Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe who has branded gays and lesbians 'worse than pigs and dogs', may be visiting New Zealand for a private speaking engagement.

Mugabe is banned by the EU from traveling to Europe and if New Zealand allow him into the country for a private speaking engagement it would be very controversial.

Zimbabwe’s outspokenly anti-gay president Robert Mugabe has slipped into Italy  for the inauguration of Pope Francis despite a European Union (EU) travel ban due to his abuse of human rights.

Mugabe, banned since 2002 due to allegations of vote rigging and human rights abuses, was whisked today (19 March) directly from his plane at Rome international airport to the Vatican.

A priest greeted the 89-year-old president, his wife and son at the airport saying: ‘On behalf of Pope Francis, welcome to the Vatican, welcome to the Holy See’.

Zimbabwe's gay rights group slammed prime minister's Morgan Tsvangirai denunciation of homosexuality, saying it was 'reckless' and 'unfortunate'.

The Danish government has agreed to give $4.4 million to help gay and bisexual men affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa.

The 25 million Danish Krone will fund the International HIV/AIDS Alliance's work in Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Tanzania, where same-sex relationships are illegal.

Executive Director of the Alliance, Alvaro Bermejo, said: 'It’s heartening to see the Danish government and the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) showing such leadership for the HIV response in Africa.

Zimbabwe announced that charges that will be brought against the association for running an ‘unregistered’ organization, and ‘undermining the authority of the President’.

Members of the association are continually being harassed and persecuted in an increasingly hostile climate to LGBT people in Zimbabwe.

GALZ has been informed that it now faces an additional charge of ‘undermining the authority of the President’.

The Herald reported that Zimbabwe police in the city of Kadoma have arrested a ‘gay couple’ for homosexuality.

LGBT activists, however, say that the government owned daily paper made the report up in order to create media sensationalism designed to bolster proposed constitutional changes and further legitmise persecution of LGBT people in Zimbabwe.  

A Zimbabwean government minister has warned tribal chiefs to resist the entry of foreign cultures into the country and said there was no room for so-called foreign practices like LGBT rights in the country’s new constitution.

‘Those fighting for gay rights are disobeying God who created us in his image,’ Resident Minister Jason Machaya told the chiefs.

Machaya claimed that tribal chiefs had the power to ban their subjects from adopting aspects of other cultures.

The US State Department has condemned the mass roundup of LGBT activists in Zimbabwe in what it has called ‘a pattern of abuse.’

Two truckloads full of riot police rounded up forty-four members of the group Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) on August 11 and held overnight but all were released without charge the following morning.

Police claimed they were searching for illegal data and offensive materials.

Forty-four members of Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) were brutally arrested yesterday and released today (12 August) without charges.

Four Zimbabwe police officers attempted to gain entry to the GALZ office in the nation’s capital, Harrare on Saturday (11 August).

The police officers called for back up and around 15 riot squad officers descended on the office and effected arrest.

Two men in Zimbabwe have been arrested over ‘lurid’ gay pictures found on a mobile phone.

As reported in New Zimbabwe, a man, known only as Andrew, left his phone to charge with people he knew at a mobile phone repair shop in the capital Harare.

One of the employees snooped through the phone and found pictures of him and another man called Esau kissing and embracing in bed. He then called the police, who have confirmed the arrest.

Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe has been made a UN 'leader for tourism', angering activists who argue the anti-gay dictator's dire human rights record has driven travellers away from the troubled country.

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe says homosexuality harms women's rights and leads to the 'extinction' of the human race.

In yet another anti-gay tirade, the 88-year-old African dictator told a women's HIV/Aids and gender rights conference in Harare that the 'gay world' was unnatural and removed women's right to bear children.