General elections were held in March 1990. In July the government lifted the 25-year-old state of emergency. Zimbabwe became a republic on 17 April 1991. In November 1992 the first cases of a cholera epidemic were reported from within the Tongogara Refugee Camp in Manicaland. In June 1993 the government announced plans to downsize the 50,000-strong Zimbabwe National Army by 10,000 men over the next five years. The combined Zimbabwe Defense Forces Headquarters was formed in July 1994. In April 1995 parliamentary elections were held. The Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) ran unopposed in 54 of the 120 electoral districts and a further 20 parliamentary seats were reserved. Zimbabwe sent delegates to Ottawa, Canada to discuss land mines and launch the Ottawa Treaty in October 1996. The government unilaterally banned anti-personnel mines on 15 May 1997, signing Mine Ban Treaty on 3 December. The government ratified the treaty on 18 June 1998. A court sentenced Canaan Banana, Methodist minister, theologian, and the former President of Zimbabwe to ten years imprisonment, nine years suspended for sodomy, on 18 January 1999. Major mine clearance operations started in three of Zimbabwe's seven, identified, contaminated areas in March.

Zimbabwe (/zɪmˈbɑːbweɪ/ zim-BAHB-way; officially the Republic of Zimbabwe) is a landlocked country of southern Africa. It shares a 125-mile (200-kilometre) border on the south with the Republic of South Africa and is bounded on the southwest and west by Botswana, on the north by Zambia, and on the northeast and east by Mozambique. The capital is Harare (formerly called Salisbury). Zimbabwe achieved majority rule and internationally recognised independence in April 1980 following a long period of colonial rule and a 15-year period of white-dominated minority rule, instituted after the minority regime’s so-called Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in 1965.

Zimbabwe has three official languages: English, Shona and Ndebele. Zimbabwe began as the British self-governing colony of Southern Rhodesia, created from land held by the British South Africa Company. President Robert Mugabe is the head of State and Commander in Chief of the armed forces. Morgan Tsvangirai is the Prime Minister. Mugabe has been in power since the country's internationally recognised independence in 1980.

Mark Edward Waugh AM (born 2 June 1965) is a former Australian cricketer, who represented Australia in Test matches from early 1991 to late 2002, and made his One-Day International debut in 1988. Waugh is regarded as one of the most elegant and gifted stroke makers to ever play the game. His nickname is "Junior" as he is younger than his twin brother Steve by a few minutes. Dean Waugh, another of Mark's brothers, is also a cricketer, having played first-class and list A cricket in Australia.

Waugh was primarily a right-handed batsman, batting in the No.4 position in Test matches, and was also a handy medium pace bowler, who changed to an off-spin bowler after back injuries restricted him. He is regarded as one of the best slip fielders ever to play cricket, and held the world record for most Test catches by a non-wicketkeeper until Rahul Dravid broke it in 2009.

He began as an all-rounder in the Australian ODI team, but he later focussed on batting and progressed to opening the batting, where he excelled and became Australia's leading one day runscorer. His three centuries at the 1996 Cricket World Cup made him the only batsman to ever achieve this feat, and a fourth century in the 1999 tournament made him the only Australian to score more than 1000 runs in World Cup competition and to score four centuries. He became the leading Australian run-scorer and century maker in ODIs during the 1999 tournament.

Stephen Rodger "Steve" Waugh, AO (born 2 June 1965) is a former Australian cricketer and fraternal twin of cricketer Mark Waugh. A right-handed batsman, he was also a successful medium-pace bowler. Born in New South Wales, with whom he began his first class cricket career in 1984, he captained the Australian Test cricket team from 1999 to 2004, and was the most capped Test cricket player in history, with 168 appearances, until Sachin Tendulkar of India broke this record in 2010. Though thought of in the early stages of his career as only "a moderately talented player", at one point losing his Test place to his brother Mark, Waugh went on to become one of the leading batsmen of his time. He is one of only ten players to have scored over 10,000 Test runs, led Australia to fifteen of their record sixteen consecutive Test wins, and to victory in the 1999 Cricket World Cup. He was named Australian of the Year in 2004 for his philanthropic work, and inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame in front of his home fans at the Sydney Cricket Ground in January 2010.

Saeed Anwar (Urdu: سعید انور; born September 6, 1968 in Karachi, Sind) is a former Pakistani left-handed opening batsman and ocasional Slow left arm orthodox bowler who played international cricket between 1989 and 2003. He played 55 Test matches scoring 4052 with the help of eleven centuries while in 247 One Day Internationals (ODIs) he made 8824 runs. He made twenty centuries in ODIs which are the most than any other pakistani batsman in the format.

In February 1999, Anwar became the third Pakistani to carry his bat through a Test innnings, following father and son Nazar Mohammed and Mudassar Nazar. He scored 188 not out - single-handedly beating his team's previous innings (185), when he mad a duck, and contributing 60 per cent of a total of 316. It was also the highest Test score by a Pakistani on Indian soil which was surpassed by Younis Khan (267) in 2005. He is most notable for scoring 194 runs against India in Chennai in 1997, then the highest, and now the joint third highest individual score in a ODI.