Zimbabwe

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — With Zimbabwe’s economy in shambles and political tensions rising, leaving the country seems the best option for many who are desperate for jobs. But those dreams often end at the passport office, which doesn’t have enough foreign currency to import proper paper and ink.

A passport now takes no less than a year to be issued. An emergency passport can take months amid a backlog of 280,000 applications, never mind recent ones.

HARARE, May 27 (Xinhua) -- At least eight people died at a mine in Mazowe, about 40 km north of Harare, after a mine shaft they were working in collapsed following an explosion, the information department in the Zimbabwean government said Monday.

The Ministry of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services posted on Twitter that the incident involved illegal miners.

HARARE, April 29 (Xinhua) -- An Air Zimbabwe plane caught a "brief tail pipe fire" mid-air on Sunday after suffering a malfunction on one of its engines, the airline said in a statement Monday.

"However, the malfunction did not threaten the continuation of the flight and safety of the crew and passengers on board and it landed safely in Harare at 2030hrs. Our engineers have commenced the requisite investigations and a report will be issued in due course," the airline said.

The Boeing 767-200ER servicing flight UM462 was flying from Johannesburg to Harare.

Zimbabwe next month will start paying partial compensation to white commercial farmers whose properties were seized nearly 20 years ago under Robert Mugabe's land reforms, the government said Monday.

In a statement, the finance and agriculture ministries said they had budgeted 53 million Zimbabwean dollars ($18 million) in payments to "former farm owners affected by the land reform programme and who are in financial distress."

Chimanimani, Mar 21; AP: A week after Cyclone Idai lashed southern Africa, flooding still raged Thursday as torrential rains caused a dam to overflow in Zimbabwe, threatening riverside populations. The confirmed death toll in Zimbabwe, neighboring Mozambique and Malawi surpassed 500, with hundreds more feared dead in towns and villages that were completely submerged.

Aid agencies and several governments continued to step up their deployments, with helicopters in short supply for hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the cyclone.

16 Mar 2019; DW: Tropical Cyclone Idai has left at least 31 people dead in eastern Zimbabwe, the government said on Saturday, continuing a trail of destruction across southeast Africa.

Since the start of the week, heavy rains and the powerful storm already killed 87 people in neighboring Mozambique and Malawi.

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa arrived in Harare late Monday after cutting short his fund-raising trip in order to address the country’s economic crisis and crackdown.

Mnangagwa was welcomed at Harare International Airport by Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, former army commander who was in charge during the president’s week-long absence and when the government launched a widespread clampdown in which 12 people were killed, more shot by troops and others dragged from their homes and beaten, according to human rights groups.

18 Jan 2019; AFP: Zimbabwe imposed a "total shutdown" of the internet on Friday, a major provider told customers, after protests early this week triggered a ruthless security crackdown.

The internet had been partially restored after a first shutdown started on Tuesday.

"We were served with another directive for total shutdown of the internet until further notice," Econet, the country's biggest provider, said in a text message on Friday.