Zimbabwe News Sources

Zimbabwe news sources have grown considerably between year 2000 and 2010. This is the period when Zimbabwe experienced its worst economic down-turn as a result of political problems. The growth of news sources in Zimbabwe has also been biased towards independent online based publications

The reason for this skewed growth in the 10 years is a decline in the Zimbabwe economy and a poorly perfoming Zimbabwe currency. The exodus of Zimbabweans from Zimbabwe to live abroad has also been a factor. These Zimbos (as we are also jokingly calling ourselves)  are also estimated to be in their millions even by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe which launched the Homelink project for them press a constant daily demand on news from Zimbabwe. In the last few years there also has been a growth of independent Zimbabwe news papers published abroad but imported into Zimbabwe.

The following is a comprehensive list of Zimbabwe news sources relied upon by millions of Zimbabweans both living in Zimbabwe and abroad.

News Websites

1. Zimonline - based in Johannesburg South Africa
2. New Zimbabwe - based in the United Kingdom
3. Zimbabwe Situation - summaries news articles from different Zimbabwe news sources
4. ZimDaily - very critical of President Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF
5. Mail & Guardian - based in South Africa (onwed by a Zimbabwean)
6. Zimbabwe Independent - based in Zimbabwe
7. The Standard - based in Zimbabwe
8. The Zimbabwe Times - based in the USA
9. The Herald - government of Zimbabwe controlled
10. The Chronicle - based in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
11. The Sunday Mail - government controlled and based in Harare
12. The Zimbabwean - based in the United Kingdom

 Zimbabwe News -Print Newspapers

1. Mail and Guardian
2. Zimbabwe Independent
3. The Standard
4. The Chronicle
5. The Sunday Mail
6. The Sunday News
7. ZimDaily
8. The Prime Minister - a newsletter from the office of Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC party.

 There are other numerous Zimbabwe news sources relied upon in Zimbabwe. These would include online news publishers such as BBC, CNN, SABC, SkyNews and many others. Within Zimbabwe, satelite TV is very important. Many Zimbabwe people do not trust Zimbabwe TV also known as ZBC. Almost every household in urban and peri-urban centres has a satelite receiver for free to air channels including SkyNews, SABC (South Africa), BTV (Botswana), France24, PressTv and others. It is possible that the penetration rate of satelite TV in Zimbabwe is well over 40%.

Homelink Zimbabwe Disaster

Homelink is a concept that developed into a fully-pledged project engineered by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) at the height of the Zimbabwe crisis. The project was in essence an out-reach to Zimbabweans living abroad to invest home. Its main thrust was facilitating money transfer and investment needs of Zimbabweans living abroad. The company legally known as Homelink (Pvt) Ltd was wholly owned by the reserve bank and launched on the 2nd of February 2005 in Harare.

For a period of time Gideon Gono [pictured] the Reserve bank of Zimbabwe Governor from 2003 onwards was not on the EU and American targeted travel sanctions list. This allowed him and an entourage of RBZ staff to carry out whirlwind tours promoting the project across the world in places where Zimbabweans were highly concentrated. These places would include the UK, the USA and South Africa. The RBZ undertook the tours in phases spending millions of United States Dollars and publishing video and thick news paper supplements of the tour.

The company set-up a call centre at Hardwick House along Samora Machel Avenue in Harare which operated seven (7) days a week to make it possible for Zimbabweans abroad in different time zones in the world to contact the call centre.

The RBZ saw the homelink project as an effective way of raising much needed foreign currency for the cash trapped government of Zimbabwe. Thousands of Zimbabweans participated in the project through which the RBZ acquired tracts of land in cities in Zimbabwe on behalf of those abroad in order to build houses.

The government racked in millions of United States Dollars. Most of its clients abroad complained the buildings built in their absence were of a great sub-standard. Today some of the houses have been allocated to Zimbabwe military personnel after a fall-out with the RBZ. For instance in Harare, up to 120 houses were built in the Wesgate surburb.

In general the disastrous failure of the Homelink initiative was predictable. The government of Zimbabwe is remarkably known for failing to follow-through on key capital projects including infrastructural development.

Apart from building homes, homelink also facilitated transfer of remittances by Zimbabweans abroad to friends and relatives at home. It is widely believed that the Zimbabwe economy before the world wide economic recession of 2008 and 2009 heavily survived on money sent from overseas by fellow Zimbabweans. The RBZ opened facilities across the country and recruited full-time staff to run the homelink project.

Arthur Mutambara - Who is he?

Professor Arthur Mutambara is the president of the MDC smaller party that broke away from the main MDC party led by Morgan Tsvangirai in Zimbabwe. He is a professor of Robotics Science and once worked from NASA in the United States. Mutambara as his affectionately known in Zimbabwe and amongst student circles was once an active member of the students union at the University of Zimbabwe.


As the president of the student's union, Arthur Mutambara led numerous student protests against the government of Zimbabwe led by Robert Mugabe. He is known for his acrobatic maneuvers jumping off a three story students residency hall to escape anti-riot police.

For many years most people thought Arthur Mutambara would be the ideal person to stand against Robert Mugabe in the Zimbabwe political landscape. After the split of the MDC party in 2005 the smaller MDC splinter group appointed Mutambara as its president. To many people's utter disappointment, Mutambara

proved ill-equipped and obviously politically unseasoned at a national level.

Subsequently Professor Mutambara made many mistakes and misplaced utterances that saw him criticised across the political divide including the state controlled Herald and Chronicle daily newspapers. Many Zimbabweans generally do not trust Arthur Mutambara and there is widespread feeling that his small party has everything to gain with the prolonged stay of the inclusive government. There is clear evidence that in a free and fair election the smaller MDC party will become complete history in Zimbabwe politics.

On the other hand both parties i.e ZANU PF and MDC-T in the current inclusive government will require Arthur Mutambara's party support to have some legislation passing through parliament. For that reason Mutambara is in a way considered a king maker.


Mutambara now resides in Zimbabwe and is married with children. He frequently participates in international conferences and meetings that focus on Zimbabwe's politics and economics in general.

NewZimbabwe Review

NewZimbabwe is one amongst the very first Zimbabwe news websites to be published from outside of Zimbabwe. The paper is based in the UK and was founded by Mr Mududuzi Mathuthu a journalist who fled Zimbabwe after the closure of the private controlled only daily paper in Zimbabwe, The Daily News. The paper covers a whole range of issues on Zimbabwe from politics, sport, business entertainment and lifestyle news items and opinions.

NewZimbabwe has a vibrant team of bloggers which is a relatively latest addition to it's opinion pieces. The paper and its editor have long been considered enemies of the state by the government of Zimbabwe and the paper was once listed as a target to be shut down. New Zimbabwe is a paper dear to many Zimbabweans in Zimbabwe and those living abroad. It is a free online paper that attracts over 50 000 visitors per day. It's main channel of revenue is advertising via Google contextual ads as well as private direct placements.

NewZimbabwe received a recent face lift after years of a lack of sophisticated design. The new look front page came with video presentations amongst other reader engaging content. The clutter from excessive advertising on the previous outlook also appears to have been resolved in the newly designed web page. You may view the old front page from 2003 on the Internet way back machine.

Due to the problems in Zimbabwe and the general intolerance of media criticism by government, according to sources staff and the editor of the paper have not travelled to Zimbabwe in years. However, the paper has some undercover reporters within Zimbabwe just like other papers critical of the government of President Robert Mugabe such as ZimDaily, Zimonline and others. NewZimbabwe has certainly a more professional outlook than many other so called online publications on Zimbabwe. The digital paper is widely respected and often quoted on Zimbabwe.

NewZimbabwe has however been criticised in some circles especially at the split of the MDC in 2005 to have openly supported the smaller MDC party of Professor Aurthur Mutambara generally viewed as being from Bulawayo. It would appear Zimbabwe has some unfinished business on tribal issues which time and again surface when accusations are exchanged. In this case the owners of the paper were accused of being tribalist by opposing Morgan Tsvangirai because they are from the Matebeland region.This however could be open for debate.

New Zimbabwe commands a very active forum involving thousands of Zimbabweans. It is worth noting that the paper has organised live question and answer sessions on the forums with prominent people of Zimbabwe such as Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor , Gideon Gono. This particular question and answer was important to many Zimbabweans living abroad because of the doomed Homelink project started by Gono to serve Zimbabweans abroad.

In recent years since its launch in the early 2000s, the owners of the paper have made moves to transform the publication into a fully fledged business. Like other online papers on Zimbabwe they have also attempted to transform the paper into a print edition. This edition has been available in the UK and elsewhere but very difficult to access in Zimbabwe.Penetrating the Zimbabwe market has proved very difficult for many due to very restrictive media and publication controls.

Technology wise, the paper is robust and its website hosts are amongst the fastest on the Internet based in the United States. The paper has suffered some serious set-backs before from malicious attacks on its servers causing website outage for days on end in some cases. Even though the general belief is that government agents are behind some of the attacks behind Zimbabwe news online publications, this notion has never been fully proved. However, NewZimbabwe is set to be on the Zimbabwe news map for years to come and indeed and formidable news leader and opinion maker.