The removal of restrictive measures imposed by the European Union on the former ruling elite is dependent on the implementation of the Global Political Agreement (GPA), a top EU official has said.

The EU placed travel bans on President Mugabe and his inner-circle after years of human rights abuses, stolen elections and state sponsored violence on defenseless Zimbabweans.

Failure to transform from military to civilian leadership, running the state with violence and suppression is the major cause for the political turmoil Zimbabwe is going through, a Cabinet minister has said.

Addressing a discussion forum titled ‘What can be done to end political violence in Zimbabwe’  Thursday, Minister of State Enterprises, Gorden Moyo, said suffered from state sponsored violence has been the bane of local politics because President Mugabe’s regime inherited the colonialist’s state and its structures.

About 20 000 small holder farmers are set to benefit from a 6 million euro project following the signing of a Contribution Agreement between the European Union and the Food and Agriculture Organisation in Harare, Thursday.

The project, which will cover the 2012/2013 and 2013/2014 growing seasons, will see the EU supporting rural families with agricultural inputs in order to realize improved productivity, which would also translate into improved livelihoods.

FAO will manage the project and will work together with the Government, Non Governmental Organisations and Private Sector organisations in its implementation.

Giving feedback following her attendance of the 2012 UN Commission on the Status of Women (UN CSW) held in the USA last month, Grace Chirenje, said rural women produce approximately 70 percent of the total small scale agricultural produce.

The women’s rights activist said if women were fully empowered the country would not face food shortages.

Zimbabweans remain in bondage, three decades after independence, reknown war veteran, Wilfred Mhanda, has said.

Speaking at a lecture series titled, ‘The revolution checked halfway, where did we go wrong? A case of the liberation struggle in Zimbabwe,’ last Friday Mhanda, said the state of affairs 32 years after independence is a reflection that the purpose for waging the liberation struggle has still not been attained.

“As long as the judiciary and the police operate in a partisan manner, the people of Zimbabwe remain in bondage and their fundamental rights infringed by the repressive laws which were assumed after independence,” said Mhanda.

There are those in this government who think that implementing any reform is conceding power, and they have stood in the way of key reforms including those reforms that would have changed information management and dissemination and brought in alternative voices.

We have a Ministry that spends more time thinking about how it should curtail information rather than how it should disseminate it!

It is clear that those ministers refusing to implement reforms are getting tacit support from a higher office. But the ministers and their handlers, as well as those journalists that have chosen to peddle hate speech and to sow seeds of conflict shall be personally liable on the day of reckoning.

The Rwandan example shows that you will be alone, without any institutional support, when history asks you to account for your role in standing between the people and their inalienable rights and freedoms.

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said at the World Press Freedom day commemorations in Kuwadzana.