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Zimbabwe runs out of bread
Guardian Unlimited ^ | October 1, 2007 | Chris McGreal

Posted on 10/01/2007 7:08:53 PM PDT by george76

Harare admits land reform has failed as the deadline passes for the last white farmers to leave their land.

Zimbabwe's bakeries have shut and supermarkets have warned there will be no bread for the foreseeable future as the government admitted that wheat production had collapsed following the seizure of white-owned farms.

The agricultural ministry announcement that the wheat harvest is only about a third of what is required, and that imports are held up by lack of hard currency, came as a deadline passed today for the last white farmers to leave their land or face prosecution for trespass.

The maize harvest is expected to be equally dire and price controls to contain hyperinflation have emptied the stores of most other foodstuffs...

Last week, the government said it plans to import 100,000 tonnes of wheat but acknowledged that a shipment of 35,000 tonnes was held up in Mozambique because of a shortage of hard currency to pay for it.

The agriculture minister, Rugare Gumbo, has blamed the food shortages on black farmers who have taken over formerly white-owned land.

"I am painfully aware of the widespread theft of stock, farm produce, irrigation equipment and the general vandalism of infrastructure by our new farmers," ...

"I am disappointed that our new farmers have proved to be failures since the start of the land reform programme in 2000..."

The ministry of agriculture has also blamed electricity shortages...

The power shortages are likely to continue. Mozambique has reduced electricity supplies to Zimbabwe because of a $35m... unpaid bill...

Zimbabwe, once the world's second largest exporter of tobacco, has also seen production of its main cash crop nosedive...

(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: africa; bringbackiansmith; gloriesofcommunism; majorityrule; mugabe; racerelations; robertmugabe; socialism; southernafrica; starvation; zimbabwe
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To: Albion Wilde
You could understand his grammar well enough to draw that conclusion? Wow.

LOL, I taught a couple of semesters of Freshman comp.

101 posted on 10/02/2007 2:52:58 PM PDT by Trailerpark Badass (Don't taze me, bro!!)
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To: george76
Zimbabwe runs out of bread
 
 
 
There is a reason!
 
 

102 posted on 10/02/2007 2:56:17 PM PDT by Radix (When I became a man, I put away childish things)
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To: george76

Zimbabwe runs out of bread

how about blood?


103 posted on 10/02/2007 3:30:01 PM PDT by bill1952 (The 10 most important words for change: "If it is to be, it is up to me")
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To: ari-freedom

That reminds me of some gallows humor from the WWII concentration camps, “Potato shadow soup.”

suspend a large potato over a pot of boiling water so that it’s shadow falls on the soup. cook and serve


104 posted on 10/02/2007 3:33:15 PM PDT by bill1952 (The 10 most important words for change: "If it is to be, it is up to me")
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To: Jedi Master Pikachu
Yet it is disgusting that on so many of these Zimbabwe threads that the main trust of so many posts is that the European descended Zimbabweans should not have be expelled from power

not it is not. They should not have been. The entire world was complicit in that travesty - I call it a crime - and now they are appalled at the consequences of Africa reverting to its kind?

People who have never been to Africa, thats who is appalled.

Who in their right mind would be surprised. You?

105 posted on 10/02/2007 3:39:05 PM PDT by bill1952 (The 10 most important words for change: "If it is to be, it is up to me")
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To: shield

Which African nations give a damn? Which ones are those?


106 posted on 10/02/2007 3:41:11 PM PDT by bill1952 (The 10 most important words for change: "If it is to be, it is up to me")
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To: TheyConvictedOglethorpe

“I believe Mr. Gumbo is about to find out he’s in the wrong time and place to be named after a food...” .... If it keeps up, he’ll be Gumbo, without the chicken.


107 posted on 10/02/2007 3:49:03 PM PDT by Bringbackthedraft
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To: george76

108 posted on 10/02/2007 3:51:19 PM PDT by badgerlandjim (Hillary Clinton is to politics as Helen Thomas is to beauty.)
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To: bill1952

It’s still changes nothing...it’s still Africa’s problem...not ours. They told us loud and clear by taking property of the whites and killing many of them.


109 posted on 10/02/2007 3:59:52 PM PDT by shield (A wise man's heart is at his RIGHT hand;but a fool's heart at his LEFT. Ecc 10:2)
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To: Trailerpark Badass
LOL, I taught a couple of semesters of Freshman comp.

Oh, that explains it. I taught art students; they weren't literate at all....

110 posted on 10/02/2007 4:22:57 PM PDT by Albion Wilde (America: “the most benign hegemon in history.”—Mark Steyn)
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To: shield

>It still changes nothing...it’s still Africa’s problem

Agreed. We are on the same page here. Thank you for your posts. - bill


111 posted on 10/02/2007 4:51:31 PM PDT by bill1952 (The 10 most important words for change: "If it is to be, it is up to me")
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To: george76
Image hosted by Photobucket.com africawinsagain...
112 posted on 10/02/2007 4:59:56 PM PDT by Chode (American Hedonist)
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To: Jedi Master Pikachu

I hope you do realize that the African nations will not welcome ANY military intervention by western powers. (The UN is worse than useless) It is an African problem that the Africans do not want to solve. Too many are marxist themselves. South Africa is next.
The only whites to blame for Zimbabwe are Peanutd—k and his fellow marxist murderers!


113 posted on 10/02/2007 5:18:36 PM PDT by dynachrome (“Third world indigenous medicine for third world illegal aliens!!!”)
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To: lakey
"In this sprawling collection of townships, the President and Hillary Rodham Clinton planted a tree at the memorial to the 13-year-old Hector Peterson"

"We ate the Memorial Tree," said Mr. Gumbo...

114 posted on 10/02/2007 5:38:21 PM PDT by StAnDeliver (=)
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To: All

This from the country which was once known as “The Breadbasket of Africa.”

Tragic.

At what point will these ‘leaders’ wake up and face reality?

(Actually, don’t answer that. I’m afraid that I already know.)


115 posted on 10/02/2007 6:39:09 PM PDT by annie laurie (All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost)
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To: george76

Reap what you have sown.

Can’t blame whitey this time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


116 posted on 10/02/2007 6:50:43 PM PDT by taxed2death (A few billion here, a few trillion there...we're all friends right?)
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To: Billthedrill
To be blunt, the thugs in Zimbabwe will be in power long after Mugabe has departed the scene, and they will be kept that way by Western compassion and political sympathizers.

I agree.

Nothing will change with Mugabe gone.

117 posted on 10/02/2007 7:16:35 PM PDT by razorback-bert (Posted by Time's Man of the Year)
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To: dynachrome; george76; Clive
I wonder where that Cathy Buckle is, who used to write a column from Zim?

The poor silly woman is still living in the Godforsaken sh*t-hole. Check out www.cathybuckle.com.

Here is her latest post:

What a way to live

Saturday 29th September 2007

Dear Family and Friends,

Standing outside over yet another smoky fire late one afternoon this week, a Go-Away bird chastised me from a nearby tree. I'm sure this Grey Lourie is as fed up of me intruding into its territory as I am of being there - trying to get a hot meal for supper. For five of the last six days the electricity has gone off before 5 in the morning and only come back 16 or 17 hours later a little before midnight. "Go Away! Go Away!" the Grey Lourie called out repeatedly as my eyes streamed from the smoke and I stirred my little pot. My hair and clothes stink of smoke, fingers are yellow and sooty but this is what we've all been reduced to in Zimbabwe. Our government don't talk about the power cuts anymore and don't even try and feed us with lame excuses about how the power is being used to irrigate non-existent crops. We all know it's not true and the proof is there in the empty fields for all to see.

Something else our government aren't talking about anymore is the nationwide non availability of bread and the empty shops in all our towns and cities. Everywhere you go people are struggling almost beyond description to try and survive and yet the country's MP's, both from the ruling party and the opposition, do nothing to put an end to this time of horror. I have lost count of how many weeks this has been going on for but it must be around three months. None of the basics needed for daily survival are available to buy. There is no flour to bake with, no pasta, rice, lentils, dried beans or canned goods. People everywhere are hungry, not for luxuries like biscuits or snack food but for the staples that fill your stomach. When you ask people nowadays how they are coping, mostly they say that they are not, they say they are hungry, tired and have little energy. This is a national crisis almost beyond description and people say they are alive only because of " the hand of God."

This week as Monks and then ordinary people in Burma took to the streets in their thousands calling out 'Democracy, Democracy' in the face of the police and soldiers, we can't help but wonder why something similar does not happen here. The chant could be shorter and even simpler than in Burma and it could just be: 'Food, food,' but without leadership it seems as elusive as ever.

I end with a story about a man who is epileptic and visited the local government hospital for his regular check-up this week. It took four hours before he was seen by a nurse who scribbled in his book that this was a known case and that the hospital pharmacy should dispense his prescription of 90 phenobarb tablets at no charge - as they usually do. This major provincial government hospital had no phenobarb however so the man went to the biggest and busiest pharmacy in the town. They said the phenobarb would cost 1.2 million dollars - this is ten times more than the man's government stipulated minimum monthly wage. I offered to help and took the prescription to another pharmacy. The exact same tablets cost 250 thousand dollars - nearly five times cheaper. When I gave them to the man, his eyes shone with tears and he thanked me - 'I thought I would have to die' he said.

What a way to live, and to die.

Until next week, thanks for reading, love cathy.

118 posted on 10/02/2007 8:45:04 PM PDT by ccmay (Too much Law; not enough Order.)
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To: Jedi Master Pikachu

Where and when. ..and how; will this end?


119 posted on 10/02/2007 9:17:58 PM PDT by cricket
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To: george76
The problem in Zimbabwe (once one of the richest southern African nations) is the communist tyrant running the county into the economic graveyard.

Where is the leadership in the surrounding nations allowing this beast to destroy everything? Mugabe should have overthrown ages ago, with assistance from bordering counties.

A Zimbabwean man walks past empty bread shelves in Harare, 2006. Zimbabwe's supermarkets have run out of bread after bakers were forced to suspend their operations due to a critical shortage of wheat.(AFP/File/Desmond Kwande)

Mugabe's brand of brutal communistic rule in action: Zimbabweans cross into Zambia from neighbouring Zimbabwe in Livingstone, Zambia, in this Thursday, August 23rd, 2007 file photo. As Zimbabwe's economic woes have intensified in recent months, sparking the country's worst crisis since gaining independence from Britain in 1980, increasing numbers of Zimbabweans are crossing the border into Zambia, South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique and Namibia in search of business and basic commodities. (AP Photo, File)

120 posted on 10/02/2007 10:20:45 PM PDT by M. Espinola (Freedom is never free)
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