Robert Mugabe

The president's health is in the spotlight – and it is hardline generals who are set to determine the face of Zimbabwe's futureDuring August, Robert Mugabe was pictured walking unsteadily and requiring the assistance of aides when going up and downstairs at various summits. The images sent long-running speculation in Zimbabwe about the state of Mugabe's health – he is said to have a form of cancer – into overdrive.

The golden arches of McDonald's could soon be rising over struggling ZimbabweRobert Mugabe meets Ronald McDonald? It sounds about as likely as the Zimbabwe president retiring to become a beekeeper in Sussex. Yet a publicity stunt involving Mugabe clutching a burger beneath the golden arches of McDonald's emerged as a real possibility.

Diplomatic tensions grow as president criticises Robert Mugabe after 'insulted' western ambassadors walk out of state funeralBarack Obama has openly criticised Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, and said he is "heartbroken" by the country's turmoil since independence.The US president's unusually forthright comments are unlikely to soothe diplomatic tensions after his ambassador walked out of Mugabe's sister's state funeral in protest at an anti-western diatribe.Obama, whose father was Kenyan, was addressing 115 young Africans at an event in Washington to mark the 50th anniversary of independence in many of their countries."I'll be honest with you," the American president said.

Place names, schools, eloquent oratories and, of course, cricket can make Zimbabwe seem the most English of African countriesHigh tea and cakes to the strains of a grand piano. Rooms with names such as Balmoral, Edinburgh, Windsor, Mirabelle and Edward & Connaught. An oak-panelled grill that recalls a gentlemen's club on Pall Mall.Yes, it must be Zimbabwe again.The Meikles in Harare claims to be the country's best hotel, and it certainly seems to have dodged the economic bullets of recent years.

Commander of the white Rhodesians who resisted black ruleLieutenant General Peter Walls, who has died aged 83, may go down in history as one of the most successful of counter-insurgency commanders. Yet even he could not prevail in an unwinnable war against nationalists determined to overturn minority white rule and transform Rhodesia into Zimbabwe.Born in what was then the self-governing British colony of Southern Rhodesia, Walls went to Britain in his teens during the second world war and entered the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst at the very end of hostilities.

Gemstone finds in the country's wild east have brought spies and paranoia and turned Mutare into frontier town

Founder of the Kimberley Process says that Harare must be brought back into international fold to avoid destabilising global tradeBlood diamonds will flood back into the world ma illerket unless a way is found to bring Zimbabwe back under global control at a key meeting next week, according to one of the world's biggest diamond tycoons.Willie Nagel, founding father of the Kimberley Process – a group made up of government, human rights and diamond industry officials to prevent the trading of diamonds that could be used for financing wars – has warned that Zimbabwe is not adhering to the "clean trade" system.He said u

Proposed site has links with massacres by Mugabe's men, say supporters of Zimbabwe liberation struggle leaderPlans for a statue of a leader of the liberation struggle in Zimbabwe have been branded an insult to the victims of massacres ordered by president Robert Mugabe.Joshua Nkomo fought alongside Mugabe to overthrow white minority rule in Rhodesia, but after independence the pair fell out.

Child scavengers in Harare bear tragic witness to how little has changed in a society brutalised by Robert Mugabe's cynical ruleR otting food scraps picked out of the dirt and the bins of the backstreets of Harare are piled together in a slimy heap on the ground with torn cardboard as a serving plate.Elias, 15, squats and pushes both hands into the pile, scooping out a chunk of something pink. He gnaws on it, then shouts: "Dinner! Come and eat."The other boys shush him. "The police will come," says Lloyd, "and we will have to run." There are more than 20 of them, gathered on a small piece of waste ground around a thin fire. The youngest is 8, the eldest 18. Lloyd used to have a blanket, but the police took it last time he was rounded up.

Robert Mugabe's regime accused of human rights abuses, including a massacre of illegal diggers, in diamond fieldsThe stakes were high as the sun set in Tel Aviv last week. Seventy international delegates talked long into the night but failed to reach a consensus.