Zim News Blog -NEWS NETWORK

Zimbabwe has begun preparing for a potentially severe drought by urging livestock farmers to keep enough feed to sustain their animals for at least two years, as weather forecasts point to a heightened risk of El Niño during the 2026/27 farming season. The warning was delivered by Dr Dumisani Kutywayo, Chief Director of the Directorate […]

The post Government’s strong warning to farmers as Zimbabwe faces massive drought: Stock feed enough for 2 years! first appeared on My Zimbabwe News.

Source: The Zim monodialogues

New senators, new diplomats, new term

Paul Bogaert

The post The Zim monodialogues appeared first on Zimbabwe Situation.

Production is expected to start in 2027, and is expected to produce 226,000 ounces of PGMs annually.

Source: Tharisa secures 25-year mining lease for Zimbabwe platinum project – MINING.COM

Tharisa Plc THST.L said on Monday it signed a 25-year special mining lease agreement with the government of Zimbabwe for its Karo platinum group metal (PGM) venture, a key step in advancing the project.

Tharisa, an integrated PGM and chrome producer operating in South Africa, is developing the Karo project in Zimbabwe. The project is expected to produce 226,000 ounces of PGMs annually in the first phase.

First production from the Karo project is now expected in 2027, three years behind the initial schedule, following a sharp decline in PGM prices between 2023 and 2024.

PGM prices fell sharply as expectations of electric vehicle growth dampened the outlook for the metals, which are mainly used in catalytic converters that curb vehicle emissions, which pure battery EVs do not use.

PGM prices recovered mid-2025 after output in major producer South Africa continued to decline, while the growth of EVs proved slower than previously expected.

Tharisa CEO Phoevos Pouroulis said the signing of the special mining lease agreement provides the long-term security of tenure and fiscal certainty required to advance the Karo project.

The post Tharisa secures 25-year mining lease for Zimbabwe platinum project appeared first on Zimbabwe Situation.

For the Tonga people, Kariba is more than a lake—it carries memories of displacement, survival and sacrifice. Now another tragedy has reopened old wounds and raised urgent questions about safety and accountability.

Source: Kariba ferry disaster: A Tonga son’s grief and demand for answers – Nehanda Radio

I am Tonga, and I was born into a people who know the Zambezi not from geography books, but from memory. We know her smell before the rain, the colour of her water when the wind begins to turn, the sound of a canoe cutting through the morning silence, and the particular fear that enters an old man’s voice when he says the water is no longer safe.

We know that water can feed a family, carry a fisherman home, separate a mother from a hospital, and sometimes, without warning, take a life.

So when the news came that a ferry had overturned on Lake Kariba, I did not read it as another story coming across my phone. I felt it somewhere deep inside me, in that place where a people keep the memories that history books often forget.

Kariba is not simply a lake to the Tonga. It is history, pain, survival and memory. It is the place where an old world disappeared beneath water and where our people were forced to learn how to begin again.

Our elders remember the villages that were moved when the dam was built, the graves and sacred places disturbed, the homes left behind, and the profound rupture that came when a people were told that what was being taken from them was necessary for the development of a nation.

The Tonga sacrificed, and then we carried our memories with us. We learned to live beside the enormous body of water that had replaced parts of the world our ancestors knew.

We learned the lake, fished it, crossed it, feared it and respected it. That is why, when the water takes our people again, it touches an old wound.

I do not know all the names of those who died, but I know what a name means. A name is somebody’s child, somebody’s mother, somebody’s husband, somebody’s sister, somebody’s grandfather, somebody’s friend.

Behind every number announced on television is a family sitting somewhere tonight, staring at a doorway that will not open. That is why I cannot bring myself to speak simply of forty-six people, or whatever final number emerges from the search and investigation.

Forty-six is a number; they were human beings. They laughed, argued, worried about money, made plans for tomorrow and carried the ordinary hopes that make up a life.

Someone was probably carrying food home. Someone was returning from a market. Someone may have been thinking about work the following morning. Someone may have promised a child, “I will be back.” Then the lake became the last place they were seen.

We are told that the ferry was carrying more people than its certified capacity, that the passenger numbers are disputed, and that survivors described frightening conditions aboard the vessel.

We have heard accounts of water entering the ferry, luggage shifting and passengers becoming increasingly afraid. We have heard that some passengers wanted the vessel to turn back.

These things must be investigated carefully and independently, because grief does not give us permission to turn allegations into facts. But even before the final report is written, one truth is already staring us in the face: poor people should never have to choose between danger and survival.

The people who use these boats are not tourists looking for an adventure. They are fishermen, traders, mothers, children, farmers, grandmothers and ordinary people travelling because they need medicine, food, school, work or simply a way to reach another community.

For someone sitting comfortably in Harare, a ferry may be just another form of transport. For someone in the Zambezi Valley, it can be a lifeline.

It can be the difference between reaching a clinic and remaining at home, between getting food to a family and going hungry, between reaching a market and losing the day’s income.

That is why the safety of these vessels cannot be treated as an administrative matter buried somewhere inside a ministry.

When people board a ferry on Lake Kariba, they are entrusting the state, the operator and the captain with something that cannot be replaced once lost: their lives.

A lifeline must never become a death sentence simply because the people using it are rural, poor or far away from the centres of power.

I am Tonga, and this is where Kariba becomes personal. Our history with this water is complicated beyond anything a tourist photograph can capture.

The dam transformed the Zambezi Valley, displaced communities and changed the relationship between our people and the river that had sustained them for generations.

Development brought electricity and national benefit, but it also demanded a price from people who had little power to negotiate that price. Our grandparents and parents carried their memories forward because a people can be displaced from land without being displaced from history.

We know what it means for the nation to benefit from something while the people living closest to it carry some of its greatest burdens.

So when people die on this lake because questions of safety may have been ignored, the grief is not isolated from that history. It sits directly inside it.

But I refuse to blame the water for everything. The Zambezi is not a criminal, and the lake did not decide how many people should board the ferry.

The lake did not issue a safety certificate, inspect an engine, count passengers, approve a departure or decide whether a vessel was fit for the weather.

Human beings make those decisions. Institutions make those decisions. Governments make those decisions. Therefore, if human decisions contributed to this tragedy, human beings must have the courage to answer for them.

We cannot simply point at the wind, blame the waves and call the matter closed. There is a difference between a tragedy that nobody could reasonably have prevented and a tragedy that exposes a system that was already failing.

So I want answers, not because I want someone to blame, but because the dead deserve the truth. How many people were actually aboard? Why were the numbers so uncertain? Was the vessel overloaded? When was it last inspected?

Was it mechanically and structurally sound? Were there enough life jackets, and could passengers reach them quickly? What weather information was available before departure?

Who made the decision to sail? Were concerns raised before the vessel left? How quickly did the rescue response begin?

Why should communities living beside one of Africa’s great lakes have to wonder whether adequate rescue capacity is available when disaster strikes? These are not political questions.

They are human questions, and they deserve answers that can withstand the grief of the families who are now waiting.

Please do not reduce this tragedy to another press conference. We have seen the pattern before: disaster happens, cameras arrive, officials express sadness, condolences are issued, promises are made, and then the country moves on. But the families do not move on.

They go home with empty chairs, clothes that belonged to somebody, photographs that suddenly become painful to look at and children who keep asking when their mother or father is coming home.

They live with a silence that does not end when the news cycle ends. The families of those who died on Kariba do not need Zimbabwe to remember them for a week. They need us to remember them long enough to change the system that carried them onto that water.

And this is why I believe every person aboard that ferry must be counted. A child does not become less human because the ticketing system did not record the child. An infant does not become a statistical ghost because there was no fare to collect.

A grandmother carrying maize is not cargo, and a fisherman trying to make a living is not an expendable unit in a transport schedule.

If somebody stepped onto that vessel, somebody had a responsibility to know that person was there and to make every reasonable effort to bring them home. The manifest should not merely be a document for officials; it should be a promise that every person aboard matters.

The government must therefore do more than mourn. Every passenger vessel operating on Lake Kariba should face a rigorous, independent safety assessment, and government-owned vessels should be subjected to the same standards expected of private operators.

Passenger capacity must mean exactly what it says. Every person aboard must be recorded, regardless of age. Life-saving equipment must be available and properly maintained. Weather warnings must have consequences.

Captains must have the authority to refuse departure or turn back when conditions become unsafe. And the communities who have lived beside this water for generations must be part of the conversation. The fishermen know the lake.

The boat operators know its moods. The elders understand seasons and winds. Indigenous knowledge should not replace modern science, but neither should modern institutions be so arrogant that they refuse to listen to people who have spent their entire lives reading the water.

I speak now not only for myself but from the place where my own identity meets this tragedy. I am a son of the Zambezi Valley, and I know that the Tonga people understand something about being forgotten.

We know what it means to have our history submerged beneath something the rest of the country calls development. We know what it means to be told that sacrifice is necessary and then expected to carry on quietly.

We know what it means for the centre to remember us only when something goes wrong. But the people who died on Lake Kariba cannot be allowed to disappear twice: first beneath the water, and then beneath the weight of another news cycle.

Tonight, when I think of Kariba, I do not see the beautiful photographs that tourists take at sunset.

I see mothers waiting on the shore, children asking questions that no parent should have to answer, fishermen staring into the darkness and families listening for footsteps that will never come.

I think about the people whose final journey was supposed to take them home. I think about the old Tonga relationship with water, and I think about the generations who have lived with the consequences of Kariba.

Our ancestors are not here for us to blame, and the lake is not an enemy to be cursed. They are memory, and memory carries an obligation: to learn, to protect, to speak and to refuse to allow suffering to become normal.

So I speak to Kariba tonight as a Tonga son, not with hatred but with grief, anger and love. You have carried our people, fed our families, witnessed our history and held beneath your surface memories that no map can recover.

Now you have taken more of our own, and we cannot pretend that the pain belongs only to the families directly affected. It belongs to all of us who call the Zambezi Valley home. Let every missing person be searched for with dignity. Let every family receive the truth.

Let every death be properly investigated. Let those responsible be held accountable where the evidence demands it.

And let the safety of the people who live around this lake finally become as important to the nation as the electricity, tourism and economic value that Kariba provides.

I am from the Zambezi Valley, and I know that water is both giver and taker. I know that we cannot command it, only respect it. But respecting the water also means respecting the people who must cross it.

Kariba should never again become a choice between hunger and danger, between reaching a hospital and risking death, between feeding a family and leaving them without a parent.

Rural lives are not cheaper lives. Tonga lives are not lesser lives. A child from Binga or Kariba is not worth less because they were born far from the capital.

Kariba, my mother, my river, my memory, you have carried us for generations. You have witnessed what was taken from us and what we have endured. You have known our songs, our fishing grounds, our grief and our resilience.

This time, you have cried, and we have cried with you. But we will not let those who disappeared into your waters disappear from our national memory. We will remember their names. We will remember their families.

We will remember what happened on that terrible August day. And we will ask, again and again, until somebody finally answers: How many more of our people must the water take before Zimbabwe learns to protect those who live beside it?

I am Tonga. I am a son of the Zambezi. And tonight, I mourn.

Dr Temba Munsaka is a clinical psychologist, multidisciplinary researcher, and academic affiliated with Midlands State University in Zimbabwe.

The post Kariba ferry disaster: A Tonga son’s grief and demand for answers appeared first on Zimbabwe Situation.

HARARE — Zimbabwean equities extended their recent gains on Tuesday, with the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE) All Share Index rising 0.66% to 481.17 points as investors continued to accumulate selected counters despite relatively thin market activity.

The ZSE recorded 78 trades, generating ZWG54.39 million in turnover, while total market capitalisation increased to ZWG107.70 billion. The ZSE Top 10 gained 0.72% to 484.41 points, while the Top 15 rose 0.59% to 497.56 points.

The broader market advance was supported by strength in consumer-facing and financial counters, with the Consumer Staples Index gaining 1.11%, the strongest performance among the main sector indices. Financials rose 0.17%, while the Agriculture Index added 0.13%. The New Industrial Index was marginally lower, slipping 0.02%.

The Small Cap Index was unchanged, while the Mid Cap Index advanced 0.42%.

The day’s trading, however, continued to expose one of the defining characteristics of Zimbabwe’s capital market: significant movements in share prices can occur on relatively modest liquidity.

FIDL was the strongest performer, gaining 14.29% to 92 cents, followed by TNCI, which rose 6.30% to 32.65 cents. Proplastics advanced 3.67% to 120 cents, while ZBFH and Meikles gained 2.71% and 2.60%, respectively.

At the other end of the market, Ariston Holdings fell 12.02% to 6.47 cents, while Sable Chemicals dropped 6.65% to four cents. Zimplow declined 3.92%, Rainbow Tourism Group lost 2.09%, and ZSE Holdings slipped 0.78%.

The disparity between the market’s more than ZWG107 billion valuation and the relatively modest daily turnover remains an important consideration for investors. Market gains are therefore not necessarily synonymous with a broad-based improvement in liquidity.

An equity-market analyst told The Zimbabwe Financial Mail that Tuesday’s performance should be interpreted as evidence of selective investor conviction rather than a wholesale return of liquidity to the market.

“The market continues to show pockets of strong price performance, but liquidity remains the structural constraint. Until turnover broadens across a much larger number of counters, investors should be cautious about interpreting daily index movements as evidence of a broad market re-rating,” the analyst said.

The comment captures the unusual investment environment facing Zimbabwean equities, where the combination of currency considerations, limited investable assets, inflation expectations and relatively shallow market depth can produce substantial movements in individual counters.

Investors turn increasingly to company fundamentals

The market is also entering a more information-intensive phase, with a series of corporate announcements providing investors with fresh evidence on the underlying performance of listed companies.

Meikles issued a further cautionary statement on Monday, while Dairibord released reviewed half-year financial results in both ZWG and US-dollar terms. Dairibord also remains the subject of a further cautionary announcement relating to potential corporate activity.

Zimbabwe’s dual reporting environment remains particularly significant for investors attempting to distinguish nominal earnings growth from genuine improvements in operating performance.

With companies increasingly reporting in both local and hard currency terms, investors are placing greater emphasis on US-dollar revenue, margins, cash generation, working-capital requirements and the sustainability of earnings rather than relying solely on ZWG-denominated share-price movements.

“The market is moving into a phase where operational performance matters more,” another market analyst told The Zimbabwe Financial Mail. “Revenue growth, margins, working capital and cash generation will ultimately determine whether the recent share-price gains can be supported by fundamentals.”

That shift is potentially important for Zimbabwe’s equity market, particularly after several years in which monetary instability and exchange-rate movements often dominated investment decisions.

REITs provide a contrasting picture

The listed property market also delivered a notable signal, with the Tigere Real Estate Investment Trust rising 4.60% to 111.93 cents and reaching a market capitalisation of approximately ZWG2.1 billion.

The Revitus Real Estate Investment Trust was unchanged at 212.83 cents, with a market capitalisation of about ZWG783.9 million.

The contrasting performance reflects the growing importance of listed real estate as an alternative asset class in Zimbabwe, particularly for investors seeking exposure to property income and capital preservation.

The relative stability of the REIT segment also comes as Zimbabwe’s broader property market continues to adapt to changing monetary conditions, construction costs and demand for income-producing assets.

A market caught between recovery and structural constraints

Tuesday’s session comes against a broader improvement in Zimbabwean equities this year. Independent market data show the Zimbabwean market had gained substantially over the preceding 12 months, although recent weekly performance has been comparatively subdued.

The market’s challenge is that rising valuations have not necessarily been accompanied by a commensurate deepening of liquidity.

This creates an important distinction between market appreciation and market development.

For Zimbabwe to develop a deeper and more efficient capital market, analysts say the country needs broader institutional participation, greater availability of investable securities, improved corporate governance and more predictable monetary and exchange-rate conditions.

The migration of major companies between the ZSE and the US-dollar-denominated Victoria Falls Stock Exchange (VFEX) has also changed the structure of Zimbabwe’s capital markets, with investors increasingly able to choose between local-currency and hard-currency exposure.

The ZSE has consequently been operating within a capital-market ecosystem that is becoming more segmented rather than simply expanding in one direction.

The significance of this shift was underlined earlier this month when Old Mutual’s migration from the ZSE to VFEX was approved, with trading commencing on August 12.

At the same time, Zimbabwe’s capital-market infrastructure is expanding beyond conventional equities. CBZ Holdings is planning a US$600 million bond programme to be listed on VFEX, targeting regional and international investors to finance infrastructure and development projects.

For Zimbabwe’s financial system, such developments could gradually broaden the market from being predominantly an equity-trading venue into a more comprehensive capital-raising platform.

Fundamentals will determine the next leg

For now, however, investors remain highly selective.

The combination of rising indices, uneven counter performance and modest turnover suggests that confidence is returning in parts of the market, but that investors have yet to demonstrate the broad-based conviction required for a sustained liquidity cycle.

“The important question is no longer simply whether the index can rise,” an equity analyst told The Zimbabwe Financial Mail. “The test is whether earnings, cash flows and balance-sheet strength can catch up with valuations. If they do, the current market recovery can become more fundamentally grounded; if they do not, individual counters could remain vulnerable to sharp corrections.”

That distinction is likely to become increasingly important as Zimbabwean companies report their half-year and full-year results and investors assess whether nominal growth is translating into genuine increases in US-dollar earnings and shareholder value.

For Tuesday, however, the message from the ZSE was relatively clear: buyers remain present, selected counters continue to attract strong interest, but the market still lacks the depth and liquidity needed to turn isolated rallies into a fully fledged broad-based bull market.

The post Zimbabwe stocks edge higher as selective buying lifts ZSE indices appeared first on The Zimbabwe Mail.