Latest news with #RobertMugabe
Yahoo
21-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Blair's fury with Chirac over Mugabe summit invite
Tony Blair bitterly accused French president Jacques Chirac of trying to undermine UK efforts to put pressure on Zimbabwe's dictatorial leader Robert Mugabe, according to newly released government files. Papers released by the National Archives show Mr Blair erupted with anger when he learned Mr Chirac was insisting the Zimbabwean president should be allowed to attend an EU-Africa summit due to be held in 2003. 'But this is the opposite of what he said to me,' he scrawled in a handwritten note after No 10 officials told him Mr Chirac feared South African president Thabo Mbeki would stay away from the gathering unless Mr Mugabe was invited. 'Ultimately if France wants to take the heat on this they can and probably they are using it to damage the UK's standing in Africa in the belief (mistaken) that Mugabe retains credibility. 'But we should be seen to do all we can to protest.' The row came as Zimbabwe was caught up in a worsening spiral of violence and economic collapse after Mr Mugabe instigated a violent campaign to drive the country's remaining white farmers from their lands. Mr Blair's Labour government was at the forefront of international efforts to pressurise Mr Mugabe to end the chaos, implement democratic reforms and restore the rule of law. The UK's intervention was, however, deeply resented by Mr Mugabe who argued that – as the former colonial power – Britain should be paying reparations to his country. As the situation worsened Mr Blair noted that they needed to be 'pretty fierce on Mugabe' if they were to make any progress. He was, however, warned by South Africa's former president Nelson Mandela that – as a veteran of Africa's struggles for liberation from colonial rule – Mr Mugabe still needed to be treated with respect. 'Despite the recent turmoil in Zimbabwe we must not forget that President Mugabe is a statesman who has made a major contribution not only to Zimbabwe's independence but to the liberation of southern Africa,' he wrote in a letter to the prime minister. 'He deserves our good will, support and advice. As friends we should be able to discuss the issue of land redistribution, the rule of law and violence frankly and constructively with him.' Meanwhile, efforts to foster better Anglo-French co-operation on Africa were hampered by a deep personal antipathy between Mr Chirac and Britain's international development secretary Clare Short. Sir John Holmes, Britain's ambassador to Paris, said Mr Chirac had taken him aside to complain that she was 'viscerally anti-French and 'insupportable''. He contrasted her attitude with the good working relationship French foreign minister Hubert Vedrine had enjoyed with his British counterpart Jack Straw and before him Robin Cook. 'Vedrine and Cook had worked well together, and Vedrine and Straw were continuing in the same vein. But Ms Short was impossible,' Sir John reported the French president as saying. 'He had not liked to raise this with the prime minister because they always had lots of other things to talk about, but we needed to know the position. In typical Chirac fashion, he laboured the point for several minutes.' When Sir John assured him that Ms Short's views had been 'transformed' in the light of a recent trip to the region by Mr Vedrine, the French president replied 'God be praised'.
IOL News
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- IOL News
Calvin Ratladi's 'Breakfast with Mugabe' delivers a bold, haunting portrait at The Market Theatre
The cast brings to life the final years of Robert Mugabe's rule in Zimbabwe in Fraser Grace's award-winning play 'Breakfast with Mugabe', delving into the troubled mind of the once-revered leader as he confronts inner demons and political paranoia. After a powerful debut at the 2025 National Arts Festival, Calvin Ratladi's Breakfast with Mugabe is set to make its way to the Market Theatre - bringing with it a bold, unflinching meditation on power, memory, and the ghosts that haunt leadership. The production, which drew strong responses during its Makhanda run from July 3 to 6 as part of the festival - South Africa's longest-running and most prestigious celebration of the arts - marked a significant moment for Ratladi, this year's Standard Bank Young Artist for Theatre. Based on the award-winning script by British playwright Fraser Grace, the production reimagines President Robert Mugabe not as the distant figure we've come to know through headlines and political discourse, but as a haunted man, navigating memory, grief, and the ghosts of power. In Grace's fictionalised account, loosely inspired by reports that Mugabe once sought psychiatric help for his declining mental health, we find Zimbabwe's former president in conversation with a white psychiatrist. What begins as a clinical session soon unravels into a layered exploration of trauma, nationalism, identity, and the burdens of leadership. Breakfast with Mugabe has been hailed as a 'modern-day Macbeth,' but in Ratladi's hands, the play becomes something even more personal and political. 'Never in my deepest existence did I imagine I would direct this play,' Ratladi admits. 'I read it in 2016 while I was still an undergrad. I loved the script, but it was not the kind of work I gravitate towards.' Yet something lingered. Over the years, he noticed how the themes of land dispossession, power, African culture, spirituality and ancestry echoed his own artistic concerns. The connection deepened, not just with Mugabe the leader, but with Mugabe the man. 'I was interested in who this man really was. Not the version fed to us by the media and propaganda. I wanted to know the colour of his underwear, the small decisions in his household that somehow held global consequences. These things aren't just personal, they're ancestral, psychological, spiritual.' To ground the production in authenticity, Ratladi brought on a cultural dramaturg from Zimbabwe, Professor Samuel Ravengai, an academic intimately familiar with the country's spiritual and political terrain. The dramaturg helped guide certain choices in the staging, allowing Ratladi to merge intuitive direction with lived cultural insight. 'Every moment in the show was decided,' he says. 'Sometimes I followed their advice fully, sometimes partially. But I always listened.' His cast, too, reflects this commitment to truth. Themba Ndaba brings gravitas to the role of Robert Mugabe, while Gontse Ntshegang embodies Grace Mugabe with a commanding, complex presence. Craig Jackson rounds out the principal cast as Andrew Peric, the probing psychiatrist whose sessions with Mugabe drive the psychological tension of the piece. One surprise addition was the actor cast as the president's bodyguard, Farai Chigudu, who flew in from Zimbabwe to audition. 'I asked him three times to come in, and he never once mentioned he was flying from Zimbabwe,' Ratladi recalls. 'Now he's here, in South Africa, making his theatre debut.' The production process was as intense as the script itself. With just four weeks to mount the piece, Ratladi and his team worked at an unrelenting pace, driven by what he describes as a divine plan. 'This felt like God's work. Everything aligned, cast, collaborators, and timing. Things I dreamed about years ago just started falling into place.' But why should people come see Breakfast with Mugabe? For Ratladi, the answer lies in what the play dares to confront. 'In African leadership, vulnerability is still a taboo,' he says. 'And I think this play opens up that conversation. It shows how the political and the personal are deeply intertwined, how a moment of discomfort in a leader's household can spill over and shape the fate of an entire nation.' Ratladi refers to the piece as being 'full of flaws, fear, brilliance, and brokenness.' At its heart, it's about human beings, not headlines. 'I had to guide the actors to play real people. That meant stripping away performance masks and finding emotional truth. I hope audiences leave unsettled, in the best way, questioning the cost of silence, the weight of history, and what it means to protect the myths of one's life.' Ratladi insists that Breakfast with Mugabe is far more than a biographical study; it's a meditation on the aftershocks of colonialism, the psychological toll of liberation, and the fragile humanity obscured by political power. His interpretation is steeped in African cosmology and cultural specificity, yet it echoes with a universality that resonates far beyond the continent. 'Every day I walked into rehearsal, it felt like coming home,' he says. 'Not work. Home. And we understood the politics of this continent, but also where we are now, and how this story might speak to the global moment.' He adds that the production has changed him. 'One thing this work has taught me is to trust slowness. To listen. I've learned that the most powerful moments are found in the quiet corners of a scene, in the breath before the line. It's reaffirmed my commitment to telling African stories with complexity, without simplifying our realities to fit Western expectations.' Breakfast with Mugabe will make its highly anticipated debut at The Market Theatre, where it will run from July 16 to August 10.
National Post
05-07-2025
- Politics
- National Post
Geoff Russ: Race socialism is coming to the West. It will start in New York
Article content The Africa Report, an award-winning quarterly focusing on the continent's current affairs, reported in June that the Mamdanis were awash with 'diasporic intellectualism, where ideas about justice, decolonization and identity were household conversations.' Article content How exactly did decolonization play out in Africa following the collapse of European rule? There was great enthusiasm for wealth redistribution and the scapegoating of ethnic minorities, led by charismatic figures like Uganda's Idi Amin and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe. Article content Following the British departure in 1962, Idi Amin demonized and purged the country's mostly South Asian merchant class in the 1970s, Mamdani's father among them. Their businesses were expropriated, and their assets confiscated. Article content In the 1980s in Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, Robert Mugabe seized the lands of the remaining white farmers in an attempt to loot and redistribute the wealth associated with it. Article content Concurrent to that, Mugabe began a violent repression of the country's sizable Ndebele minority, whom he accused of subversion and sabotage. It resulted in the deaths of up to 30,000 Zimbabwean citizens. Article content The Ndebele remember it as a time when their people were singled out and slaughtered. Mahmood Mamdani described this period as one of 'massive social change,' in which 'very little turmoil' took place. For those who champion decolonization, the violent cleansing of certain ethnic groups is immaterial if it furthers the cause. Article content According to Africa Report, his son Zohran would be 'the first to carry the intellectual legacy of postcolonial Africa into the political heart of the West.' Article content Right now, the West's cultural zeitgeist is perfectly aligned for the arrival of this sort of decolonial race socialism in New York City. Article content It is impossible to ignore the newly emerged, constructed narrative of the 'colonizers' and the 'colonized.' Resentment and the assignment of ancestral guilt are at the core of it, and it has spread throughout the English-speaking world. Article content Statues of explorers, monarchs and historical business and political leaders are common targets for radicals who despise the countries they helped to found. They have been toppled, smashed or vandalized in Victoria, Hamilton, and Melbourne, usually without legal repercussions. Article content Article content This fabricated Indigenous-colonizer conflict is not only permissible, but given space in respectable society across Australia, Canada and even Britain. The hustlers are given prime- time television slots or academic tenure to vent, and usually receive polite nods from the presenters in return. Article content In America, Zohran Mamdani's rise to political stardom is where this wave of racial politics meets the socialist revival spearheaded by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who have wholeheartedly endorsed him. Article content The politics of the English-speaking world have always been connected, and the United States is its most powerful engine for driving new narratives. Mamdani's team are artful practitioners of social media, and his presence is felt well beyond the U.S. Article content Already, Canadian NDP politicians like Marit Stiles and MP Leah Gazan are falling over each other trying to heap praise upon him. Article content Gazan, a leading voice for radical decolonial, anti-Western politics in Ottawa, posted on X: 'Zohran Mamdani's victory in New York is an inspiring example for how progressives can stand up to establishment liberals or authoritarians like Trump.' Article content
IOL News
02-07-2025
- Politics
- IOL News
Inside the violent brawl that led to Robert Mugabe's son Chatunga's recent arrest
Former Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe's youngest son, Bellarmine Chatunga Mugabe. Picture: Instagram Image: Instagram Former Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe's youngest son, Bellarmine Chatunga Mugabe, has been released on bail after he was arrested on multiple charges including assault. The 28-year-old Chatunga is charged alongside his bodyguards identified as Peter Fredson and Tinashe Mupawo. The arrest follows a violent attack that occurred at a mining site in Mazowe - Ultimate Mining concession, leaving a security guard critically injured, with broken limbs. The Ultimate Mining concession borders a farm owned by Chatunga's mother, Grace Mugabe. The brutal attack happened last week, when the furious Chatunga led a group of heavily armed men, some brandishing AK-47 rifles. The group, led by Chatunga, charged into the mining area and confronted the security guards, accusing them of allowing illegal miners to operate on his mother's property. Get your news on the go, click here to join the IOL News WhatsApp channel. After a severe attack, several employees of the mining concession were nursing wounds after being brutally assaulted. There are also reports of some gunshots being heard during the chaos. On Tuesday, Chatunga was seen in a video doing the rounds, wearing a black hoodie during a court appearance. Chatunga and his co-accused were later released on US$200 (around R3,500). Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Ad loading In September last year, IOL reported that court in Zimbabwe had issued a warrant of arrest for Chatunga, after he failed to attend court in connection with another violent incident. IOL saw the statement from the National Prosecuting Authority of Zimbabwe, which stated that Chatunga was expected to appear before the Beitbridge Magistrate's Court, in the border town near South Africa. Chatunga was due before the court for a routine remand hearing following his arrest two weeks earlier on charges of disorderly conduct. The long-time president's son also faced charges of possession of prohibited weapons, in the form of a knife allegedly found on him. 'Allegations are that on August 31 2024 the accused person's vehicle which was being driven by a South African national was stopped at Bubi security roadblock in Beitbridge. The driver was asked to produce his passport and vehicle registration documents,' the prosecutions authority's statement read. The South African national was identified in media reports as Irvin Molokoza. The Zimbabwean authorities said before the driver could comply, Chatunga allegedly handed his passport to the police officer. 'The police officer ordered the driver to park the vehicle on the side of the road. It is alleged that the accused person complained after the police officer requested that the driver parks the motor vehicle off the road. He (Chatunga) allegedly disembarked from the vehicle and charged towards the police officer shouting, 'what are you doing, you are delaying me for the fourth time. I am rushing to a wedding in Harare, check my passport, don't you know who I am',' the National Prosecuting Authority of Zimbabwe stated regarding the disorderly conduct charge. Former Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe. Image: File
News24
01-07-2025
- Politics
- News24
Zim court dismisses ZAPU's move to block Gukurahundi public hearings
The High Court in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, has dismissed an application by an opposition party seeking to halt the Gukurahundi massacres public hearing. More than 20 000 people accused of being dissidents fighting the government were killed by soldiers while former president Robert Mugabe was in office. President Emmerson Mnangagwa's government initiated public hearings to seek healing and compensation for the victims. The Bulawayo High Court in Zimbabwe on Tuesday dismissed an application by the opposition party, the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), to stop the public hearings into the Gukurahundi massacres. According to the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe, more than 20 000 people accused of being dissidents were killed by former president Robert Mugabe's soldiers in the early 1980s. The massacres took place in Matebeleland, south-west Zimbabwe. The current government of President Emmerson Mnangagwa had initiated public hearings - to be led by traditional chiefs - to seek healing and compensation for victims. Mnangagwa was the security minister during the massacres. On Tuesday, Bulawayo High Court Judge Munamato Mutevedzi dismissed the urgent court application, saying: ZAPU did not act when they initially felt aggrieved but waited for the day of the public hearings to start and then bring their case before the courts. The public hearings were supposed to kick off last Thursday but were postponed due to the court application. ZAPU spokesperson Richard Gandari told News24 that this was a sad judgment and they were working on a way forward. 'As ZAPU, we tend to disagree with the judge that the matter is not urgent. We still have an urgent issue in the spirit of the law, but we will respect this outcome. 'As a matter of principle, we are going to pursue other avenues that are peaceful to get a resolution and get justice for victims of Gukurahundi. So that this issue, which has now spanned several decades, can be resolved once and for all.' Gandari said he felt the current public hearings would not bring any justice. 'It is our view that the shadowing process being led by traditional chiefs falls far too short when delivering genuine restorative justice for the victims. 'It is also silent on the role played by the perpetrators and making it a one-sided affair which is tantamount to interrogations of survivors of Gukurahundi. We don't believe any healing will come out of these hearings, and part of our urgent court application came from the nature of those hearings.' A Matabeleland region community-based advocacy group, Ibhetshu Likazulu, which has been calling for compensation for the Gukurahundi massacres, said the court's dismissed disadvantaged victims. 'There are critical issues about these public hearings. First, the issue of media being barred and the issue of privatisation of these Gukurahundi public hearings are about to start. Those are the issues people are complaining about. 'Especially the fact that the perpetrator [the government] is the one who is supposed to be giving people ground rules on what should be done and what should not be done. Will people have access to the final report? Those are the critical issues we need to address as a nation before the public hearing starts,' added the advocacy group's secretary-general, Mbuso Fuzwayo. Human rights activist Vumani Ndlovu, who is based in Matabeleland, said affected people made it clear the process 'must be driven by themselves and the perpetrator [the government] must not be the one who is telling them what to do'. Ndlovu added the best solution was to set up an independent commission led by a foreign leader. 'When few people were killed after the 2018 elections, the government constituted a commission that was run and chaired by a foreigner and a highly regarded somebody, Kgalema Motlanthe. Why not do the same with the Gukurahundi issue?'
