NORMBOND MARKETS

3 Simple Ways to Reach Millions of Customers on Their Mobile Devices

Mobile devices from Samsung, Apple, Sony, Microsoft, Google and others are experiencing explosive growth. You can't go far without seeing someone on an iPhone, Android, iPad or some other handheld gadget. Not only has technology changed -- the way we communicate as a society has changed.

In just a few short years we have seen people also change the way in which they prefer to access the Internet. Mobile devices have overtaken desktop and laptop computers as the primary vehicle for "going online".
 
For business owners, entrepreneurs and anyone seeking to reach a targeted audience this sea change has a huge impact. It is more important than ever that you adjust your online marketing plan to meet the needs of  today's mobile consumer.
Let me share with you three simple ways that you can reach millions of people via their mobile devices.

SMS Messaging

SMS (Short Message Service), or text messages is an incredibly easy tool for staying in touch with your customers. And it’s also one of the most effective. The SMS text message was first developed in 1984, and there are now 4 billion SMS users worldwide.
 
If you have your customers opt-in to receive text messages from you, it gives you the opportunity to send them promotions, new product announcements and various other pieces of information.

And these messages can be sent on extremely short notice, so you can use them strategically to increase revenue for your business. What if you owned a restaurant and you were having a slower-than-normal week? Using SMS you could send a promotional text to your customers on Thursday morning, announcing a free appetizer with any meal they purchase that evening.

The message would be delivered immediately, and would quite likely generate additional business and profits that you wouldn’t otherwise have had.

Email

Email is your best tool for building relationships with your target audience. Although consumers love social media it is not the best channel for connectivity. Consider your Facebook business page. You review your page likes, and see that thousands of users clicked "like" and want to connect with your brand. But alas, the Facebook algorithm limits and restricts the content that is displayed to each user. So the overwhelming majority of people who like your page, will never see your updates. The organic reach of Facebook content (that is not-paid) continues to plummet.

When you send your message to an email subscriber that has opted-in to your list, that message remains in their inbox. And if you decide to create a newsletter you can include multiple stories, promotions, images and other relevant content personalized to your subscribers.

Email tends not to get read as quickly so it’s not as effective for extremely time-sensitive information.

The big advantage is that email drives return on investment. If you send great content, and include relevant adverts, every time a person clicks on the ad you generate income. And email is relatively low cost. With most email services today, for a single monthly fee you can send unlimited messages to your subscribers. And you can personalize messages to your audience based on their click, browse and purchase behavior.

Social Media

Social media is the big dog in the house. Monster sites like Facebook with over 1.6 billion users, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Vine are incredibly popular with mobile internet users. These platforms are working to keep the audience on the site longer. They're constantly adding new features like purchase buttons, messaging, expanded publishing and video to make the sites even more addictive.

And it's working. In 2016, it is estimated that there will be around 2.13 billion social network users around the globe, up from 1.4 billion in 2012. Nearly two-thirds of American adults (65%) use social networking sites, up from 7% when Pew Research Center began systematically tracking social media usage in 2005. And the majority of people accessing social media are doing it through mobile devices (over 71% according to Adobe).

By maintaining a presence on these sites for your business, you’ll have yet another way to stay in touch with your customers, and reach new ones as well. Local businesses can click here our free special report.
 
It makes business sense that the more opportunities you give your customers to interact with you, the better. In spite of the huge numbers you still have to scale it down and personalize it to your target audience. I loved how in radio we would say "be the demo". Know how your audience prefers to be contacted. There is a huge advantage to showing "personalization" even in mass marketing and communications.

Your goal should be to reach your audience, with their permission through their mobile devices. When you make this happen it will be personal and not just business. And that's what relationships are all about.
Leave your thoughts in the comments.

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Norm Bond

President at NORMBOND & Associates

NORM BOND shows people how to use digital marketing tools to find customers, grow sales and increase profits. And if you're not using digital tools he shows you how to do that too. He currently splits his time between Bangkok, Thailand and the U.S. He is available for consulting and speaking.

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Norm Bond: DIGITAL MARKETING COACHING PROGRAM

Spring Into Coaching - 3/14/2016 Many people have been asking me about providing "coaching services". You've seen my emails, websites and want to know how I do it. What tools do I use and how can you add them to your own marketing efforts? And you want some "hand-holding" to answer questions and even hold you accountable to get results. So in response I'm very excited to introduce my DIGITAL MARKETING COACHING PROGRAM. To learn more CLICK HERE or on the image below. We know that today it's critical to use digital marketing tools to increase revenue. For small business owners you can also decrease costs and improve customer satisfaction. And if you conduct business in person and now want to connect online -- this program is made for you. Since I moved to Bangkok, Thailand a little over a year ago, I have really had to step my game up in regards to digital marketing -- so I know the struggle. Many of the exisiting programs with reputable coaches cost thousands of dollars. While I don't question their value as many are sold out -- I wanted to create something affordable for almost everyone. Happy Marketing, Norm

Reggie Rivers: The Football is the Customer

Welcome to ReggieRivers.com!

Reggie Rivers is a former Denver Bronco, Media Personality, 
Benefit Auctioneer, Motivational Speaker, Master of Ceremonies and Author

The Football is the Customer

Brought to you by Former Denver Bronco Reggie Rivers



Former Denver Bronco Reggie Rivers shares one of the lessons from his innovative speaking series titled, “The Business of Football: Strategies from the gridiron that will grow your business.” Never before has an athlete so clearly connected the actions of football teams to the metrics of business. Rivers helps companies see their goals in a whole new light.

Book Reggie to Speak at Your Next Company Event!

The Business of Football: Strategies from the gridiron that will grow your business…

Is an entertaining, informative, inspiring and hilarious presentation that takes the audience deep inside the NFL to learn the habits that players, coaches and teams use so effectively.

When Reggie Rivers retired from the NFL, he was shocked to discover how different the business world was from the football world. But he also noticed something very interesting: The companies and individuals who performed best were those that acted most like football teams and/or football players.​

DOWNLOAD: The Business of Football Flyer
READ MORE: About the Business of Football

 

Liberated Africa: Pathways to Self-Transformational Development

By Ehiedu Iweriebor

In the period since independence in the 1950s, Africa has undergone profound social, cultural, economic and political changes. Some inherited and historically rootless colonialist political and social systems have collapsed, been transcended and reconstituted.  Different political systems – single party rule, personal rule and military governments have come and gone. New post-independence political and social systems; economic institutions, professional associations and labour unions, various types - traditional and new and varied cultural expressions have all emerged.  Creative efforts to foster effective nation-building, develop a sense of belonging and manage diversity productively have also been made. New political systems, different forms of electoral democracy and democratic government;  political parties and groups, varied social and intelligentsia organizations, confident youth groups, civil society organizations are also emerging.  Disruptive and traumatic political and social crises have occurred. These include civil wars, secessionist wars, famines, elite generated manipulative ethnicity and deadly intergroup conflicts, and recently home grown and imported religious terrorism and their destructive wars, spectacular damaging actions, the creation of refugees and internally displaced peoples and the generation of general feelings of insecurity. Social development institutions like health and educational facilities that barely existed under colonialism have been built. For example, vast numbers of schools at all levels including universities and other tertiary institutions – conventional and specialized have been established and dot various parts of Africa. They have produced millions of educated Africans as never existed before in African history. New physical infrastructures: roads, railways, water ways and airports have been built. This is a rough profile of profound changes in Africa since the 1950s. However, given Africa’s size and vast unmet human, social and economic needs there is no question that substantial as what has been built is, the extant physical and social infrastructures are not adequate or abundant enough. At the same time, it is quite clear that the physical and social landscapes of Africa today are vastly different from what they were 60 years ago such that it is unlikely that people from those times will recognize Africa of today. Yet it is also true that there are some aspects of African realities that have not changed substantively or for the better during this period because Africa did not regain, recover or assert its ownership and use of its autonomous self-direction capacities in some spheres over the past six decades. These are primarily in the areas of economic sovereignty, development capacitation, self-actuated development and ideological self-direction. This failure is manifested in such conditions as persistent underdevelopment, the pre-eminence of primary commodities production and export in its economic interactions with the world, import dependency, development incapacitation and poverty generation.  It is also manifested in Africa’s ideological subordination to external diktat through the acceptance and implementation of the economic management dogmas and prescriptions of the multilateral imperialist agencies – the World Bank, IMF and similar bilateral external agencies. These prescribed non-development dogmas include: privatization, deregulation and African states self-withdrawal from promoting socio-economic development and the simultaneous promotion of the ascendancy of  “MARKET FORCES, FOREIGN INVESTORS, FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENTS and FOREIGN TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER ” as the primary and indispensable engines of African economic growth. The forceful application of these disempowering dogmas through the active complicity of psychologically programmed and ideologically defeated African leaders and elite over the past three decades has yielded or in fact consolidated Africa in its status as under- developed, under-equipped and incapable of development self-propulsion. With African economies arrested in primary commodity export and the mass importation of manufactured goods they are mired in the same exocentric rut and this inevitably results in the export of jobs and import of poverty, therefore recurrent poverty-generation. This condition and its persistence over this period suggest that IT CANNOT BE RESOLVED WITHIN ITSELF. It has to be transcended by African strategies of psycho-cultural recovery and development capacitation. Psycho-cultural recovery will entail the self-conscious efforts of liberated Africans to peel off the layers of self-deceit, self-delusion, psycho-ideological incapacitation, diminution of African self-worth, self-marginalization of African agency in African development. It would also require the expurgation from African leaderships and elite of their worshipful dependence on outsiders and preference for all things foreign including pre-fabricated solutions that have been introduced into Africa as dogmas of disempowerment and mechanisms of control from the slave trade era to the present. In its various incarnations, African disempowerment was partially procured through various  seemingly neutral but ultimately destructive external ideological constructs such as “Christianization”, “Islamization”; European “Civilization” during the colonial era; “Modernization” in the neo-colonial period after independence and its latest expression, as multilateral imperialist “globalism” and dictatorial globalization that ideologically and politically dictates a single, global capitalist and liberal democratic system as the only “approved” economic, political and social and order for all times. This would be composite world of the rich and powerful, and the weak and powerless with Africa at the top. But all these disempowering political, social, cultural and economic constructs and systems of domination were politically and self-consciously created by organized and mission-driven national and racial elites pursuing the objectives of group ascendancy and global domination. They are not divine constructs imposed on the world. In the same way, liberated Africans can self-consciously choose and work to exit from this state of UNFREEDOM AND INDIGNITY by dismantling and reconstituting the extant world order (as Asians have done) and chose to create and enter the realms of FREEDOM AND SELF-DIRECTION through development capacitation, psychological liberation, cultural recuperation, mental freedom and self-actuated development so as to emerge as powerful participants in the world system as actors not subjects. This is the liberatory imperative. In order for Africa to assume responsibility for its own transformation and elevation, and be able to undertake self-reliant development and create secure domestic prosperity, it has to create its own specific ideology and strategy of self-development. To do this there are a number of irreducible components that have to be designed and put in place. These are: the recovery and application of African agency in African development, the creation of the liberated African state, establishment of an African development capacitation system, the creation and dissemination of the Affirmative Africa Narrative and African comprehensive military empowerment. The Centrality of African Agency in African Development The first requirement of this liberated development strategy and process is the emplacement of African Agency at the centre of African thought and action as the primary psycho-cultural foundation, ideological premise and endogenous propellant for Africa’s self-actuated development. In this context African Agency is the endogenously created psycho-cultural software embedded in societies with which African societies train, organize, motivate, self-activate and direct themselves to accomplish desirable ends individually and collectively. It is the absolute psycho-cultural grounding and ideological ownership of the African project devoid of compromises to any external imperatives. African Agency is grounded on the supremacy of African endocentric thought and motive-forces as the propellants of development as a self-directed imperative. Without contemporary Africans’ psychological internalization of this understanding and ownership of their development vision and their assumption of complete responsibility for self-actuated development, African societies will remain dependent, underdeveloped and insecure. Therefore the new liberated Africa vision must recognize the absolute necessity of the restoration of African Agency to primacy for any successful African actuated process of transformation.  This new perspective is critically important because it has to be realized that one of the major challenges and primary impediment to Africa’s development since independence in the 1960s has been the absence of African Agency in African development as the directive force. This was due to the concerted and largely successful efforts of external multilateral imperialist forces (posing as omniscient advisers) working with psycho-ideologically unprepared and even naive African collaborator-leaders to promote exocentric authority and the corresponding marginalization, diminution and de-activation of African Agency in African development. Consequently, without the unquestioned ascendancy, centrality and directive role of African Agency, African development understood as Africans’ self-equipment for total liberation and radical transformation can never occur. The Liberated African State Second, is the imperative of the creation of a new Liberated African State through the rigorous ideological cleansing, psychological re-empowerment and administrative reconstruction of the contemporary politically compromised and disabled neo-colonial African states that are more representative of external forces than national interests. The decolonization of the colonial African state and the evolution and emergence of the liberated state after independence was disrupted in the 1980s when most African states were captured and disabled by the cancerous ideologies, dogmas and prescriptions of the multilateral imperialist agencies – the World Bank and the IMF and their bilateral supporters in the context of the economic crises of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Embodied in various formulations and policy diktats such as the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), and its unvarying conditionalities: currency devaluation, subsidy removal, trade liberalization and others like deregulation, privatization, poverty reduction; these prescriptions have transformed African states into disabled, compromised, neo-colonial political-administrative contraptions that are responsible to neo-imperialist multilateral institutions and not to Africans. They therefore cannot serve Africa’s interests This is why it is imperative to create the new Liberated African state. It will be a strong and interventionist developmental state. Its raison d’ etre would be the representation and promotion of national interests. This Liberated African state will be grounded on the affirmation and militant expression of its untrammeled sovereignty; and the absolute non-compromise of national interests to any external agencies, formulations, dogmas and imperatives. It would self-consciously assume and assert uncontested ideological ascendancy. In fact the new liberated state will represent the completion of the decolonization of the African states and the emergence of truly endogenous states. It is only such Liberated African developmental states that can lead to the realization of the African citizens’ expectations for defence and protection, advanced development, material prosperity and freedom from want and colonialist philanthropy, psychological security and empowerment, dignity and equity with all other groups in the world. The African Development Capacitation System The third critical requirement is the development and placement of an African Development Capacitation System as the primary motive-force for Africa’s social and economic transformation and creation of advanced societies. This is proposed against the background of the complete failure of the extant neo-colonial economic system inherited and maintained from colonialism. In over five decades of its use and application as the dominant economic management system and growth strategy it has yielded and maintained Africa in a state of development incapacitation, primary commodity exportation, secondary goods importation, dependency, poverty generation, incapacity for self-propulsion, and subjection to the diktat and control of multilateral imperialist agencies – the World Bank and IMF. It is quite clear that the extant exocentric economic system with its development motive forces externally situated is organically defective, un-reformable and inherently incapable of propelling Africa to the highest levels of development. Therefore in order for Africa to develop and achieve the highest levels of human development it has to own the instruments and systems of self-actuated development. This perspective is partly based on this author’s succinct definition of Development - as a society’s self-equipment with the resources and capacities for its self-reproduction. Consequently, the African Development Capacitation system is the creation and existence within all African societies of the endogenous capacities to conceive, design, construct, manage and operate projects in ALL sectors of the economy. These include the technological, scientific, managerial and operational capabilities for all facets of modern industrial and agricultural production and development self-propulsion. Practically, the components of the development capacitation system include the domestic possession and ownership of the following capacities: Project Conception and Design capabilities; Technological Production Capacity or Capital Goods Industries comprising : Engineering Industries for the manufacture of all types and levels of machine tools, industrial machinery and equipment, transport equipment, electrical and power equipment;  electronic and professional tools and equipment. Intermediate Goods Industries (Metals, Heavy Chemicals, Petrochemicals, Paper, Rubber etc); Civil Engineering Construction Capabilities for large, medium and small scale projects; and Project management and operation and supervision Capabilities. This endogenous development capacitation system is found in all successful  global examples of societal self-development as the prime movers of any society’s self-actuated transformation from conditions of UN-FREEDOM: material underdevelopment, mass poverty, indignity and colonialist philanthropy to new empowered conditions of FREEDOM: expressed as self-created material abundance and prosperity, psycho-cultural confidence and dignified existence. This is practically expressed in mass industrialization, modernized mass agricultural production, mass mineral exploitation and beneficiation primarily for domestic use; mass employment, mass prosperity generation; cultural elevation, self-actuation, self-agency, human dignity and societal power. This is in effect the enthronement of the strategy and process of endocentricity and its ineluctable creation and production of a state of development. The Affirmative Africa Narrative The fourth basic requirement is the creation and permanent dissemination of a self-elevating paradigm or narrative to be known as the Affirmative Africa Narrative. Currently there is no global African created narrative that conceives, presents, projects and widely propagates a truthful, complex and elevating narrative of Africa and Africans. In its absence there exists a universal externally fabricated, pervasive and routinely propagated perverse perspective on Africa that I describe as the Pathological Africa Narrative. This narrative which evolved from the era of the European slave trade; was expansively propagated and consolidated during colonialism and has been fine-tuned and expanded since independence to the present to include other foreign propagators like Asians and even Africans. It presents an image and impression; perception and narrative of Africa as a world of deficits, lack, deprivation, absence, danger, disease, inaction, native incapacity, immobility and a basket charity case that is rescueable only by the self-assigned salvationary efforts of Western multilateral imperialist agencies – World Bank and IMF - their dogmas, experts and prescriptions. This Pathological Africa Narrative is not only inaccurate but it is also dangerous and damaging as it represents the software of African self-denigration, servility, surrender and incapacitation. In order to pursue the vision of liberated Africa it is imperative to create and propagate the Affirmative Africa Narrative. This would be a robust and unapologetic statement of African accomplishments in all areas of human endeavor since independence despite all internal and external obstacles. It would provide the psychological props and grounding among Africans for their self-representation. The Affirmative Africa Narrative is intended to confront, combat, degrade, pulverize, defeat, eliminate and replace the Pathological Africa Narrative that currently pervades external and internal descriptions and representations of Africa and Africans. In its place, the Affirmative Africa Narrative should become the primary perceptual representation and imagistic projection of an energetic and boundless; resurgent and self-directed Africa. Consequently, for Africans committed to racial upliftment and continental advancement and empowerment embodied in the new liberated Africa vision, the requisite framework of self-representation, self-projection and self-activation is the Affirmative Africa Narrative. This is thus a necessary and indispensable accompaniment and organic adjunct to the determined pursuit of the liberated African vision and mission. The Imperative of African Military Empowerment A fifth requirement of the liberated Africa vision is the imperative of Africa’s military empowerment through deliberate provisions for continent-wide development of military capabilities. In order to meet the defence needs of a self-conscious people and continent determined to assume responsibility for its own self-advancement,  self-protection, self-projection and emergence as a powerful and dynamic participant in global affairs, two range of actions are minimally imperative. First is the establishment and development of military industries throughout Africa to ensure that virtually all military equipment from the most basic to the most advanced are manufactured (not assembled) in Africa. This is will free Africa from its current pathetic situation of dependency for military wares from the countries which participated in the past in Africa’s conquest and colonization as well as from new armament producers and traders. To be militarily none self-equipped and self-reliant is to reside in a state of UNFREEDOM. The second aspect of African military empowerment is the revival, re-steaming and realization of the long-standing grand visions from the 1960s for continental defence institutions and systems. The founding nationalist and pan Africanist leaders of the 1960s and 1970s, had canvassed and proposed the development a comprehensive continental military defence system. This is was to be known as the African Military High Command. These pioneer leaders envisaged it as a powerful continental defence force for self-protection, internal security issues, intra-continental intervention, conflict resolution, contributions to continental and global peace keeping and management as needed and as a force of self-projection that announces Africa’s global presence. It would also be responsible for the security of African geo-political and oceanic spaces against foreign powers desirous of containing, controlling and constraining Africa by the establishment of their military cordon around the continent. The over-all rationale for the prescription of Africa’s military empowerment is due to the historical purblindness and psychological incapacitation of African leaderships and dominant elite since independence.  In the light of the rapid conquest, colonization and exploitation of African communities after the Berlin Conference between the 1880s-1900s, self-conscious Africans should never have the luxury of forgetting that Africa was conquered primarily because of Western military superiority in arms and armaments. Thus it would seem minimally patriotic, psychologically imperative, behaviourially logical and eminently sensible that such a people and continent should give premium attention to the establishment of a powerful military capacity for defence and offense as indicated by its historical experiences and new status as sovereign states. Therefore a fulsome strategy for African military self-equipment and a powerful and expansive African Military High Command should be developed and incorporated as part of the liberated development strategy to equip Africa to defend, protect and project itself and to play a dynamic role in global affairs. Conclusion The various elements outlined above constitute a new strategy and process of endocentric development or African Liberated Development and their application would produce Liberated Africa. This Africa would be truly self-made: developmentally transformed, ideologically self-directed, politically stable, technologically advanced, industrially developed, socially prosperous, culturally renascent, psychologically assertive, militarily powerful, a globally ascendant continent with self-restored human dignity, an Africa of which all Africans will be duly proud.  Ehiedu Iweriebor, Ph.d (Columbia) is a Professor and former Chair of the Department of Africana and Puerto Rican/Latino Studies, Hunter College, City University of New York, USA. Source: APO

TMZ

O.J. SIMPSONCOULD BE FREED AND ON REALITY TV IN 2017

13.9K

 2,411

 3/10/2017 1:00 AM PST

EXCLUSIVE

O.J. Simpson could be released from prison as early as October, and the buzz in the reality TV industry is that some producers are getting ready to scramble to sign him.

We've contacted a number of reality TV production companies, TV agents and platforms where such a show could run, and the reactions range from recoiling in disgust to pouncing on the opportunity.

None of the people to whom we spoke wanted to be quoted by name, but they all say the most likely formats are documentary or interview show.

Simpson actually co-wrote a book and then in 2006 shot a TV special, 'If I Did It.' O.J.'s co-author has said O.J. confessed to the double murder in the book and we know he read that passage for the TV special. There was a public outcry and Fox killed the show and our sources say it will never air.

The producers and agents with whom we spoke say they're certain someone will try to recreate the TV special that was never broadcast for several reasons ... years have passed, O.J. has done time for unrelated crimes, and 'People vs. O.J. Simpson' was a big hit.

Here's the problem. Almost to a person, producers and agents said broadcast and cable networks would never air a show featuring O.J. They say the public wouldn't tolerate it and no one would advertise on it.

That said, producers say there would be a home on Pay-Per-View because, as one person put it, "people could pay without being judged."

As for O.J. making money off a show ... he's still on the hook for a $33 million wrongful death judgment, and any money he makes could be attached to satisfy the judgment.

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The Telegraph

Canaan Banana

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12:03AM GMT 12 Nov 2003

Canaan Banana, the colourfully-named former president of Zimbabwe who died on Monday aged 67, became his country's first black head of state in 1980 following the bloody and prolonged war of independence that toppled Ian Smith's white-only regime; but his career ended in disgrace 18 years later when he was convicted and jailed for sodomy.

Although not well-known outside Southern Rhodesia before independence, Banana had had an honourable career as an opponent of the Smith regime, and as a radical theologian. He served as the country's president, a largely ceremonial position, from March 1980 to December 1987, when he was effectively forced out by the increasingly autocratic Robert Mugabe, who took over as executive president, after serving as prime minister.

Banana might have expected to spend the rest of his days as his country's respected elder statesman, but his retirement was rudely interrupted by a sexual scandal which led to his trial on charges of sodomy.

The story broke in February 1997 when a former bodyguard, Jefta Dube, who was on trial for murder, pleaded in mitigation that he had been systematically raped and sodomised by Banana over a three-year period when Banana was president, and that he (Dube) had been taunted by the murdered man as "Banana's wife".

Banana had allegedly spotted Dube playing for the police football team, the Black Mambas, in late 1983 and invited him to join his household. Dube described how Banana drank, danced and played cards with him before drugging him and raping him on the carpet of the State House Library.

Dube had complained at the time to the country's police commissioner, but was told that nothing could be done. When he asked Banana to stop, Banana refused, telling him: "I am the final court of appeal."

Banana denied the allegations, claiming that the charges had been trumped up by his opponents. But by May, Dube had been joined by a veritable army of accusers, including dozens of former students of the University of Zimbabwe (where Banana had been Chancellor from 1983 to 1988), several members of the State House football team, the Tornadoes (who testified that their patron's fascination for scoring extended beyond the pitch), and assorted policemen and air force officers. There was, in addition, testimony of sex with cooks, gardeners and several aides, a jobseeker and a hitch-hiker.

Homosexuality is regarded as beyond the pale in Zimbabwe and is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. In 1995, President Mugabe had famously described homosexuals as "worse than pigs and dogs" and urged Zimbabweans to turn them over to the police. Banana's arrest contributed to growing public disillusionment with the regime, since rumours of Banana's sexual profligacy had been rife in the capital for many years and it was generally assumed that Mugabe must have known, but had done nothing to stop it.

In 1998 Banana was found guilty on 11 charges of sodomy, attempted sodomy and and other "unnatural acts" with men. The case took a further dramatic twist when, shortly before sentencing, Banana went on the run to South Africa after receiving a tip-off that Mugabe intended to have him assassinated. After meeting Nelson Mandela, he returned to Zimbabwe, where he was sentenced to 10 years in jail, of which nine were suspended.

Canaan Sodindo Banana was born on March 5 1936 at Esiphezini, in Essexvale District, near Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia. He was educated at a mission school, followed by Tegwani Teacher Training Institute and Epworth Theological College, where he was ordained as a Methodist minister in 1962.

He worked at various missions and was chairman of the Bulawayo Council of Churches in 1969-70 and of the Southern African Urban Industrial Mission from 1970 to 1973. He alarmed the authorities by publishing his own version of the Lord's Prayer, encouraging Africans to resist white supremacy.

Banana spent a year travelling in South-East Asia and Japan (where he took a diploma at Kansai Industrial Centre). On his return he became an active nationalist, joining the newly-formed African National Council (ANC), of which Bishop Abel Muzorewa was president. He became its vice-president and campaigned for the rejection of the agreement between Rhodesia's prime minister Ian Smith and Sir Alec Douglas-Home during the Pearce Commission inquiry.

In 1972, Banana accompanied Muzorewa on a visit to London to press for another constitutional conference. In consequence, Banana's passport was confiscated on his return, and he fled on foot to Botswana in 1973. He ended up in America on a three-year scholarship and studied for a master's degree in Theology at Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington DC.

On his return to Rhodesia in 1975, Banana was arrested at the airport and jailed for leaving the country without a passport. On his release in January 1976, he flew to Bulawayo but was kept under house arrest. Later in the year he was allowed to join Muzorewa's team at settlement talks in Geneva, during which he defected to Robert Mugabe's Zanu (the Zimbabwe African National Union).

On his return to Rhodesia in December 1976, he dismissed Muzorewa as "irrelevant and gullible" and the following year established the People's Movement to represent the internal wing of Mugabe's party. He was again detained, but was released shortly before Lord Soames arrived as Governor in 1979.

Banana became first president of an independent Zimbabwe on April 18 1980, when he received the constitutional instruments from the Prince of Wales. As a former political detainee and a member of the minority Ndebele people, he had impeccable political credentials, and was the only person nominated by Zanu.

Banana used the presidential platform to attack the churches for their mealy-mouthed approach to the liberation struggle, and in 1980 called for a "radical transformation" of the content of the Christian message: "When I see a guerrilla, I see Jesus Christ," he declared. Later, he suggested that the Bible should be rewritten to make it relevant to people in post-colonial societies.

In September 1980 Banana was an intermediary in talks about merging Zanu-PF and Joshua Nkomo's Zapu and was credited with brokering the 1987 Unity Accord which brought to an end the Matabeleland massacres in which Mugabe's army is thought to have killed an estimated 20,000 civilians.

Banana had some difficulty investing the office of president with the required aura of reverence and in 1982 a law was passed in Zimbabwe forbidding jokes about the president's name, though it continued to invite cheap jibes, illustrated later in such headlines as "Man raped by Banana" and "Mugabe Slips on Banana".

Banana took a great interest in raising chickens at Mrs Banana's farming co-operative in the grounds of State House and acquired his own farm just outside Harare. He sent Prince Charles a poem for his wedding, and wrote five books on theology and politics. His other interests included refereeing football matches, conducting a choir, and playing tennis and Ping-Pong.

The loss of office in 1987 was not without its compensations. Banana retired that year on very favourable terms, with a tax-free pension for life of £25,443, lifetime immunity from import duties, and with a secretary, two security guards and a vehicle allowance.

Thereafter he served, in 1989, on the United Nations commission of eminent churchmen investigating business in South Africa. At the end of 1991 he was one of a group of Commonwealth "Eminent Persons" which observed Codesa (Convention for a Democratic South Africa). He also played an active part, on behalf of the Organisation of African Unity, in seeking to broker peace in Liberia.

After the scandal broke, Banana lost his university chair of theology, religious studies and philosophy, was stripped of his clerical rank by the Methodist church in Zimbabwe and was dropped by the OAU. When, as president of the Zimbabwe Football Association, he went on to the field to meet the players he was booed by the crowd.

Banana was convicted by Zimbabwe's high court, but served only six months of his sentence in an open prison that allowed him to make shopping trips to the capital. He continued to protest his innocence, describing homosexuality as "deviant, abominable and wrong", and denouncing the charges against him as "a mortuary of lies".

He married, in 1961, Janet Mbuyazwe and had three sons and a daughter. After standing by her husband during his trial, Mrs Banana left Zimbabwe for Britain, where she claimed political asylum.