Posted on 06/25/2002 3:02:21 AM PDT by Clive
Aid, it has been said, is the transfer of wealth from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. This is not necessarily a reason not to give, as a proportion of most direct aid does benefit the starving child, the desperate mother, even if another proportion goes to buy a new car for the official responsible. But the provision of aid becomes yet more morally complex when it directly subsidises a tyrannical regime such as that of Resident Mugabe.
First the ironies: Mugabe is primarily responsible for his people?s hunger as even his regional allies now concede, albeit still on the sly. He blames the drought but his people go hungry alongside full dams, the waters unexploited. His fast track programme has replaced farmland with wasteland, his A2 commercial pioneers are concerned only with plunder. As hunger spreads, his regime seeks to eliminate 17 out of any 20 commercial farms once and for all in less than two months? time. Every speech he makes is a foam- flecked condemnation of the West yet it is the UK, Australia and, most of all, the USA who are supplying the aid to keep his people alive ? millions of US dollars, thousands of tonnes of food. A last irony is that the real food hardship is, so far, primarily rural: hence the West is feeding many of that small proportion of the electorate which willingly voted for Mugabe.
Mugabe facilitated the famine, now it is the West who is coming to his help. But does he pass any of the further tests that confront him? Are there, perhaps, pleas in mitigation? Has he checked or modified his disastrous land policy to ensure some kind of future food security? No, the reverse is true as the few remaining productive farms are annexed and despoiled. Has he opened up the food system to permit a more competitive and effective import of food? No, the Zanu PF-run state monopoly, the GMB, continues to run the trade to the greater enrichment of Zanu PF cronies and the greater suffering of the Zimbabwean people. Spared, in part, the obligation to feed his people by the West, has he used the exchequer monies so saved to benefit Zimbabwe? Of course not ? most of the money saved goes in financing dubious loans from dubious banks, in paying his all-important apparatus of army and police and so-called war veterans, in subsidising non-productive squatters and in shoring up deals with Libya and the DRC where senior Zanu PF officials can make personal fortunes behind the facades of state enterprise.
Worse than all of this: even the aid provided by the Englishman in Truro, the taxpayer in Seattle, is sometimes twisted to Mugabe?s direct benefit. However much the NGOs in Zimbabwe ? World Vision, Christian Care, WFP - try to distribute food fairly, it is often the case that after their trucks bump away, the Zanu PF system closes it, re- allocating food to the Zanu PF faithful in Mugabe?s name or simply selling it for personal gain.
So, international food aid directly subsidises Resident Mugabe and he uses the resources so saved to maintain himself in power. Should the West swallow its liberal principles and shut down supplies? It is true that such a move might kill those who starve now but it might help ensure that such starvation does not become a permanent feature of life in Zimbabwe, as it surely will under Mugabe. But this is the sort of decision the West is temperamentally unable to take and the world is probably a better place for that. Sadly, the world cannot even seek a half way point and request more realistic policies from Mugabe in exchange for propping him up, as he has already shown himself willing to let his people die rather than yield to sanity. So what can be done?
1. Those responsible for smashing Zimbabwe?s food security, and for its selfish and incompetent policy of food distribution, should suffer targeted sanctions from the EU and from the West: Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Local Government, the DAs and the governors and the GMB: put them all on the list. Hitherto damp squibs, these sanctions are about to bite with the inclusion of spouses and offspring.
2. Aid should be calibrated, so far as is possible, so that its quantities keep mothers, infants and the elderly alive and healthy. It should reach those recipients directly. There should be no surplus to line Mugabe?s pockets. Aid should cease where integrity of distribution cannot be guaranteed.
3. The UN should establish a Zimbabwean task force that researches, and reports upon, the integrity of international aid distribution throughout Zimbabwe.
4. All sacks and containers of maize and other foodstuffs should be clearly marked so that recipients cannot be led to believe that they are recipients of Mugabe?s largesse.
5. Running totals for the provision of aid, and the areas of its distribution, should be available to the independent press in Zimbabwe.
6. The WFP should present to SADC and to the AU organisation its prognosis for long term food shortage in southern Africa should Mugabe utterly destroy the Zimbabwean agricultural sector, as is his intention.
There can be no mutually beneficial alliance between the conscience of the West and Mugabe?s tyranny. The latter will always exploit the former whilst Mugabe curses those who are saving his people. But we should not simply accept this fact; rather we should broadcast it and fight it. We wish to help Mugabe?s victims. We wish to see an end to Mugabe. For with his departure, and the end of his vicious regime, there will come hope for all.
Now for implementation...
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