Zimbabwe Crisis – Resources

History Matters has compiled several resources on the Zimbabwe crisis …

The list of resources available online is long. If you would like to recommend more resources, please email me or leave a comment below, thanks.

Latest: Memorandum of Understanding between ZANU-PF and MDC

You can see a timeline of the crisis since the March 29 elections here or a longer timeline (going back to 1889, when Rhodes founded the British South Africa Company in Zimbabwe) here (pdf 140k).

You can see press releases on the current crisis from the ANC, Cosatu, ZACTU (Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions), the Presidency of South Africa, as well as yesterday’s Security Council statement (pdf 120k). The SADC communiqué of April is available here. It appears the MDC website has been vandalized and Google warns visitors to the site about computer security issues they have detected (pdf 120k).

Interesting articles and reports include,

• Ebrahim Fakir (Centre for Policy Studies) on Genesis, History and Politics – Party Political contestations and conflicts in Zimbabwe
• Idasa’s most recent report How to Loose and Election and Stay in Power (pdf 280k)
• At the Difficult Dialogues session at UCT on 1 July, Desmond Tutu, Mamphela Ramphele, Heidi Holland and Wilmow James delivered excellent presentations on the way forward in Zimbabwe. Follow this link to read their papers. You also can read other Zimbabwe posts on History Matters.
• Institute for Security Studies’ report on the public seminar ‘Zimbabwe at the Crossroads‘ (pdf 44k)
• Human Rights Watch’s report on state-sponsored violence
• International Crisis Group’s most recent report, ‘Negotiating Zimbabwe’s Transition’ (pdf 163k)
• Joshua Hammer’s article The Reign of Thuggery in the New York Review of Books.
• Francois Grignon of the International Crisis Group – “Peace Advocates Deserve Support”, in allAfrica.com

Useful background documents are Zimbabwe’s Constitution and the Lancaster House agreement of 1979 which paved the way for Zimbabwe’s independence.

good websites:

The Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition (350 affiliates in southern Africa and offices in Harare and Johannesburg).

The Institute for War and Peace has a good feature with reports and other documents.

The International Crisis Group has numerous useful links on their dedicated Zimbabwe Crisis page.

Some interesting blogs are

Alex Mathews’ Afrodissident. Also look at 3rd Liberation.

For the latest news coverage of Zimbabwe, visit

• AllAfrica – Zimbabwe
• The Guardian on Zimbabwe
• Inside Zimbabwe
• IRIN –Zimbabwe
• IWPR – Africa
• Mail & Guardian – Southern Africa
• Reuters AlertNet for Zimbabwe
• www.zimbabwesituation.com (thanks Lauren)