The two men are supposed to share power in a new unity government that is facing the world’s highest inflation rate, hunger and a cholera epidemic that has killed 3,400 people.

Briggs Bomba grew up in Zimbabwe and is now with Africa Action, an organization that focuses on shaping U.S. political and economic policies that affect African nations. He joins Martin Savidge to discuss the likelihood that Mugabe will actually share power, possible solutions to the cholera epidemic and the role of other African countries in improving conditions in Zimbabwe.

PBS Wide Angle interviews Mahmood Mamdani, a Ugandan-born professor of government at Columbia University and an expert on African Studies. Mamdani explains why he believes that the new power-sharing agreement is the best way forward. He also reflects on Mugabe’s three-decade rule, failed land reforms and the subsequent collapse of Zimbabwe’s agricultural system.

The two men are supposed to share power in a new unity government that is facing the world’s highest inflation rate, hunger and a cholera epidemic that has killed 3,400 people.

Wide Angle’s web-exclusive documentary series Focal Point goes undercover with independent journalist and native Zimbabwean Robyn Kriel. Underground Zimbabwe chronicles life in Zimbabwe under Mugabe.

In the video Zimbabwe’s Life Lines, Kriel takes cameras inside empty stores and speaks with people who are trying to make a living in Zimbabwe’s thriving black market. The footage was shot a year ago and the situation has worsened significantly since.

In the video Demonstrating Under Dictatorship, Kriel also follows the non-violent street protests of the 35,000-member activist group Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA).

For more on the crises in Zimbabwe, visit Wide Angle’s Underground Zimbabwe.

Morgan Tsvangirai will become prime minister of Zimbabwe’s unity government.

Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, said on Friday that it will accept a power-sharing plan worked out in September and join a unity government with President Robert Mugabe. The leader of that party, Morgan Tsvangirai, will become prime minister.

The move underscores a growing sense in the region that Zimbabwe needed a political solution so it could address its growing humanitarian crisis.

Blogger “Marius Bosch” writes that the agreement might improve prospects for dealing with the country’s cholera epidemic and widespread hunger.

The “Afrodissident” blog writes that the agreement will merely allow Mugabe’s party to retain a “veneer of democratic respectability” and that the Tsvangirai’s party will not have much power.

Blogger “Denford Magora” in Zimbabwe writes that Tsvangirai’s decision to join the government is merely a “face-saving” tactic, and that the opposition party has merely hopped aboard a sinking ship, as the government has no hope of repairing Zimbabwe’s infrastructure.

Zimbabwe is also trying to deal with a paralyzed economy. This week, the United Nations said unemployment has reached 94 percent. Zimbabwe announced that it will allow transactions in other currencies, as the Zimbabwean dollar has been plagued by hyperinflation.

The economic hardship touches just about every part of life in Zimbabwe, including the crumbling education system. This week was supposed to be the start of the new school year, but teachers went on strike over pay.

Blogger “Bishop Kadenge” writes that the education strikes are hurting Zimbabwean parents, who must pay extra money to get home tutors, but that Zimbabweans as a whole are coming together and working as a community.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Sokwanele - Zimbabwe under a Creative Commons license.

Some have blamed the crisis on the policies of President Robert Mugabe.

Ann Veneman, the executive director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), recently returned from Zimbabwe and joins Martin Savidge to discuss efforts to combat the epidemic, UNICEF’s role in Zimbabwe and the relationship between Zimbabwe’s political impasse and its deteriorating health sector.

Additional footage: UNICEF

Thado Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, is mediating Zimbabwe’s power-sharing agreement.

South African leaders are scheduled to meet next week to discuss the political situation in Zimbabwe, where rival political parties remain at a standstill despite a power-sharing agreement signed four months ago. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) complained that President Robert Mugabe was refusing to share key government posts.

Some, like Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, have called for military intervention in the country and for the forced removal of Mugabe.

Michael Keating is a senior fellow and associate director of the Center for Democracy and Development at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, where he is an Africa specialist. He writes at World Politics Review to argue that military intervention would further destabilize Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe: Military Intervention Would Be a Disaster

While the United States and most of the world celebrated the inauguration of Barack Obama, the people of Zimbabwe were once again being pushed to the brink. Talks between President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangarai have broken down over several key issues, prompting Tsvangarai to say: “For us as the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), this is probably the darkest day of our lives, for the whole nation is waiting.”

At the heart of the dispute is control of key ministries in the power-sharing arrangement being pushed by the South African Development Community (SADC) and its chief mediator, former South African President Thado Mbeki. It appears that the SADC agreement is basically the same one that was put on the table last September, essentially undermining attempts by the Tsvangarai faction to assume some control over key ministries that the Mugabe camp refuses to cede.

In other words, Mbeki is promoting a compromise plan without a compromise. Although the plan calls for Tsvangarai to assume the post of prime minister, it also allows for Mugabe to appoint two vice-presidents from his ZANU-PF party, and it fails to specify which ministries will go to the MDC and which to ZANU-PF. MDC has made it clear that it wants — at least — Home Affairs and Finance, but Mugabe refuses to budge. So the Zimbabwean danse macabre continues.

This outcome, which spells disaster for the people of Zimbabwe, might have been avoided if Mbeki and the other SADC leaders had taken a harder line with Mugabe from the beginning. Instead, the Zimbabwean president feels he has a mandate to make whatever shoddy offer he pleases to his opponents in a take-it-or-leave-it strategy that Tsvangarai has decided is just too paltry.

Headlines dealing with Zimbabwe dwell on the collapsing economy and health-care system, and calls from international activists for military intervention are growing. But there are still people working within the broken-down Zimbabwean judicial system to address some critical legal issues, particularly around land-reform.

The issue is whether the people in Mugabe’s inner circle who benefited from land confiscations will be able to hold on to all of their ill-gotten gains, since the compromise agreement says explicitly that beneficiaries can only hold one farm at a time. Many white farmers view this as an opening to use the court system to get their land — or at least portions of it — back, and to resume pursuing their livelihoods on some of Africa’s richest soil.

The simple fact that white farmers have yet to pack up and leave their native country suggests that, from their perspective, there is still hope.

International activists who have called for military intervention seem to forget the lessons of the Congo, where marauding interveners from multiple countries raped and plundered their way across the landscape, doing nothing but enriching themselves while further destabilizing a chaotic situation. To think that wouldn’t happen in Zimbabwe is naïve.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user World Economic Forum under a Creative Commons license.

Hyperinflation has plagued Zimbabwe, where $50 billion is equivalent to less than $1.25US.

The cholera crisis in Zimbabwe has now claimed more than 2,100 lives and the treatable disease has spread to neighboring countries.

Zimbabwe also has the world’s highest inflation, and released a $50 billion note on Monday that was worth only $1.25 U.S. dollars.

Shanta Devarajan is the chief economist of the Africa region at the World Bank and blogs at “Africa Can.” He shares a letter from a friend in Zimbabwe, where the lines at the bank are long and residents struggle to get clean water and power.

Letter from Zimbabwe

I received this missive from a friend:

December 11, 2008

Harare, 1.00am

It is just after midnight in Harare. I have just returned from a midnight tour of the ATMs in Harare with a cousin. There are queues of people still waiting to get their weekly cash withdrawal limit of $100,000,000,000 (US$2.50). I saw the queues this morning when I went for my first meeting at 7.45 a.m. I did not know then that I would be seeing them throughout the day. Most of the ATMs had run out of money. Rather than go home, people saved their precious place in the lines by lying down where they stood and taking a nap. Covering themselves with sacks, newspapers and whatever warming clothing they had. Those ATMs that were still paying out cash had queues of policemen and soldiers. I dared not pull out my camera then. When I did pull out my camera, it was of people too tired to care. Needless to say, picture quality from a moving car using a micro camera is not the best. This is not a normal interpretation of 24-hour banking; seven days a week.

Three hours earlier, I had gone to one of the cholera-infected areas where my aunt lives. I had not intended to stay long. It is a way out of town and I did not want her worrying about my safety getting back into the city. There was a power outage from 6 p.m. and it had taken us two hours to find a house I last visited 20 years ago as a boy. But I did ask how she was coping in Harare; and to her nephew she poured her heart out. No clean water for weeks on end, no food in the shops and constant power cuts. She drives an hour and half across the township in search of clean drinking water, which she brings back in plastic containers. When the city council water does run through the taps in the house, the water is discolored with sewer water. The shops in the neighborhood are empty of basic necessities including mealie meal. Her husband now lives at their farm in another town so that he can plant, guard and harvest the maize that they will live on next year. There are groceries in some shops in the city, but they are sold in US$ and priced beyond her means. I am glad I brought her a suitcase of groceries. Groceries that, 20 years ago, my parents once drove from Lusaka to Harare to buy when Zambia was going through similar madness in the 1980s.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user ZeroOne under a Creative Commons license.

Andrew Meldrum, a senior editor at GlobalPost, reported from Zimbabwe for more than 20 years and joins Martin Savidge to discuss the state of the country’s health sector and how the U.S. can respond to the crisis.

They discuss the shoe-throwing incident in Iraq and its international importance, the worsening situation in Gaza and the potential for action in the Zimbabwe crisis.

A military commander close to Mugabe was shot on Saturday, in what the Zimbabwe government claimed was an assassination attempt.

Andrew Meldrum, a senior editor at GlobalPost, reported from Zimbabwe for more than 20 years and joins Martin Savidge to discuss the shooting incident, the future of the political situation in Zimbabwe and potential options for the Obama administration in the African nation.

Read our previous coverage of the political and health crises in Zimbabwe.

They discuss U.S. plans to move more troops into Afghanistan, Pakistani leader Asif Ali Zardari’s claims that he is taking steps against terrorism amid questions about his government’s effectiveness and Zimbabwe’s continued cholera crisis.

AUDIO: Dele Olojede, a Nigerian journalist, Pulitzer Prize winner and former foreign editor of Newsday, joins Martin Savidge from Lagos, Nigeria, to discuss Robert Mugabe’s situation, the role of other African nations in Zimbabwe and the country’s future.

The cholera crisis in Zimbabwe prompted President Robert Mugabe to give his own assessment of the outbreak, claiming there was ”no cholera.” 

The United Nations reports more than 16,000 cases of cholera and almost 800 deaths.

Mugabe also launched a counterattack against world leaders and those who say he should resign or be removed. 

Read more about the cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe and calls for Mugabe to step down in our previous Blogwatches.

AUDIO: Manuel Lopez, head of a Doctors Without Borders mission in Zimbabwe, joins Martin Savidge from Harare to discuss the spread of the disease, Zimbabwe’s health sector and efforts to end the epidemic.

The situation in Zimbabwe continues to collapse, and international aid workers are struggling to provide even the most basic medical care to tens of thousands of people.

At least 775 have now died due to the country’s outbreak of cholera, and another 16,141 are infected. Some have sought treatment in neighboring countries, and the disease has spread to South Africa.

Read more about the cholera epidemic and political strife in Zimbabwe in our previous Blogwatches.

Many African countries have been slow to criticize the Zimbabwean leader, but Kenya recently called for foreign intervention.

A spokesman for Mugabe claimed that the U.S. and United Kingdom are planning to invade Zimbabwe.

Andrew Meldrum, a senior editor at GlobalPost, reported from Zimbabwe for more than 20 years and joins Martin Savidge to discuss the humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe’s role in the country and international calls for the leader to step down.

Below, bloggers discuss the humanitarian and political situations in Zimbabwe.

Blogger “Sokwanele” posts images of raw sewage in the streets of Ruwa — an ominous sign for the spread of cholera as the disease spreads. For more on the cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe, see our previous Blogwatch: Cholera claims more than 560 lives in Zimbabwe.

The “Kubatana” blog writes that it is the failing government who is responsible for the health crisis.

The “Foreign Policy Blog” says that international calls for Mugabe’s removal give him the excuse to play victim of Western imperialism.

The “Back Towards the Locus” blog responds to an article in the Times Online that calls on the African Union to send troops into Zimbabwe, arguing that such military action would endanger aid workers and exacerbate instability.

Protesters marched at the Harare International Conference Centre, the venue for this week’s regional meeting.

After hours of talks, Zimbabwe’s rival political parties remain at a standstill on a power-sharing deal.

The country’s neighbors — members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) — have now decided to intervene and hold a regional summit to resolve Zimbabwe’s political impasse. United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon has urged decisive action at the meeting.

As Zimbabwe’s political future hangs in the balance, bloggers from the region voice their thoughts about President Robert Mugabe and the political system.

Blogger “Kwapi” writes at the “NowPublic” Web site that Zimbabwe’s leaders, as well as its complacent citizens, are to blame for a cycle of poltical dysfunction.

Blogger “Opalo” demands an ultimatum, writing from Zimbabwe that the squabbling over cabinet seats ignores the plight of rural citizens in a country whose inflation rate recently reached 231 million percent.

A citizen journalist at “OhMyNews” writes about Mugabe’s current situation and the climate of fear in Zimbabwean politics.

On Oct. 27, 47 protesters from the Restoration of Human Rights group (ROHR) were arrested in Harare, Zimbabwe, where the regional summit will take place.

The “Zimbabwe Republic Police” blog, which monitors police action in Zimbabwe, concludes the protest was peaceful and that the officers involved should themselves be arrested.

Zimbabwe’s main opposition party accused the 28-year incumbent Mugabe of lacking sincerity about developing a cooperative government. Mugabe has led Zimbabwe since it gained independence from Britain in 1980. The opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, may boycott the forthcoming summit.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Sokwanele under a  Creative Commons license.