Zimbabwe -- Cathy Buckle -- Missed the target

A new schedule of minimum wages for some categories of employment was released by a government department last week. One of the lowest in the schedule is a yard or garden worker whose minimum wage has been set at 3.2 billion dollars a month. To outsiders this may sound like a massive amount of money but in reality it is a death sentence. As I write this letter a 1 kg packet of plain hard biscuits is 9.2 billion dollars, a 2 kg packet of potatoes is 3.6 billion dollars, a 400 gram tin of baked beans is 1.8 billion dollars. By the time you read this letter all of these prices will have increased; it is likely they will have doubled within a week. On a full month's pay a yard or garden worker cannot even feed himself for a few days; worse still, he cannot provide any food for his family, he cannot buy any clothes or shoes and cannot pay his children's school fees. God help him if he gets sick. Perhaps the saddest fact of all is that this government stipulated minimum wage is currently worth just ten US cents a day.

After almost a decade of political turmoil and economic collapse, the vast majority of Zimbabweans are unable to cope on their own and are surviving on charity of some type or other. It may be from families in the Diaspora sending hard currency home every month, relations abroad paying school fees and medical needs or friends, churches and other well wishers sending parcels of food, toiletries, medicines and other essentials. On a much larger scale help has come from the international aid organisations who this winter were set to feed 4 million Zimbabweans - over a third of the population.

This week all aid organizations operating in Zimbabwe were ordered to immediately stop all their field operations and to re-apply for new licences. It seems none are spared from the ruling issued by the Social Welfare Minister. All are affected from school children surviving on one charitable meal a day to rural households receiving grain and food relief to people with HIV/Aids receiving life sustaining anti-retroviral drugs.

The timing of the ban on charitable assistance could not have come at a worse moment for Zimbabweans. It is winter, market gardening is minimal and vegetable growth very slow. Supermarket shelves remain largely empty. All basic goods continue to be unavailable including maize meal, flour, rice, sugar, cereals, beans, oil and many more.

This week, while Mr Mugabe, his wife and their delegation were in Rome attending a UN Food Security conference, dire news was released about Zimbabwe's daily bread which should be growing this winter. The state sponsored Herald newspaper reported that only 8,963 hectares of wheat have been planted this winter amounting to just 13% of the government target of 70,000 hectares. Agriculture Minister Rugare Gumbo was quoted as saying: "We have missed the target, with challenges being shortages of fertilisers and fuel as well as frequent breakdowns of tillage facilities."

Zimbabwe was often in the international news this week for diplomatic incidents at road blocks, for food insecurity, for ongoing political violence, for widespread arrests of MDC officials, activists and MP's and for the prevention of MDC election campaign rallies. For the ordinary and very long suffering people of Zimbabwe, we are counting down the days to round 2 of the Presidential election. It cannot come soon enough and the reasons for which candidate to choose become more obvious each day.

I have to believe that there will not be a “Round 2” of the Presidential elections there. The Opposition leader will most likely have an “accident” by then and Mugabe will be the only choice.

It’s a bit more convoluted than that. The restrictions on aid are so that the government can control the distribution, providing food only to Mugabe’s supporters. The plan is to literally starve out the opposition before the election.

Nice guys.

I have watched the news here in the USofA on Zimbabwe's General Election last March, go from optimistic to pessimistic to grim to the current 'why bother / no news - its a dog's upchuck'. I would just love to see one of those radical Europeans, who try to 'arrest' Rumsfield or Bolton, try to do the same to Mugabe while he is in Rome. Yes, I know that he has diplomatic immunity, but we should have an agreement in our Western Civilization countries to remove that 'protection' from monsters like him.

Perhaps, if tyrants like Mugabe had to stay home there might be a chance for a 'Maoist Vote' (the kind that comes from the gun barrel). Curses on his international protectors who ensure such misery with their cynical desire for Zimbabwe's UN Vote.

"Perhaps, if tyrants like Mugabe had to stay home there might be a chance for a 'Maoist Vote' (the kind that comes from the gun barrel). Curses on his international protectors who ensure such misery with their cynical desire for Zimbabwe's UN Vote. "

Well, Grace had to get her shoes.

Grace Mugabe Shops For Ferragamo Shoes In Rome's Luxury Boutiques

I use this as an example of Socialism to my daughter...since the State knows best how to run the economny, the fact that three dozen Friends of Mugabe with no farming experience now run the farms must mean that everyone is well fed, and rumors to the contrary are punishable by death.

[SARCASM]

It is a good thing that the Glorious Leader got rid of all the white farmers who kept Zim the "breadbasket of Africa!"

[/SARCASM]

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