Posted on 05/31/2003 3:39:43 AM PDT by Clive
Dear Family and Friends,
For over three years the only question in every Zimbabwean home has been: How long can this go on?
There have been a score of different occasions when we didn't think that things could get much worse. Like when the government said they would seize 5 million hectares of farm land, increased that to 11 million hectares and actually carried it out, giving the best farms to government ministers and security officials.
Then we thought it was bad when we ran out of maize meal, then bread and oil, then sugar and flour and then petrol and diesel.
Then came the long electricity cuts, the collapsing infrastructure, the closure of hundreds of companies and the massive brain drain from the country.
Then the end of internal Air Zimbabwe flights, first to tourist destinations and this week even between Harare and Bulawayo as aviation fuel ran out.
Through it all has been the violence, rapes, murders and horrific torture of people in police custody.
This week though, as I tipped three weeks worth of garbage out onto my back lawn and burned it because refuse collection is no longer operational in Marondera as there is no fuel for the trucks, I knew that we had finally reached the very bottom of the barrel.
The reason is that now, 40 months after the political mayhem began, the country has literally run out of money.
There are big queues everywhere you look now, the short ones are for non existent food and fuel but the really long ones are outside banks and building societies where many hundreds of people are trying to draw out money. There are no big bank notes left in Zimbabwe's banks, it started in the capital city and over the week it has spread to all the little towns.
Many companies can't pay their full wages, employees can't cash their salary cheques and it is complete and utter chaos at every turn. Big companies are paying out multi million dollar wage bills in 20, 50 and 100 bank notes and people are leaving banks with boxes stuffed with small bills.
Big bank notes have become so sought after that the joke in our town this week is that you can buy 500 dollar notes on the black market for 700 dollars.
It's like being in a horror movie or a slap stick comedy just doing something simple like going shopping in Marondera this week. The person at the supermarket till in front of me had 47 thousand dollars worth of groceries and was paying the bill with huge blocks of 50 and 20 dollar notes.
The teller could barely cope with counting all these mountains of small bills and on his lap he had a cardboard box to put the money into as it wouldn't all fit into his till. He told me he needed a new box for every third customer and the managers office looked a lot like a warehouse.
Amazingly though, there is an incredible feeling in the air this week. A mixture of excitement, anticipation and relief is palpable in the country as we all know that at last the time has come for action.
The opposition, trade unions and civic society have united and called for a week of well organised and peaceful protests, street marches and demonstrations calling for the resignation of President Mugabe. The opposition are calling this the Final Push and most people believe that this is now the beginning of the end.
We all fear blood shed and violence. People have been advised to stock up on food and be prepared for all eventualities. It's a very frightening time and exacerbated by news that both the police and army have been put on high alert and all security personnel have been called back from leave.
Zimbabweans are determined though, enough is finally enough. Every day this week there have been calls for prayer and many hundreds have gathered daily to pray for courage, for peace and for an end to a madness which has not ever been about land redistribution but about a political party's survival.
Wherever you are in the world, please join us in praying for an end to Zimbabwe's madness in the coming weeks.
Until next week, with love, cathy.
AfricaWatch:
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CIA -- The World Factbook -- Zimbabwe
First it was Rhodesia then SA now America paying the price of silence.
-A Capsule History of Southern Africa--
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ZWNEWS.com - linking the world to Zimbabwe MPR Books - Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African ... Title: "Cry, the Beloved Country" - Topics: World/South Africa The Coming Anarchy -South Africa - The sellout of a nation-- FYI, I wrote this a while back: I don't know what will happen in southern Africa beyond a general breakdown into chaos & anarchy... the old bugbear was the Soviets gaining control of the tip & choking our fleet's movements, coupled with control of the mineral wealth. Now it look like Quaddaffi is angling to take over Rhodesia and perhaps spread to South Africa. At this point, we are 20 years too late, but we can at least bear witness to the debacle. Bear in mind I am a partisan- I supported ( with reluctance ) the old white-minority governments in Rhodesia and South Africa, because I knew the Communists and their puppets- including proxies like Cuba- were angling for control of southern Africa. One big problem we have is our media. They have tried to portray the situation in southern Africa as a clone of our own civil-rights struggles when in fact just the opposite was true. Africa is degenerating into chaos and anarchy under the guise of "liberation" and "one man, one vote." What I used to tell people was that while Apartheid was an onerous, offensive system, I would prefer being a black South African under Apartheid to being a person of any color under the old Soviet system- and I still believe those words to be true and correct. Given time, the old South African government would have worked out its problems- but it was not allowed to do so. Today, we are seeing the results of this folly in Zimbabwe- or rather, we see what tiny bits the web and small elements of talk radio cover. The whole story of contemporary Africa is a sad tale of tribalism, class warfare, kleptocracy, and massive corruption- and one the media here "won't even talk about" because it does not fit within their template of acceptable ideas. I would also add, that both the press and entertainment arms of the media encouraged and supported the toppling of the old governments, i. e., they were in collusion, and complicit in the fall. Now that things have worked out at variance with their idealistic fantasies, they simply "don't talk about it..." "Why do you keep posting this stuff? Nobody cares about Africa, anyway..." Clive, Cincinatus's Wife, blam, myself, and a few others get asked that occasionally- we are among the keepers of the "AfricaWatch" columns, and we continue to post articles about what I believe will prove to be one of the great, tragic stories of the new century. The mainstream press never publishes more than one Africa story a day, and it's usually some fluff or dodge around how grim the situation is over there. But the truth is archived here on Free Republic, and I maintain that one day, when things over there are too awful to be ignored any longer, those who have eyes to see will read the stories here, and be appalled at the silence. That is all...
backhoe |
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The teller could barely cope with counting all these mountains of small bills and on his lap he had a cardboard box to put the money into as it wouldn't all fit into his till. He told me he needed a new box for every third customer and the managers office looked a lot like a warehouse.
Amazingly though, there is an incredible feeling in the air this week. A mixture of excitement, anticipation and relief is palpable in the country as we all know that at last the time has come for action. ***
Bump!
Its an utter tragedy that a nation that was as beautiful as Rhodesia under Smith was could fall so far so fast.
Nice observation, but I believe the mental illness flows from a deeper disbelief in, or rebellion against God. A mind unanchored in the eternal God is adrift and mad.
let's face it....Africa and lots of other places do not get any face time with our ratings-mad and politically correct media as well as our so-highly principled liberal "cabal".....
in defense of the media and the liberals, I guess the reason they don't want to talk about Africa is that it would show an utter failure of massive proportions of their ideals....(or lack of them)
perhaps they would be forced to admit that some humans must be stopped no matter what.....
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