The UK's decision not to help Zimbabweans who were resettled on land owned by white farmers fails to alleviate hardship

It is 12 years since President Robert Mugabe responded to divisions in his party and the rise of an opposition by launching a "fast-track" resettlement programme in which 4,500 white commercial farmers were thrown off the land and replaced by 150,000 black families.

It feels as though it is almost as long since Britain took a close look at Zimbabwe and assessed what should be achieved with the £80m ($126m) of taxpayers' money spent there each year. Britain's priorities count. Donors, led by the US, give more than $900m per year in aid to Zimbabwe and they take their lead from the Department for International Development (DfID).

Since the land invasions began in 2000, donors have faced a conundrum: how to provide humanitarian assistance to needy people without giving a penny to their government. The challenge did not go away in 2009, when the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was given a few ministries.

Britain came up with a good plan – to channel aid money through two conduits. These are the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), which handles education, health and social welfare, and the Protracted Relief Programme (PRP), which uses NGOs to support 2 million communal farmers. The system is reactive to emergencies – such as the 2008 cholera outbreak – and has provided for consultation with MDC-controlled ministries. Importantly, it allows for the travel and business sanctions imposed against Mugabe and other individuals to appear not to affect ordinary people.

However, while the donors have studiously been perfecting routes to circumvent the treasury, Zimbabwe has fundamentally changed.

DfID officials stress that British taxpayers' money does not go to people living on "contested land", meaning farms for which former owners have not been compensated. Britain, they say, only helps people living on communal lands – those whom Britain has always helped, and whose security of tenure is at the whim of traditional chiefs.

The assertion that aid is not reaching new farmers on "contested land" means Britain is ignoring the humanitarian needs of the 150,000 families – about 750,000 people – who have been part of the largest demographic movement in southern Africa in the past decade.

Here are some snapshots of Zimbabwe now:

• On Portelet Estates, a former commercial farm near Chinhoyi, 450 children attend a "satellite school" with no furniture or blackboards in a barn on the verge of collapse. The headteacher, Fanuel Mtongozi, 46, says the school opened in 2002 for children of settlers in Village Nine. Unicef delivered the first textbooks last year. There are 1,363 satellite schools in Zimbabwe, but they are not mentioned in Unicef's Education Transition Fund plan.

• A white pensioner begs in the car park at Avondale shopping centre in the northern suburbs of the capital, Harare. She says she lost her farm, then her husband died, and her pension became worthless under hyperinflation in 2008. There are now no more than 500 white farmers left in Zimbabwe, most of them past retirement age, many living in hardship and reliant on charity.

• Near Macheke, a man in his 40s, called Patrick, squats in dilapidated buildings that used to be the productive fruit and tobacco farm where he worked. It has been resettled under "fast track". He is not a beneficiary, but he has nowhere else to go and lives by doing odd jobs for the resettled farmers. Zimbabwe has an estimated 1 million internally displaced people – 8% of the population. They are often former commercial farm employees. There is no support for them as long as they remain on "contested land".

• Near Goromonzi, Mathias Mandikisi, a former "war vet" – who played an active role in occupying the land he now farms – has had a bumper tobacco crop on his six hectares (14.8 acres). He bought his first car last year, at the age of 53. This year he intends to trade in his Mazda 323 for a one-tonne pick-up.

Contrary to popular belief, the majority of "fast-track" farms have not been given to high-ranking officials of Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF). They are plots of land that have been given to low- and middle-ranking civil servants and to people like Mandikisi who were previously living in townships. Mandikisi said: "Some of us are doing well and we are very grateful to President Mugabe for giving us back the land. Others are not succeeding so well as farmers. But even they are staying on the land. There are no jobs in the location [township] and at least here everyone can grow their own food."

It could be argued that it is for Zanu-PF to provide the new farmers with seeds and fertiliser. But they, as much as all Zimbabweans, need clinics, schools, boreholes and roads.

Another reason to start including the resettled farmers in calculations of the humanitarian needs of Zimbabwe is to ensure that aid is going where it is most needed. A shortfall is predicted this year in the 2m tonnes of maize required by the country. Guesstimates of production range from 700 tonnes to 1.4m tonnes. This is because the output of the new farmers is not known.

Like him or loathe him, Mugabe's policies over the past 12 years have radically transformed Zimbabwe. "Fast track" happened, and in an agrarian society like Zimbabwe, its impact should be at the centre of humanitarian policymaking. The changes should stimulate rather than mute the analysis and debate about aid to the country.

Schools on formerly white-owned farms in Zimbabwe are sorely lacking in facilities and equipment, and receive little funding from the government or foreign donors

In the old kitchen at Dunstan farm, desks have been pushed up against the cream-coloured Aga. Children are having a maths lesson. The dining room where black staff served three generations of the Cullinan family is also a classroom. The children have dumped their schoolbags in the grand fireplace before sitting down for their lesson.

A decade after President Robert Mugabe launched a "fast-track" resettlement programme that chased 4,500 white commercial farmers off the land, Zimbabwe's rural landscape has been transformed. The whites who owned vast tracts of land have been replaced by 150,000 black small-scale farmers and their families, creating the need for a rethink in the provision of education and health facilities. Yet western donors to this country that once prided itself on having the best education in Africa are reluctant to support people living on contested land.

Headteacher Obed Saki, 43, says 293 children attend the primary school in the once-grand Italianate villa. "It opened in 2002, but we only received textbooks in 2010," he says. "The parents of these children have each been given offer letters for six hectares of land. Some are producing tobacco and doing well, but others are struggling for lack of seed and fertiliser so we have capped the fees at $8 per term."

On a tour of the school and grounds, Saki says he is proud to be running one of Zimbabwe's so-called satellite schools – learning facilities for the children of Mugabe's land revolution. But he is frustrated at the slow progress towards normalising the lives of the new settlers. "Parents who can afford to send their children to better-equipped schools in town will do so. The children here are the worst off," he says.

Saki is one of seven teachers at the school. He adds: "The farmhouse was initially occupied by war vets [land occupiers deployed by the ruling party], and we were teaching in the barns. But in 2004, we convinced the war vets to hand over the house, which had electricity. Now we have classrooms on the ground floor and the teachers sleep in six rooms upstairs. Unfortunately, most of the cables were stolen in 2006 so we no longer have electricity."

In the grounds of the house, built on 3,600 hectares (9,000 acres) by the late Leslie Cullinan, son of the diamond magnate Sir Thomas Cullinan, the new occupants of the land have planted maize in a perfect rectangle that was once a tennis court.

The double garage is a classroom with a piece of plywood for a blackboard. In the scullery, 40 children in "early childhood development" sit on the floor, and their teacher has a wooden bench. In the garden room – flooded with light through half-broken French windows – the teacher's desk has been confected from planks and a metal frame found in a greenhouse.

"The parents have done a lot to get the school working," says Saki, who receives a standard teacher's salary of $249 per month from the government. He and his prison-officer wife Matilda – who lives 30km away in the capital, Harare, with the couple's two children – are on the waiting list for land.

"Grades four and six have furniture," he says. "It was bought by one of the parents. But we have hardly any books. We need novels and short stories – and latrines. Actually, we need a proper school. We have pegged a suitable plot for a building, but who knows when the government will build it? The nearest secondary school is five kilometres from here but there is a river in the way and in the rainy season the children cannot go for two or three weeks."

The education minister, David Coltart, admits that Zimbabwe's satellite schools – 1,363 facilities out of a total 8,000 primary and secondary schools – are "problematic". But he denies his ministry, which is controlled by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, is reluctant to support schools on formerly white-owned land.

Coltart says his ministry lacks money to maintain and improve mainstream schools, let alone ones that have sprung up as a result of land reform. "We have done as much as we can in the short term. We have ensured that all children in Zimbabwe have textbooks and teachers. We simply do not have the resources to ensure they have adequate buildings and facilities. That would require the government to cut back on foreign travel and defence spending."

Britain is one of the main funders of the UN Children's Fund, Unicef, in Zimbabwe. It contributed $9m to Unicef's programme to distribute 22m textbooks. Last month, the Department for International Development (DfID) announced a further $38m for education in Zimbabwe. But no mention was made of satellite schools, and DfID executives are emphatic that no UK taxpayers' money is given to resettled farmers on contested land.

The Unicef country director Peter Salama says the impact of Britain's contribution to education in Zimbabwe was "very tangible". But he concedes that it may be time to rethink how money is spent: "Unicef's mission, regardless of politics, is to support vulnerable women and children. We acknowledge there are new realities, and that women and children are part of these realities."

Among questionable ethical deals was £35m lent to Robert Mugabe and spent on BAE's Hawk fighter jets

Britain's arms industry and other companies are to be called before MPs to explain why taxpayer funds ended up helping Robert Mugabe to buy five Hawk fighter jets and 1,030 police Land Rovers which he later used to suppress dissent.

The bosses of the world's biggest multinational defence and oil companies, including BAE Systems and BP, will be asked to account for why hundreds of millions of pounds of government money was used to help military dictators build up their arsenals, and facilitated environmental and human rights abuses across the world.

An official all-party inquiry into the government Export Credits Guarantee Department's (ECGD) underwriting of the loans will begin to call witnesses next week, the Guardian has learned.

The all-party parliamentary group on international corporate responsibility will investigate more than 40 years of the government's involvement in supporting dubious practices overseas. The actions of the ECGD have led to it being christened the "department for dodgy deals" by the Jubilee Debt Campaign.

Among the catalogue of ethically questionable deals was £35m lent to Zimbabwe to buy five Hawk fighter jets from BAE Systems between 1989 and 1992.

Zimbabwe, which was already heavily indebted at the time of the loans, spent £49m repaying the cost of the Hawks, according to a response to a freedom of information request from the Jubilee Debt Campaign seen by the Guardian.

Mugabe's government deployed the jets in the 1998-2002 war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa's most deadly conflict in modern history, which led to 5.4m deaths.

At the time of deployment the British government approved Zimbabwe's purchase of spare parts worth £5m-£10m despite concerns the aircraft were being used in the deadly Congo war, according to the journal Africana Bulletin.

The department also supplied Mugabe with £21m of loan guarantees to help him import 1,030 police Land Rovers and other military equipment. The vehicles were sent to Zimbabwe after Mugabe promised that they would be used "with due respect for human rights". He specifically pledged not to use them for riot control, but Amnesty International said they were used to crush demonstrations.

The Land Rovers were sent to Zimbabwe in the late 1990s, before Mugabe began taking over white farmers' land in 1999. Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, later banned the shipments.

The ECGD also supported the notorious al-Yamamah "oil for arms" deal with Saudi Arabia, for which BAE Systems was investigated by the Serious Fraud Office amid allegations of bribery and corruption. The inquiry was eventually dropped following the intervention of the then prime minister, Tony Blair.

The government loans also allowed the former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, and his predecessor Anwar Sadat, to buy arms, including helicopters and missiles, and helped Argentina buy two Type 42 Destroyers and two Lynx helicopters, which were later used in the invasion of the Falklands.

As well as arms, the department has provided funds for the world's largest and riskiest oil-drilling project, in the Atlantic Ocean, and a 1,760km BP joint venture oil pipeline through the Caucasus.

The inquiry will this week begin asking arms and oil industry executives to provide evidence to parliament after pressure for the ECGD to clean up its act. The cross-party group of MPs will also call on former politicians to explain why they signed the deals. More than 100 MPs signed an early day motion calling for the ECGD to commit itself to transparent and open dealings in the future.

The ECGD, which is part of the business department and has changed its name to UK Export Finance (UKEF), was often used by arms companies to get a state-backed guarantee to recompense their banks if the deal fell through or the debtor failed to make repayments. In the 1980s the ECGD had 4,000 staff in branches across the country and offered backing for 40% of Britain's exports.

Lisa Nandy, a Labour MP and chair of the all party group, said the department had committed "billions of pounds of taxpayers' money" to projects that had been the subject of "countless criticisms" for human rights and environmental abuses.

"It is vital that we bring together all stakeholders and interested parties through this inquiry to look seriously at the allegations levelled at this department," she said.

"This Department commits billions of pounds of taxpayers' money each year. It has a responsibility to spend that money in a way that is ethical and effective. In the past it appears that this responsibility has not been taken seriously enough."

"In a time of recession, business needs support from government but that support must be of long-term benefit for everyone: safeguarding human rights, protecting the environment and, at the very least, not exacerbating poverty."

Tim Jones, policy officer at Jubilee Debt Campaign, said: "We welcome the launch of this inquiry. Vince Cable's 'Department for Dodgy Deals' has a notorious track record of backing loans for undemocratic and damaging projects. UK Export Finance claims it is owed £2.3 billion. This includes loans for General Mubarak's Egyptian army to buy British defence equipment, Argentina's 1970s military dictatorship to buy British warships, and Robert Mugabe's police to buy British Land Rovers. Vince Cable needs to implement Liberal Democrat policy and audit the debt, cancel that which is unjust, and reform UK Export Finance so no more dodgy deals are backed in the future."

The inquiry has no legal power to force industry executives or former politicians to provide evidence.

Africa's rivers and lakes are prone to shortages and not suitable for drinking. But a groundbreaking study has shown that the subterranean water resources could number over a million cubic kilometers.

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At ceremony in national stadium in Harare, president urges political parties to ensure looming election is peaceful

Zimbabwean president, reported to be close to death in a Singapore hospital, appeared healthy on his return to Harare

Claims leader is fighting for his life in a Singapore hospital are malicious hogwash, senior Zanu-PF party officials say

Officials in Zimbabwe have dismissed as "hogwash" reports that President Robert Mugabe is close to death in a Singapore hospital.

Speculation about the 88-year-old's condition spread like wildfire after his absence forced the postponement of a cabinet meeting. But Sydney Sekeramayi, the state security minister, told the NewsDay newspaper: "It's just the wish of our detractors. The president is alive and well." Other media reports quoted Webster Shamu, Zimbabwe's information minister, as saying: "It's a lot of hogwash."

Two senior officials from Mugabe's Zanu-PF party also denied the report, which originated on a small news site, the Zimbabwe Mail, claiming that Mugabe was "battling for his life" in a Singapore hospital. They said he was on an Easter break with his family.

"The president is well and away on a private holiday to help his daughter prepare for postgraduate studies, but we are expecting him home this week," one of the officials told Reuters. "But some sick and malicious people are spreading false stories about him being seriously ill while others are saying he is dead or dying out there."

The two officials confirmed Mugabe was in Singapore but declined to give any further details. Asked whether the president had also used his 10-day trip for a medical checkup, one said: "We are not going to be engaged over rumours, speculation and wishful thinking."

The president is reportedly in Hong Kong, on his way home. One of the officials said he was expected to chair a rescheduled cabinet session on Thursday.

Mugabe has been in power for nearly 32 years, making him one of Africa's longest serving leaders. His health is a subject of ever-intensifying speculation. Witnesses have described him as looking ill and falling asleep at meetings. A June 2008 US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks suggested he was suffering from prostate cancer. His increasingly frequent trips to east Asia are widely assumed to include specialised medical care.

But in an interview on state radio for his 88th birthday in February, Mugabe joked: "I have died many times. That's where I have beaten Christ. Christ died once and resurrected once; I am as fit as a fiddle."

The latest scare appears to have been triggered by a terse government statement saying a weekly cabinet meeting set for Tuesday had been postponed to Thursday.

As is now also common with rumours over Nelson Mandela's health, the story quickly hit Twitter like a runaway train and spread to international media. Among the first to urge caution was Trevor Ncube, a leading Zimbabwean publisher, who posted: "Please note that the source of the Mugabe rumour story is not a reliable one."

By Monday night, the Zimbabwe Mail had published a fresh story, headlined "Ailing Mugabe returns home Wednesday". It quoted a member of the Zanu-PF politburo as saying: "The president is on his Easter holidays, like everyone else. He returns to his post this week, at the same time as those who are asking about his whereabouts from their holiday hideouts."

Mugabe is the only leader independent Zimbabwe has known. Questions over his health gain added urgency because of perpetual uncertainty about who will succeed him. .

On Monday night, Andrew Meldrum, a former Guardian correspondent who reported from Zimbabwe for over two decades, blogged on the Globalpost site: "Over the years there have been so many rumours about Robert Mugabe's ill health and impending death that journalists in Harare have become used to urgent phone calls from their editors who claim they have it on good authority that Mugabe has died or is on his deathbed. They clamour for a story of the dictator's demise.

"I've received many of those phone calls myself and have made many late-night calls to hospitals, doctors, members of Mugabe's cabinet and his Zanu-PF party, trying to get confirmation or denial of the reports of his death.

"And then Mugabe shows up, jaunty and outspoken, dashing the reports … until the next set of rumours surface … I remember when everyone was convinced that he suffered from inoperable throat cancer, when actually he was hoarse from a series of speaking engagements."

Six activists were given suspended sentences for conspiring to commit violence after watching footage of Arab uprisings

Lawyers for six Zimbabwean activists convicted of conspiring to commit violence for watching videos of Arab uprisings say they are appealing against their conviction and sentences.

The lawyer Alec Muchadehama said on Monday he had filed appeal papers arguing that if the group did plot violence at their February 2011 meeting, as the court found, they should have been prosecuted for treason, a charge that carries a possible death sentence. The group says the court's ruling is "misguided".

Muchadehama says he is applying for the fines, suspended jail sentences and community service handed to the group to be set aside. The court ruling was also based on evidence of a "dishonest witness" who lied about his true identity as a police officer when he infiltrated the group, he said.

JOHANNESBURG — Zimbabwe conservationists are investigating a big game hunting safari taken by Donald Trump's sons after photos showing Don Jr. and Eric posing with their kills surfaced online.

Johnny Rodrigues, head of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, told the Associated Press that investigators are checking the legality of the 2011 hunting trip, arranged by a South African company. This includes looking into whether hunting licenses and trophy fees were paid, and whether the company was allowed to be hunting in Zimbabwe.

Rodrigues is quoting as saying that if organizers and hunters breach Zimbabwe's hunting laws, they can face imprisonment or a fine of up to $500,000.

More from GlobalPost: Photos of Trump family's Africa hunting safari spark outrage

Photos of the Trump brothers posing with an endangered leopard, Cape buffalo, crocodile and other animals were posted on the website for Hunting Legends, the company that ran their hunting trip to the Matetsi area of Zimbabwe, near Victoria Falls.

In one photo, Don Jr. holds a severed elephant tail, while in another, the two brothers pose next to a dead crocodile that has been strung up by its neck in a tree.

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Six activists ordered to carry out 420 hours of community service over meeting they said was lecture on democratic rights

A court in Zimbabwe has fined six civic activists $500 each and ordered them to do community service for conspiring to commit public violence during a meeting at which they watched video footage of mass uprisings in Egypt.

The Harare magistrate Kudakwashe Jarabini ordered the former opposition politician Munyaradzi Gwisai and five other people to carry out 420 hours of community service or face a year in jail.

They had faced a maximum sentence of up to 10 years. The original charges of treason, carrying a possible death sentence, were dropped in months of legal wrangling.

The activists were arrested last year for holding a meeting they said was an academic lecture on democratic rights. Police arrested 45 people who attended, but 39 were later released after judicial officials said police had mounted a "dragnet" campaign.

Jarabini found the six activists guilty on Monday, saying that although watching a video was not a crime, the "manner and motive" of the meeting showed bad intent. He ruled that showing footage of uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt that included "nasty scenarios" was intended to arouse hostility towards Zimbabwe's government.

Last year a high court judge granted the six bail and described the case against them as weak and based on the evidence of one witness, suspected to have been an undercover police informer.

The court said police claims that the group planned to emulate the Egyptian revolt were "bold and unsubstantiated".

Gwisai and other members of the group complained they were tortured by police and beaten with wooden planks and iron bars. They said they were also told to confess that they had called for the removal of Robert Mugabe as president.

Mugabe has said he has the power to unilaterally call elections this year to end the coalition government. Security officials have said they will clamp down on any alleged plotters of "destabilisation".

The finance ministry expected to receive $77.5 million from diamond sales over the first two months of this year, but has only seen $19.5 million, Biti told a news conference on Wednesday.

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JOHANNESBURG — Photos showing Donald Trump's two sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, with a menagerie of dead animals while on a "big five" hunting safari in Zimbabwe have sparked outrage among wildlife conservationists.

The recently surfaced photos show the Trump sons posing with dead African animals including a leopard, elephant, Cape buffalo, crocodile, kudu and waterbuck. 

In one photo, Don Jr. holds a severed elephant tail, while in another, the two brothers pose next to a dead crocodile that has been strung up by its neck in a tree.

The photos were posted on the website for Hunting Legends, the company that ran their hunting trip to the Matetsi area near Zimbabwe's Victoria Falls.

"This was not the first time the Trump's hunted Africa [sic] and certainly not the last," the company said on its website, adding that "it was evident from the word go that these two amazing young men are everything but the 'city slickers' you would expect!"

More from GlobalPost: Hunters shoot and pay to save the rhino

Peta, the animal rights group, criticized the hunting safari in a statement to Hollywood Life.

"Like all animals, elephants, buffalo, and crocodiles deserve better than to be killed and hacked apart for two young millionaires' photo opportunity," Peta said.

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