Mugabe fears unrest over youth unemployment

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has launched the national census which he hopes will show the real extent of HIV/Aids on the country, even as he urged women to bear more children to compensate for lives lost to the scourge.

Mr Mugabe said he was disappointed by the outcome of the last census in 2002 which showed that Zimbabwe's population had grown only marginally, by 1.2 million from the previous census ten years before.

"Our grandmothers used to bear as many as 12 children but they did not die," he said. "Women, give us more children...do not be selfish."

The southern African country has one of the highest HIV prevalence rates in the world with 13 per cent estimated to be positive, but it is recognised as a success story in combating the pandemic, having managed to reduce new infections by 50 per cent between 1997 and 2007.

"The country's population has been decimated by the pandemic we all know, HIV and Aids," he said.

"Perhaps we need to establish whether that pandemic still has the same effect of decimating our population or that we managed to at least control it."

Millions of Zimbabweans have also fled the country's political and economic crises of the last decade with some experts putting the number of people in the Diaspora at more than three million.

The government was last week forced to delay the recruitment of enumerators for the count by three days after soldiers demanded to be included in the process.

They were demanding a quota of 10,000 out of the 30,000 enumerators.

The census, expected to cost $40 million, runs between August 18-28. Donors will foot a third of the cost.