Posted on 02/18/2003 3:46:19 AM PST by Clive
Who will be controlling our economy when crisis is over?
2/18/2003 7:03:43 AM (GMT +2)
By Cathy Buckle
When I was a little girl growing up and desperate for any excuse not to go to school, my parents would tell me that I could only stay at home if it snowed.
In Zimbabwe, day after day throughout winter I looked up at the skies for snow but it never came.
I wish I was still a little girl looking for snow because there is no shortage of it in Zimbabwe at the moment and I think I’d be off school for weeks on end.
Our government is doing the biggest snow job of their 22 and a-half-year career. I’m not sure who they are fooling apart from themselves.
By forbidding people from forming queues outside shops, bakeries and petrol stations they assume they are creating the impression to foreigners that everything is absolutely fine in Zimbabwe.
This snow job might even work except all foreigners have an annoying tendency of doing a few similar things.
They all go into supermarkets to look at the quality and prices of our goods. They all go to hotels and bars and talk to waiters and barmen and they all get into taxis and talk to their drivers.
By just doing those three things, any visitor to Zimbabwe can see for themselves just exactly how dire our situation has become.
The next fall of snow came with the repeated assurances that Zimbabwe was a peaceful country in which to play cricket.
A short walk by Henry Olonga and Andy Flower to the Press box at the opening cricket match against Namibia last week melted the snow immediately.
These two brave men, wearing black armbands, put paid to all the propaganda being incessantly spewed out about the situation in Zimbabwe.
Olonga and Flower said they were “mourning the death of democracy in Zimbabwe” and their short statement told of oppression, torture, terror and starvation in the country. Zimbabwe salutes Henry Olonga and Andy Flower and hopes that indeed their “small act” will restore sanity and dignity to Zimbabwe. Perhaps their huge courage will also inspire others to finally speak out.
Another deep fall of snow came last Thursday when plans for Nuanetsi were announced.
Apparently the Zimbabwe government put out an appeal for tender to grow maize on 100 000 hectares of farm land in Nuanetsi.
Why on earth the government is putting Zimbabwe’s crop growing out to tender in China is utterly beyond belief.
What exactly do Chinese farmers know about Zimbabwe’s climate? Do they know about bush fires and drought, about baboons and armyworms, about quelea birds who raid from above or monkeys who steal from below?
Whilst all these things should be cause for great concern among Zimbabweans, the most worrying thing of all is the estimated yield being advertised by the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC).
Apparently from 100 000 hectares of land the Chinese farmers will produce 2,1 million tonnes of maize. (ZBC TV news 13 February 2003) Unless my maths is wrong because I missed so much school due to too many snowstorms in the 70s, this means a minimum yield of 20 tonnes per hectare.
If I am not mistaken the highest yield of maize per hectare ever recorded in Zimbabwe is just under 12 tonnes.
ZBC would have us believe that on this one piece of land in Nuanetsi the Chinese will produce enough maize for the entire country.
There is an important question that all Zimbabwean’s should now be asking themselves especially the war veterans who supposedly started this Third Chimurenga. When Zimbabwe’s crisis is over who exactly will be dominating our economy?
It won’t be those nasty white Zimbabwean farmers any more it will be Libyans and Chinese and probably Indonesians too.
The biggest snow job of all, however, came from Zimbabwe’s two partners in crime, Presidents Obasanjo and Mbeki.
As always brave Mbeki kept his mouth very tightly shut when it came to doing the right thing about the renewal of Zimbabwe’s suspension from the councils of the Commonwealth.
His Nigerian counterpart, who we all thought was a man of high principle, was left to do the dirty work.
Clearly not even prepared to try to defend their decision at a meeting of the troika, Obasanjo said he and Mbeki would not support a renewal of Zimbabwe’s Commonwealth suspension.
Shame on you both.
I wonder if it is snowing in Nigeria?
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