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Convicted sex offender arrested for alleged possession of pornographic material. Possession of pornography is a crime in Zimbabwe ...

s aim is to increase this figure to around 5% by the end of fiscal 2015. Women accounted for 287 of the 9,691 senior officials in central government ministries and agencies as of last October, up 28 from January 2013. Namibia: prime minister lashes out at senior officials over inefficiency The prime minister Hage Geingob has accused senior government officials , including permanent secretaries, of...

A huge male elephant creeps up on some tourists taking pictures at Imire rhino and wildlife conservation area in Wedza, Zimbabwe ...

trips to Europe for "Holocaust education" that are essentially five-day vacations. In 2012, these subsidies totalled 8 million shekels ($2.3 million). Zimbabwe: calls for government to trim civil service and cultivate the economy Civil servants...

s trip to Harare sends wrong message, but Adams' manager defends concert The Canadian soft-rock singer Bryan Adams will this week become the biggest international artist in years to perform in Zimbabwe. All 3,500 tickets for Friday's concert in the capital, Harare, sold out within hours. Just as the American singer Mariah Carey was recently condemned for accepting $1m to perform at a benefit attended...

Civil service global roundup: The national treasury union is calling for the federal pay raise to get back on track Pakistan: bill introduced to ban civil servants from serving international organisations A bill to prevent civil servants from serving in international organisations has been tabled by senator Nayyer Hussain Bokhari. The bill would not apply to civil servants who are posted in international...

s medicine and siblings' school fees. She met a malaisha who promised to give her a job and a place to stay, so she crossed the border with him. "I worked for him for a few months, cleaning and cooking, but he never paid me," Precious recalls. "When I demanded my overdue money, he said I would have to have sex with him, then he would give me the money, but I refused so he beat me. After this I was...

The immigration minister promises to consider application for asylum from Zimbabwe's outgoing ambassador ...

s ambassador to Australia has requested asylum there, claiming that it is not safe for her to go home. Jacqueline Zwambila, whose term ends on Tuesday, said she had been smeared and threatened by supporters of Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe. Zwambila was appointed by the Zimbabwe unity government, which included ministers from the Movement for Democratic Change, of which she was a member....

s back and tried to force open its jaws, punching its head and poking its eyes with reeds. The crocodile released the child and turned on Kachere, who wrested himself free of its grasp. The newspaper said the child lost a leg and his father...

unions finally agree on negotiators Civil servants' unions finally agreed on nine representatives to negotiate salaries for public sector workers after days of in-fighting and an ultimatum from the government. The unions previously failed to agree on who should represent them in salary talks with the government, despite meeting in Harare for more than seven hours. There were 12 civil service unions...

t afford candles gave birth at home, which was very dangerous," he said. The risks of giving birth using candlelight at the clinic were high. "It was terrible to try and deliver without adequate light. I couldn't see the wounds clearly and it was difficult to repair the lacerations because I couldn't see where they started. It was impossible to see the birth canal too," Chanakira said. "But since 2010...

s rise . More Africans were seduced by them in 2013 than ever before. But the mall was also then the logical target for terrorists seeking maximum impact on their perceived enemies and the world beyond. In September al-Shabaab , an Islamist militant group from Somalia, brought mayhem to the upmarket Westgate shopping centre – one of the temples of Africa's 21st-century consumer capitalism – in neighbouring...

s legacy It was the performance of his career. When the South African president, Jacob Zuma, wearing a sombre black Nehru-collar tunic, addressed the nation and much of the world just before midnight last Thursday to break the news of Nelson Mandela's death , he rose to the occasion. Even Zuma's critics have praised the gravitas and carefully crafted prose with which he captured the national mood,...

s multimillion-pound TradeMark Southern Africa (TMSA) programme operated on assumptions rather than evidence and failed to prioritise the needs of poor and vulnerable communities. "We've never seen a programme as bad as this," said Icai commissioner Diana Good. "But DfID is not as engaged with their programmes as they should be. If DfID does not get into the field more, how are they going to know what...

s income on foreign aid, but he has so far failed to enact a coalition pledge to enshrine that promise in law. At the same time, the budget for helping the world's poorer countries has come under sustained criticism from Tory rightwingers, many of whom argue that Britain can no longer afford to send billions abroad at a time of austerity. Cameron has also faced criticism from charities over the prospect...

s office has denied Mbeki's allegation. Mbeki, however, remained adamant . Mbeki's accusation has sparked furious debate, with disagreement about which of the two former leaders is telling the truth. For instance, Ian Birrell writes in the Independent that "it is impossible to determine whether the whisky-drinking president's [Mbeki] recollection is accurate given the emphatic denial by Blair – not...

s rights and as a result I now know how to take better care of mine." Tlou said her husband was the first to attend the podcast meetings in the village. "I'm always busy at work and also taking care of the children, so he told me what he had learnt," she said. The podcasts are broadcast in isiNdebele, the most common local language spoken in the southern part of Zimbabwe. The topics covered include...

s office. Both the UK as its former colonial power, and South Africa, its most powerful neighbour, have long played an intimate role in Zimbabwean affairs. But their leaders were divided on how to act when it descended into chaos following the violent seizures of white-owned farms. Blair, who had made a triumphant military intervention in Sierra Leone , was determined that Mugabe should step down whereas...

At the start of The Golden Notebook, central character Anna Wulf says: "As far as I can see everything is cracking up." Doris Lessing explains how a line emerging from a traumatic disillusionment with communism half-a-century ago would be redundant today –even though the cracks Anna foresaw have grown and deepened. In interviews with the Guardian down the years, she also discusses why women have a...