Posted on 12/10/2006 3:16:13 AM PST by MadIvan
ZIMBABWE has the highest inflation and lowest life expectancy in the world, not to mention the highest percentage of orphans. So desperate is the shortage of food that President Robert Mugabe’s own guards have been spotted shooting squirrels in Harare’s Botanical Gardens.
However, Mugabe, 82, may be rewarded by being made president for life at his party’s annual conference this week.
Among the main proposals to be discussed is postponing presidential elections from 2008 till 2010. But Didymus Mutasa, the powerful national security minister and secretary for administration in the ruling Zanu-PF party, said last week that Mugabe had done “so many wonderful things” for Zimbabwe that it was likely that delegates to the conference would appoint him for life.
“There is a realistic chance that someone among the delegates or one of the provinces could come up with a proposal that he remains the party’s presidential candidate until Amen,” said Mutasa.
“He has done so many wonderful things for this country and its majority population and he is not showing any signs of tiredness. So if it is raised, as I am sure it will be, why not?”
Among those “wonderful things” is turning the country from the breadbasket of southern Africa to a land so famished that there are now long queues at abattoirs to buy waste such as pigskin marked “not fit for human consumption”.
The last official figures issued in October put inflation at 1,070%. But the cost of living shot up by almost 50% last month, according to the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe. An urban family of six now requires Z$209,000 (£442) to meet its basic food, housing, transport and clothing needs for a month, way above the average wage of Z$50,000. So bad is the economic crisis that while people around the world are stocking up on treats for the festive season, Zimbabweans are staring at empty shelves.
“This will be the worst Christmas ever,” said Joyce Taravinga, a single mother in Mbare, one of many who lost their homes in the government’s slum demolition operation. She now has to live with relatives in an already overcrowded shack.
“It’s hard to imagine that we used to have meat and presents. This year it will be a bowl of sadza [maize porridge] and leaves.”
She is hoping to have saved enough from selling bananas to be able to flavour the food with “meat sawdust” — gristle and bone sold as dog food by the abattoir. “We are happy if we can afford dog food,” she said. “We have no dignity left.”
Even the government’s own information shows that living standards have dropped 150% in the past decade. A survey by the social welfare ministry revealed that between 1995 and 2003, more than 63% of rural people could not afford to meet basic food requirements, while the figure in urban areas was 53%. Since then the situation has got far worse.
The lack of nutrition is hastening so many Aids-related deaths that new figures from Unicef reveal that a quarter of Zimbabwe’s children — 1.6m — are now orphans.
“This number is growing,” said Dr Festo Kavishe, the Unicef representative in Zimbabwe. “HIV and Aids have dramatically increased children’s vulnerability in recent years to the point where Zimbabwe now has the highest percentage in the world of children who are orphans.”
Zimbabwe’s register office has suspended issuing identification cards, passports and other crucial documents to citizens as a shortage of foreign currency means that they are no longer able to import the necessary ink and paper.
Anyone who dares to complain about the situation risks being beaten or arrested. The government is also attempting to block access to outside media by confiscating shortwave radios in rural areas in a crackdown that started this month. Wind-up and solar-powered radios were distributed by non- governmental organisations to give people access to broadcasters such as the BBC.
According to Nelson Chamisa, spokesman for one faction of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, its offices have been inundated with complaints from people who have had their radios seized.
Members of so-called listening clubs, which meet to listen to news on shared radios, have been threatened and told they are “selling out the country” by listening to “foreign” broadcasts.
“The government is becoming more and more paranoid,” said Lovemore Matombo, president of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. “The more desperate they become, the more violent they get.”
However, he vowed: “We won’t be deterred. Everything is falling apart. The health system has collapsed. Hospitals have no drugs. People cannot afford school fees. There are power cuts all the time. We can no longer just wait.”
The congress has threatened protests in the new year if the government fails to meet demands to raise minimum wage levels, stop the arrest of street traders and provide life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs to those living with HIV.
Despite the increased repression and ever worsening situation, there are moves within the European Union to avoid reimposing travel sanctions on Mugabe and his cohorts when they expire in February. France and Portugal are among the countries that no longer want sanctions.
Kathryn Llewellyn, campaign director for the London-based organisation Action for Southern Africa, which is lobbying MEPs, said: “If the EU sanctions drop we will be turning our backs on the millions of Zimbabweans suffering daily.”
Our tragedy, by a priest working in the slums of Harare
I do not know how people survive with more than 1,000% inflation. Just last month the mealie meal that everyone lives on went up 190% and last week bus fares went up 60%.
Murambatsvina (drive out the filth), Mugabe’s clean-up operation from last year, continues to take its toll: there are still homeless people in the suburb of Harare where I work. You find 20 or 30 people in a shack because people whose homes were demolished are squeezing in with friends and relatives.
Yesterday a widow, mother of five children, came to ask for help. She used to stay with her uncle. He has thrown them out onto the streets because he is afraid she might die on him, leaving him the five children. She is visibly sick with Aids.
No one outside government can be seen to be doing anything for the people. Just like food distribution: government wants to monopolise it and then give only aid to its known supporters.
The economic collapse destroys our culture and our humanity. It is so bad now that people give false names when they leave sick relatives in hospital. This is so they cannot be traced when the relative dies, because they cannot pay for the funeral. Their relatives receive a pauper’s burial in a mass grave.
Zimbabwe’s awful record
# 1.6m orphans — one in four Zimbabwean children — the world’s highest rate
# Average life expectancy: 34 for women, 37 for men, world’s lowest
# Inflation: 1070.2% (October), world's highest
# Minimum monthly budget for a family of six: Z$209,000 (£442)
# Average salary: Z$50,000 (£106)
# Budget deficit: 43% of GDP
# Unemployment 70%
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
Africa's a sewer.
Regards, Ivan
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
It's not. The whole world would be better off if it was still under your rule.
MadIvan used to rule the whole world? Wow. Go Ivan!
I'm flattered...but a lot of people would be very unhappy if that was the case. :)
Regards, Ivan
How is it the Brits fault the racist Mugabe confiscated the successful white owned farms and gave them to those who could not farm?
That argument didn't work so well with y'all when the Irish, Scots, and Welsh tried it.
L
This sure beats the hell out of Apartheid doesnt it?
No more white people feeding them, Its Great.
Mugabe and Mandela two of the genius's that took Africa into famine. One a hero ,the other President for Life. Where is Tutu the other genius that fought to get these guys put in charge. I bet he hasnt lost any weight.
Rhodesia declared independence from the UK long before any of this took place.Jmma Carter had a hand in this by placing sanctions on the Rhodies.No I'm not british,my wife is a Rhodie.
The world is going to be feeling the ill effects of that blithering idiot Carter for generations.
The world is still paying in blood for dismantling the British Empire. Say what you like about the Brits, but they knew how to set up stable colonial governments and make 'em stick for the most part.
The smart thing to do would have been to let us kick the crap out of the thugs running Iraq and then let the Foreign Office hands in to set things up and get them running.
It's amazing when you think about it. The four most succesful nations on the planet have nearly one thing in common. Namely a legacy of British colonial rule.
The US.
Canada
Australia
and Great Britain herself.
With any luck India will be along shortly. I hope so anyway. The world could use another stable democracy of nearly a billion hard working industrious educable people. We have largely the Brits to thank for that.
Not a bad legacy if you ask me. I know they weren't perfect and I was just joshing with Ivan about Ireland and Scotland.
I pray a lot for Britain. She's been a steadfast ally of ours for over a hundred years. Britain will muddle through whatever problems she has now. She always has.
Regards to both,
L
There are leftists around the world who will see the abject failure of Zimbabwe and learn nothing from it. They will probably conclude that Mugabe was not ruthless enough and they will vow that when they get into power they will show the world how to make communism really work.
Unfortunatley, we stupid Yanks helped them through our incredible daft President Carter.
The man was only in office 4 years, how did he manage to do such harm?
Mugabe is feted or fetid?
In any case, if he ran for office in Rep William Jefferson's district, I guess the dolts who live there would elect Mugabe too.
"Jimmah Brainfart Catah" was the ringleader in selling out Rhodesia.
It is sick that the U.S. Congress gave Mandela a standing ovation. They did not care what he stood for, they were just clapping for a black guy. The same mentality drives the myth of MLK, a Marxist who cheated on his wife. What ever these black leaders do, it does not mater, because to question their divinity is racist.
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