Posted on 10/10/2005 4:52:43 AM PDT by Clive
HARARE -- In the logic-defying double-speak to which Zimbabweans have become accustomed, President Robert Mugabe this week blamed international agencies for Africa's food shortages. In what can best be described as a caricature of the well-known Zimbabwean blame-dodging phrase "I am not the one" Mugabe somewhat incoherently told a joint regional Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and World Health Organisation (WHO) conference on food safety for Africa that food relief agencies had retarded the continent's agricultural development.
Officially opening the two-day conference in Harare, Mugabe said African governments had neglected agricultural development and ignored the need for food self-sufficiency because of the readily-available food handouts from groups such as FAO.
"Food aid gestures, have to a large extent, crippled the commitment and seriousness that should attend agricultural development on the continent," he said.
His government's violent and corrupt land reform programme, underway since 2000, has crippled the country's economy and reduced it to a dust bowl. Half the population remaining after 25% have fled the country require more than more than a million tonnes of food aid this season.
The conference is being attended by agriculture ministers from Zimbabwe, Kenya, South Africa, Zambia, Mozambique, Gabon, Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mugabe told them that weak food safety control systems coupled with unpredictable droughts were also behind perennial food shortages in the region.
In another leap of utterly incomprehensible 'logic' Mugabe said his chaotic land reform programme was in fact the country's solution to food shortages.
Overall agricultural production fell by about 30 percent while food production dropped by a massive 60 percent after Mugabe expelled more than 4,000 large-scale commercial farmers and gave over their farms to ruling party bigwigs and cronies.
Farm output dropped because Mugabe - who says land seizures were necessary to correct an unjust colonial land tenure system that reserved 75 percent of the best arable land for whites while blacks were cramped on unfertile soils - did not give black villagers settled on former white farms inputs support or skills training to enable them to maintain production.
Zimbabwe, a net food exporter before Mugabe began his farm seizure programme in 2000, has avoided starvation for the past five years only because of food aid from international relief agencies.
But the Zimbabwean leader told the conference his "much vilified land reform programme", was meant to create more farmers and increase agricultural production.
He said: "Its objective was to redress the fact of colonial injustice, empower the majority, and proceed to improve agricultural sector performance by increasing the numbers of our farmers."
Mugabe's right ... we're all to blame ... (sniff)
When his comments were posted the other day, I thought they were from The Onion:
"Securing the government's monopoly control over the sustenance needed for survival is a key element of our approach to governing," said Mugabe. "The unregulated donation of imported food to the hungry undermines my authority to determine what is best for my country."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1498850/posts
Looks like Mugabe is angling for the Nobel Prize in economics.
another case of the ABM..(anyone but me) syndrome
"Food aid gestures" have been the only thing that's kept Zimbabwe's army from starving. Without food aid, Mugabe's regime would have already collapsed.
Time for tough love. Cut off the food aid. Cut out the cancer, then it will heal.
YES.
He's actually right, although I know he doesn't mean it like we would mean it if we said the same. "Give a man a fish..."
This is funny stuff! It's satire right? Clive, did you write this stuff yourself? :-)
That reminds me of a guy that recently found out his girlfriend was pregnant and he said "Well she did it to herself!" It wasn't his fault she woke up pregnant one morning just like it's not Thugabe's fault Zimbabwe woke up hungry one morning.
See my post 11. (Still trying to figure out whether to laugh or hit something.)
CC
Yes, I'd seen that article.
"He said: 'Its objective was to redress the fact of colonial injustice, empower the majority, and proceed to improve agricultural sector performance by increasing the numbers of our farmers.'"
Translation: "I'm kicking them white sucka farmers who feed us off their land so I can give it to my corrupt political cronies who don't know a rake from a fork. Foreign welfare programs will feed us for free. As for the masses to whom the foreign aid doesn't trickle down, I'll blame the aid agencies themselves."
All foreign aid should be stopped to Zimbabwe until the Zimbabweans necklace Mugabe and his cronies.
Agree. Cut off ANYTHING to that SOB...
Every day man every day.
Excellent! No man better represents progressive methods of socialist governance than Robert Mugabe, friend of the friendless.
Not since the magnificent Pol Pot has such a giant strode the world stage; we are fortunate to be alive during his time on earth.
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