Zimbabwe

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.

Invesco's investment in Zimbabwe-related funds highlights fact investors have no control over where managers put their moneyThe millions of loyal investors who own stakes in Neil Woodford's duo of funds, the highly-rated Invesco Income and Invesco High Income, may be surprised to find a punt on the future of Zimbabwe lurking among the out-of-favour British companies that have become his trademark.Woodford has emerged as one of the biggest investors in Masawara, a fund set up in June "for the purpose of acquiring interests primarily in Zimbabwe-based c

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.

My mother, Lorna Graaff, who has died aged 89, was a teacher and missionary. Her life centred around her work in Zimbabwe and she was a passionate supporter of the Matthew Rusike Children's Home in Harare.Born Lorna Robins in Hull, east Yorkshire, she came from a seafaring family. Her father was a ship's captain, who met her mother, a missionary, in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Lorna left home aged 16 to nurse in a children's hospital on the North York moors. Some of the children were treated in open-air wards, and in winter the nurses would brush snow off the beds. Lorna completed her teacher training in London.After the second world war, she taught in Hull and Ely, Cambridgeshire, where she was one of the first teachers at a new national school set up by the Red Cross for severely disabled girls.

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.

A Guardian reader on Zimbabwe, later-life career changes and theatrical inspirationI'm 70 and became a Guardian reader when I became an undergraduate student in 1988. My career in accountancy had plateaued and, as I'd always wanted to write, I decided I had to break the mould. In 10 years I completed three degrees: a BA in humanities, an MA in African studies and a PhD on the work of Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera. I couldn't have done it without a grant; it would never be possible now.I first went to Zimbabwe in 1996 to address a conference on Marechera. It was a bit like going back to 1950s England.

Despite many verbal attacks on Britain, David Smith explains how Robert Mugabe is heavily influenced by English cultureDavid Smith

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.

The Kimberley Process will only survive if governments and industry stand up for the principles on which it was builtThe Kimberley Process certification scheme is often credited with ending the trade in conflict diamonds. As the blood spilled in Zimbabwe's diamond fields shows, the truth is more complex.The KP set out to ensure that the kind of diamond-fuelled conflict and abuse exposed by Global Witness and others in countries such as Angola, Sierra Leone and Liberia could never happen again.