Zimbabwe swears in cabinet

HARARE: Zimbabwe’s new president Emmerson Mnangagwa swore in his cabinet on Monday, with allies defending him against criticism for giving top posts to the generals who helped his rise to power.
Sworn in as president on Nov 24 after 93-year-old Robert Mugabe quit following a de facto military coup, Mnangagwa has also come under fire for bringing back several faces from the Mugabe era, including Patrick Chinamasa as finance minister.
Air Marshall Perrance Shiri, who was handed the sensitive land portfolio, defended his appointment in remarks to reporters after a simple ceremony to take oaths of office. "Who says military people should never be politicians? I’m a Zimbabwean so I have every right to participate in government," he said.
Shiri is feared and loathed by many Zimbabweans as the former commander of the North Korean-trained ‘5 Brigade’ that played a central role in ethnic massacres in Matabeleland in 1983 in which an estimated 20,000 people were killed.
Land is a central political issue in the southern African country, where reforms in the early 2000s led to the violent seizure of thousands of white-owned farms and hastened an economic collapse.