ZIMBABWE and China have entered into a US$5 billion deal involving the mortgaging of the country’s platinum resources worth US$40 billion which will benefit Beijing more than Harare.

The deal — which secures half of the US$10 billion that Zimbabwe is desperately looking for to fund economic recovery — is likely to cause controversy in parliament due to lack of transparency and massive financial prejudice to the country.

GOVERNMENT will from this month start paying civil servants salaries instead of allowances after it emerged that its coffers had improved.

LAWYERS representing freelance journalists barred from covering a Common Market for East and Southern Africa (Comesa) Summit in Victoria Falls despite a High Court ruling the Media and Information Commission (MIC) null and void are seeking confirmation of the provisional order as permanent after Media, Information and Publicity minister Webster Shamu opposed the ruling out of time.

PETER Michael Hitschmann, the former police reservist who was jailed after the discovery of an arms cache on his property, was released on Thursday and vowed not to be a state witness in the trial of Roy Bennett, the MDC Deputy Minister of Agriculture designate.

CIVIL society is split on the constitution-making process with key members of Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition — the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) and the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions — planning to boycott a two-day “peoples constitutional convention” that begins in the capital today.