JOHANNESBURG, 12 January (IRIN) - CONTENTS

ZIMBABWE: South Africa tries to close the back door ZIMBABWE: Scepticism over govt plan to treble ARV beneficiaries BOTSWANA: San look set to return home ZIMBABWE: Cost of living rockets as maize shortage bites MALAWI: Glitches in key agriculture subsidy programme ZIMBABWE: Govt takes aim at remaining independent media ZAMBIA: Kids slip through the ARV net ZIMBABWE: Govt dismisses reports of diamond smuggling

ZIMBABWE: South Africa tries to close the back door

Zimbabweans returning illegally to South Africa in search of work after visiting family and friends for the Christmas holidays are having a harder time than usual getting back into the country.

Where previously a backhander to immigration officials might have sufficed, now Zimbabweans escaping their country's economic meltdown are threatened to be thrown in jail for attempted bribery, and forced to consider other re-entry alternatives like crossing the Limpopo River, a natural border between the two countries where recent rains have made the water level dangerously high.

See report: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=57030

ZIMBABWE: Scepticism over govt plan to treble ARV beneficiaries

The Zimbabwean government has announced its intention to treble the number of people on its free antiretroviral (ARV) programme in 2007, but experts are sceptical about the health sector's capacity to achieve this goal.

The government hopes to enrol about 160,000 people in the ARV rollout programme by the end of 2007, but AIDS activists were quick to question the government's targets, describing them as "empty and just too ambitious". Continuing hyperinflation, now hovering around 1,200 percent annually, and a scarcity of foreign currency have crippled healthcare provision, creating shortages of drugs, medical equipment and even personnel, who have migrated in search of better salaries and living conditions.

See report: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=57031

BOTSWANA: San look set to return home

Botswana's displaced San finally look set to return home after winning a long-fought court battle to be allowed back to their ancestral land in the Central Kgalagadi Game Reserve (CKGR), in the Kalahari Desert.

In December 2006 the High Court of Botswana ruled that a group of San, also known as Bushmen, had been wrongfully evicted four years earlier from the remote CKGR but two weeks after the court ruling, some 20 Bushmen were refused entry into the reserve. The First People of the Kalahari (FPK), an advocacy group for the San community, contends that the judgment applies to all the 50,000 San in the country and cannot be confined to the 189 applicants involved in the litigation.

See report: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=57033

ZIMBABWE: Cost of living rockets as maize shortage bites

The month-on-month cost of living for an urban family of six in Zimbabwe has surged by 43 percent, while basic commodities, such as cooking oil, maizemeal and flour have been "consistently unavailable" on the formal market since the onset of the festive season, said the latest report by the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe (CCZ).

Zimbabwe's hyperinflation, which saw levels persist stubbornly above 1,000 percent in 2006, has resulted in a family of six now having to spend US$1,406 to subsist in January, as opposed to the US$982 monthly income required in December 2006. The CCZ noted that the steepest increases were recorded in education (261.9 percent), bread (179.7 percent), white sugar (166.7 percent) and cooking oil (78.3 percent).

See report: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=57026

MALAWI: Glitches in key agriculture subsidy programme

As the planting season draws to a close, the Malawian government has pronounced its subsidised fertiliser programme a success, but some small-scale farmers claim they have yet to benefit.

The US$50 million programme aims to distribute three million fertiliser coupons to farmers before the planting season ends next month, but in the southern districts of Blantyre, Machinga and Zomba, where some farmers' maize is almost 30cm high, others claim that using chiefs and local leaders as "custodians of the coupons" has led to widespread corruption.

See report: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56965

ZIMBABWE: Govt takes aim at remaining independent media

There are renewed fears that the Zimbabwean government is intensifying its campaign against the few remaining privately owned media organisations, in the wake of severe press criticisms of its human rights violations, a dismal economic record and President Robert Mugabe's plans to extend his stay in power by another two years.

The government has stripped newspaper publisher Trevor Ncube of his Zimbabwean citizenship on the grounds that he is Zambian. Media analysts said the Zimbabwean government allegedly wanted to use the citizenship issue as a means of closing down the country's two remaining independent weekly newspapers, which Ncube publishes, The Standard and The Zimbabwe Independent, or enable the authorities to hand control of the newspapers to people sympathetic to the ruling ZANU-PF party.

See report: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56953

ZAMBIA: Kids slip through the ARV net

A shortage of paediatric testing kits and specialised medical staff in Zambia is causing delays in rolling out antiretroviral (ARV) drugs for children infected with HIV/AIDS.

Despite the National AIDS Council (NAC) having enough ARV medication to treat about 19,000 children, only about 5,000 are able to access the drugs.

See report: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=57046

ZIMBABWE: Govt dismisses reports of diamond smuggling

Zimbabwe's government on Friday dismissed reports that diamonds were being smuggled into neighbouring South Africa by a Zimbabwean company as "politically motivated rumours" cooked up by its enemies, who had an agenda of effecting regime change.

Last month, the New York-based WDC said it had received reports that Zimbabwean diamonds were possibly being combined with blood diamonds from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and smuggled into neighbouring South Africa, where they were being certified as legitimate and exported.

See report: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=57054

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