Posted on 01/25/2003 6:16:38 PM PST by Clive
UN envoys in charge of food aid and efforts to battle HIV/Aids in Africa said today that Zimbabwe's food and Aids crises were getting worse and urged the government to make a huge effort to overcome them.
"This is a tragedy, a catastrophe that the world finds itself in," James Morris, the World Food Programme chief, told reporters during a two-day trip to Harare accompanied by Stephen Lewis, the special envoy on HIV/Aids in Africa.
Morris lamented the government's controversial drive to force some productive farmers off the land while the country faced a food crisis. Food shortages had worsened the impact of Zimbabwe's HIV/Aids pandemic, and the government faced a major challenge in rebuilding a farm sector that used to be the bread basket of southern Africa, he said.
Lewis said severe food shortages had worsened an HIV/Aids pandemic which is killing an average 2 500 Zimbabweans a week and accounts for up to 80% of hospital admissions in the capital Harare.
"When the body has no food to consume, the disease is consuming the body," he said, adding that the impact of the disease would be felt more seriously in years to come and well after Zimbabwe's political problems had been solved.
"What is required of Zimbabwe and other southern African countries is a Herculean effort to subdue this disease," Lewis said.
More than half Zimbabwe's 14 million people are suffering food shortages caused by drought and reduced output from formerly very productive farms which President Robert Mugabe's supporters have taken over from white commercial farmers.
Morris said that in meetings with Mugabe and his cabinet ministers, he had emphasised the need for Zimbabwe to revive its key farming sector, open up grain imports to commercial traders, promote irrigation and tackle water and health issues.
Loss to the country
Asked whether he was aware that while Zimbabwe was grappling with the food crisis, white commercial farmers with a record of production had been forced off their land, and were now living in urban areas, Morris said: "There was a significant highly productive sector that is no longer involved in agriculture. That is a real loss to this country and to the world."
Farming officials say between 600 and 800 out of 4 500 white commercial farmers are actively farming while the majority have been removed from their farms under Mugabe's controversial land redistribution programme.
Mugabe, Zimbabwe's ruler since the former Rhodesia gained independence from Britain in 1980, says his land seizures are meant to correct colonial imbalances which left 70% of the country's best farmland in the hands of minority whites.
Earlier today, Morris told a group of journalists who accompanied him to a child feeding centre in a poor Harare township that one million urban Zimbabweans were short of food.
Morris said a combination of drought and reduced production by commercial farms seized by Mugabe from white farmers for redistribution to land less blacks had cut Zimbabwe's average farming output by about 75% in 2002.
"While the response of the international community has been incredible so far, the long- term solution for Zimbabwe is in having a viable agricultural sector," he said.
Morris said he had again called on Mugabe to relax government restrictions on grain imports to ease the worsening food crisis, but that the government had refused to lift price controls to make it viable for traders to import grain.
Critics say sweeping price controls and the government Grain Marketing Board (GMB)'s monopoly in importing staple maize and wheat grains have hampered the flow of food to Zimbabwe.
Mugabe's government says its food price controls and the GMB monopoly are meant to protect consumers and prevent third parties from abusing food aid for political purposes.
Morris said he was "100% certain" that food aid brought in by the WFP and other international agencies was being distributed fairly. "I cannot speak for the government about their own supplies through the GMB," he said. - Reuters
In case you have forgotten Zimbabwe used to be the affluent nation Rhodesia.
Can South Africa -- or whatever they decide to call it later -- avoid the same fate?
Try again. That is never going to happen.
What needs to be restored is fair elections. If that happened, Mugabe and his party would have been turned out and the MDC, supported by blacks, whites, asians and coloreds, would have been elected and the sabotogue of the country reversed.
Mugabe has destroyed every sector, including the medical services which have been left with no medicines, and fewer and fewer medical personnel.
He has created a living hell for his people and that will be his legacy.
"More than half Zimbabwe's 14 million people are suffering food shortages caused by drought and reduced output from formerly very productive farms which President Robert Mugabe's supporters have taken over from white commercial farmers."
"Morris said a combination of drought and reduced production by commercial farms seized by Mugabe from white farmers for redistribution to land less blacks had cut Zimbabwe's average farming output by about 75% in 2002."
There you have it. They force the people who produce off their land in order to give unearned land to people who can't make it productive, and then want to whine for international aid to feed their now starving populace. Screw 'em.
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