Posted on 08/19/2002 2:35:59 AM PDT by Clive
"It's quite simple. Those who have Zanu PF cards get food; those who don't starve." The man explaining the politics of food in Zimbabwe today is speaking in a hotel room in Bulawayo. It is too dangerous to talk in his home. The name of the 34-year-old railway worker must be concealed, along with the name of the hotel whose manager allowed 20 hungry black Zimbabweans to talk to me, and the name of the church mission who brought them. Any criticism of the Government is considered a slur on President Mugabe and his party and can result in charges of conspiracy and subversion. In the absence of food, fear is the staple diet in Zimbabwe.
"The food trucks arrive in the villages once a week," the man explains. "Everyone has to stand up and shout 'Long Live Robert Mugabe!', 'Down with the whites!' and 'Down with Morgan Tsvangirai!'," (the opposition leader). "Only those who can prove they are members of the Zanu PF can queue. They say to the others 'go and get your food from Tony Blair in No 10 Downing Street in London!' But we don't know where London is." As everyone in the hotel room nods in agreement, a woman, a former shop assistant whose husband died of Aids, begins to cry. "My seven children are starving. I heard that food was being delivered in a village 40 kilometres away," she says. "When I arrived, they said I could not have any because I supported the whites and the opposition party during the election. I dare not go home and face my children. I wish I could die."
Drought is causing famine across southern Africa. In Zimbabwe the catastrophe is aggravated by the collapse of commercial farming, and manipulation of food supplies. "There is only food available for half the country of 13 million people," an economist in Harare said. "Robert Mugabe is employing the tactics of Pol Pot. He plans to get rid of the dissenting half of the population by starving them to death." A village close to Nkayi, in the Midlands region of Zimbabwe, made the mistake of voting for the opposition in last February's elections. Now its people are being punished. No food trucks arrive here and there are only 44lb of maize left for 200 people until the next harvest in June. Sithembiso Sekai sits in a forlorn heap outside her house, watching her painfully thin eldest daughter crack muphura, a foul-tasting wild nut, to feed to the other four children. The baby at her breast lies asleep, exhausted by the effort of sucking to no avail.
At the neighbouring house 15-year-old Musa prepares a supper of cow's intestines and one tomato for her family of 16. They have two cows left. Her father, Sima, worked on a white-owned commercial farm before he was laid off when the farm was invaded by black squatters. He says that once the cows have gone, they will have nothing and the family will starve. While Mr Mugabe appeals to the outside world for food, the 2,500 or so white farmers who are left have been forbidden from planting crops. They have watched helplessly as the war veterans and their hangers-on have invaded their farms, slaughtered their cattle and poached the wildlife. "It's the paradox in Zimabwe today," says Peter Rosenfels, under siege at his farm near Bulawayo. "While the Government carries a begging bowl we, the producers of food, are being criminalised. Zimbabwe once fed the region. Now we can't feed ourselves."
As long as the perps are black on black crime it will be ignored. Just as it was in Ruanda.
You are probably right- the Media, press & entertainment, which worked hand-in-glove to overthrow the "evil White Minority Governments" of Rhodesia and South Africa do not want to talk about, or even look at, the chaos descending there.
Nonetheless, we must stand, and bear witness, and call attention to the atrocities there.
Let no man be able to say, "gee, I never even heard of that..."
family of 16? Between the insanity of Mugabe, lack of basic family planning and AIDS, these people are toast.
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