, having twice opened the batting with India great Kohli. 'Once I signed that IPL contract, I was away in India until May 26 and that meant I was missing the dates that the Test was on,' said Bethell. 'No discussions were had (about coming back). I was happy to stay over there and gain more experience. 'It's pretty electrifying to walk out to bat with Virat. He has an aura. Over the couple of months of chatting to him, you get information that keeps coming. It's kind of just drip-fed. 'It was cool to experience someone of his calibre and how he goes about things. 'I only played the two games, but with the training and facilities, you're facing quality bowlers day in, day out. 'It was a great experience and I feel like I'm a better player now than I was a couple of months ago.' Bethell was back playing for England in their first ODI with West Indies on Thursday, when he top-scored with 82 off 53 balls in their resounding 238-run win at Edgbaston. The Warwickshire star's stand-out knock further increased the scrutiny on the battle for the No 3 Test spot, which captain Ben Stokes inadvertently stoked up last week. Before the Zimbabwe match, Stokes appeared to suggest Bethell would return to the team for the India series regardless of how other players performed, before later clarifying he merely meant the squad. Asked if he was aware of the debate, Bethell said: 'Not being in England, I didn't really hear a lot of it until one of my friends messaged me and said the whole thing was going on.
Bloomberg
3 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Rich Nations Courted by Zimbabwe Non-Committal on $2.6 Billion Bridge Finance
Zimbabwe hasn't received any concrete commitments of financial support from 10 nations it appealed to for help in its long-standing efforts to clear debt arrears. 'Some of them are very warm, some of them not so warm,' Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube said Friday in an interview in Abidjan, the commercial capital of Ivory Coast, where he is attending the annual meetings of the African Development Bank. 'You will get a varied response.'
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Simon Mann obituary
The career of the former soldier and mercenary Simon Mann might have seemed unexceptional in the pages of John Buchan or Rider Haggard but unfortunately for him it ended not in the 19th century but in a jail cell in post-colonial 21st-century Africa. Mann, who has died aged 72 following a heart attack, spent five years in prisons in Zimbabwe and then Equatorial Guinea between 2004 and 2009 for his part in the attempted 'Wonga coup', so called because of his unavailing plea for his friends, including Sir Mark Thatcher, the son of the former prime minister, to stump up funds – 'a splodge of wonga' – to rescue him following a failed attempt to overthrow Teodoro Obiang Nguema, the president of the west African oil state. It was, he admitted, 'a fuck up'. The nicknames of those friends were in a letter he attempted to smuggle to his wife from a prison in Harare: Thatcher was Scratcher, allegedly because of the adolescent acne he had suffered at school, and there was also Smelly and Nosher, names perhaps more PG Wodehouse than Bulldog Drummond. But they did not save Mann from torture in Zimbabwe or isolation at the notorious Black Beach prison in Equatorial Guinea. The Sunday Times in 2011 said: 'Everything about [Mann] is preposterous, fruity, bonkers and slightly frightful,' but his friends found him engaging, intelligent, though easily bored, and wry. He had a military career with the Scots Guards and the SAS before seeking adventure and wealth as the organiser of a firm providing mercenaries, mainly from South Africa, to protect oil and mining companies in Angola. Had the coup to overthrow the tyrannical and corrupt president of Equatorial Guinea succeeded, Mann would have received a pay off in the region of £15m. He was a son of privilege, a scion of the London brewery family whose company merged with Watney's. Both his father, George, and grandfather, Frank, had briefly been England and Middlesex cricket captains, in the days when only amateurs were considered suitable for team leadership. Both had served with the Scots Guards and had won the Military Cross, respectively in the first and second world wars. George Mann captained the MCC England party on a tour of South Africa in 1948-49 and met his future wife, Margaret (nee Clark), an heiress, on the boat taking the side back to Britain. Simon, their son, preferred rowing to cricket at Eton, where he was apparently known as 'Maps' because of his fascination with Africa and, according to a friend, the possibility of staging coups there. He proceeded to Sandhurst and a commission in the family regiment. Seeking a livelier challenge, Mann passed the demanding tests for the SAS and became a troop commander specialising in intelligence and counter-terrorism. He served around the world but left the army at the age of 28 in 1981 and started a security business offering protection to wealthy, mainly Arab, clients in Britain, returning to the army briefly to serve during the first Gulf war on the staff of the commander Sir Peter de la Billière. Later, as a sideline, Mann played Col Derek Wilford, the Parachute brigade commander, in Bloody Sunday, the 2002 Paul Greengrass film of the killings by the army at a Derry civil rights demonstration in 1972. In 1996 he teamed up with an oil executive, Tony Buckingham, to found a firm based in South Africa providing security and military support to governments to protect their interests. The company, Executive Outcomes, helped protect the oil wells of the Angolan government, under attack from Unita rebels. Four years later, Mann co-founded Sandline International, another security firm, with a British former officer, Lt Col Tim Spicer, providing military training and arms to the Sierra Leone government trying to keep control of the country's diamond fields. The profits enabled Mann to buy an estate on the Beaulieu River in Hampshire, but also took him back to South Africa, where he began recruiting mercenaries to overthrow the Obiang regime in Equatorial Guinea and replace it with one led by the insurgent leader Severo Moto. By then Mann was in his mid-50s and the whole operation was haphazard and misconceived. It included Mann checking out the price of some supplies at a branch of B&Q. The South African authorities were well aware what was going on – probably as a result of loose talk by the plotters around a hotel swimming pool – and the Zimbabwean government was alerted too, though it continued selling arms and ammunition to Mann and his colleagues. Friends of Mann, including Thatcher, provided funds, though Thatcher himself later claimed he thought he had been buying a helicopter merely for humanitarian work, an excuse which did not prevent him receiving a suspended sentence and a hefty fine for breaking anti-mercenary legislation. All went wrong after Mann and his band of 70 mercenaries touched down in Harare on the night of 7 March 2004 to pick up the arms. They were arrested, as was a further group already in Malabo, the Guinean capital. It was while he was awaiting trial that the notorious letter was written: 'Our situation is not good and it is very URGENT … it may be that getting us out comes down to a large splodge of wonga. Now it's bad times and everyone has to fucking well pull their full weight. Once we get into a real trial scenario we are fucked.' The letter was intercepted by the prison guards. No money was forthcoming from Scratcher, or Smelly, thought to be a reference to Ely Calil, a Nigerian-Lebanese oil tycoon. 'They let me down badly,' Mann complained later. 'They ought to be in shackles as well.' He said Thatcher had known perfectly well about the coup plan and had been part of the team management. He regretted the coup: 'When you go tiger shooting, you don't expect the tiger to win.' Four months after the band's arrest, Mann was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment, later reduced to four, on two counts of buying firearms illegally – the other mercenaries faced short sentences. He had claimed the object of the mission was to protect diamond mines in the Congo. Mann later said he had confessed under duress and had been tortured and subjected to sensory deprivation, 'all the sort of stuff we used to do to each other at (the SAS in) Hereford.' But on his release in Zimbabwe in May 2007 he was immediately extradited to Equatorial Guinea. There he was sentenced to 34 years at Black Beach prison, where, for most prisoners, assaults were rife and food intermittent. There were even rumours that Obiang had a penchant for eating bits of his captives – which the dictator denied. Mann's imprisonment was not so harsh: he had access to books and to journalists; food was supplied from a luxury hotel, and he lunched with the country's security minister. It helped that by then he was admitting his guilt, naming names and expressing contrition. Within 15 months, in November 2009, Obiang freed him 'on humanitarian grounds' to receive medical treatment and see his family in Britain. Back home, Mann was able to meet his five-year-old son, Arthur, for the first time, and to reunite with his wife, Amanda, and six other children. His attempts to restart his career, however, were less successful: 'My former peers couldn't hire me, even in the back office,' he told the Times in 2023. 'It was 'look Simon, don't take it personally, but we spend a lot of time and money telling everyone we are not mercenaries.'' In 2011 he wrote a book on his experiences, Cry Havoc, and latterly was chairing a start-up company attempting to turn plastic waste into hydrogen. One of his friends was said to be Obiang. Mann is survived by Amanda (nee Freedman), who was his third wife and the mother of four of the seven children who also survive him. Simon Mann, army officer and mercenary, born 26 June 1952; died 8 May 2025
