From: "zakanaka" <lalapansi@yahoo.com>
News24
Zimbabweans are starving
09/07/2004 10:18 - (SA)
Blessings Mambara
Harare - Thousands of Zimbabweans are starving while government turns
a blind eye, writes Blessings Mambara.
The Wedza rural development initiative does not mean much to
Zimbabweans in this part of the country.
Although the mountains and fertile valleys create the impression that
the land is being cultivated, people are going hungry every day.
Wedza, about 150km east of Harare, has one thing in common with other
rural areas in Zimbabwe: poverty.
Each week, war veterans tell pupils at the Makanda Primary School in
the area to inform their parents that only card-carrying members of
the governing Zanu-PF party will receive free food aid, and only if
they attend Zanu-PF rallies.
Meanwhile, the government claims that it banned foreign aid
organisations from the country because these became "too involved in
politics".
Jestina Mazano from Makanda says there were never any political
messages or slogans at these food distribution points.
"Nobody with a T-shirt or any other emblem of a political party was
allowed at these points. We opened meetings with prayer and no slogans
were allowed," says the mother of four.
West, drought to blame
Like millions of other Zimbabweans who survive only because of food
aid, Mazano is uncertain about the future. She harvested only two 90kg
of maize this season.
Yet, government maintains that the country has enough food.
President Robert Mugabe recently told Sky News that the country
produced "more than enough food" this year to meet domestic need. He
said the World Food Programme should rather help 'those hungrier,
hungrier countries than ours".
Government maintains previous food shortages were caused by drought
and "sanctions" by the West.
Agriculture minister Joseph Made repeatedly supported Mugabe's
statements that there was no food shortage.
However, cracks are forming in the government's position and
controversy is mounting among officials of this country that used to
be described as the breadbasket of Southern Africa. It is becoming
increasingly clear that the situation at grassroots level does not
correspond with the picture the Mugabe government paints.
The situation deteriorated in May when a United Nations (UN) team was
prevented from continuing its work in rural Zimbabwe.
Tensions between Zimbabwe and the UN mounted when James Morris, chief
executive of the World Food Programme, was shown the door at the end
of June before he even set foot in the country.
The government maintains that the country's Grain Marketing Board
(GMB) will supply at least 2.4 million tons of grain, but independent
figures predict a shortage of at least 1 million tons.
A better harvest, claims government
Despite its public statements, the Mugabe government is apparently
well aware of the problem and is actually "secretly" importing maize.
The government-controlled GMB admitted recently that the country was
importing maize after details leaked about a contract with an American
company, Sentry Financial International, to deliver grain to Zimbabwe.
However, the GMB claimed this contract was signed last year and
involved small quantities.
Zimbabwe will apparently pay for the maize in tobacco - an arrangement
that amounts to little more than barter.
Still, the board claims that Zimbabwe will have a better harvest this
year than last year.
Meanwhile, GMB officials are scouring the countryside, demanding that
all maize be handed over to the GMB. It is now a crime to sell maize
to private companies or individuals.
Despite government rhetoric, Zimbabweans know that the country cannot
survive without food from outside its borders. More than half of its
citizens have been dependent on food aid since 2001.
In defiance of the government's claim that drought is responsible for
the shortage, observers point out that both Mozambique and Zambia
overcame the problems of the drought that gripped the region two years
ago.
A hungry future
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) claims Zanu-PF
will increasingly use food as a political weapon in the run-up to the
2005 elections.
The MDC wants to address the food issue through parliamentary
structures. On June 17 it managed to convince parliament to allow the
portfolio committee for agriculture and land reform to conduct its own
investigation into the food situation, Reson Gasela of the MDC said.
Made unsuccessfully tried to railroad the decision.
The investigation will not be completed before the end of the current
session this week.
"The government is cheating with the figures because they want to
prove that land reform was a success while it was catastrophic,"
Gasela said. "Obviously there is an election coming up."
The food crisis is not limited to rural areas. Unemployment, the high
incidence of HIV/Aids and hyperinflation have cut incomes in the
cities and many urban families urgently need food.
A nurse at Harare Central Hospital claims at least 20% of child
patients at the hospital are treated for malnutrition.
While politicians are cooking up plans to win the elections and hold
on to power, the majority of Zimbabweans are facing starvation.
.
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| User: "Grantland" |
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| Title: Re: Zoo Behaviour |
10 Jul 2004 12:54:17 AM |
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(Grantland) wrote:
From: "zakanaka" <lalapansi@yahoo.com>
News24
Zimbabweans are starving
From: "zakanaka" <lalapansi@yahoo.com>
The Times (UK), 9 July 2004
Mugabe harvests lies as Zimbabwe faces shortages
From Jan Raath in Chirundu River Bridge
A large baboon in the dusty lorry stop near Zimbabwe's border with
Zambia daily lays bare the origin of President Mugabe's purported
"bumper harvest". Squatting on top of a bulky trailer, he rips open
the heavy tarpaulin cover and stuffs his cheeks with maize until he
can push no more in. Drivers here say that every day for more than a
month up to 30 heavy trucks have been crossing from Zambia with
30-tonne consignments of maize bound for government silos. Grain trade
executives report that at least 400,000 tonnes are on order - some of
it almost certainly grown by white Zimbabweans who moved to Zambia
after being driven from their farms by Mr Mugabe's land seizures.
"That man (Mr Mugabe), he made a big mistake to chase the white man,"
said Kennedy Phiri, a truck driver who was driving a load of maize.
Similar cargo is crossing the Beitbridge border post with South
Africa. The South African Grain Information Service says that 168,000
tonnes of American, Argentine and South African maize, and more than
50,000 tonnes of wheat, has been shipped into Zimbabwe this year.
How Zimbabwe's bankrupt Government pays for these surreptitious
imports is a state secret, but they give the lie to its claim that the
country's farmers will produce a record harvest of 2.4 million tonnes
of maize this year. In a recent interview Mr Mugabe even suggested
that the World Food Programme should redirect its efforts to other
countries. "Why foist this food upon us? We don't want to be choked.
We have enough," he told Sky News. By contrast, the UN Food and
Agriculture Organisation predicts a maize harvest of barely 900,000
tonnes, and estimates that 2.3 million people in Zimbabwe's rural
areas face starvation. Mr Mugabe's opponents have no doubt why he is
importing such large quantities of grain, while rejecting the help of
international aid organisations whose food distribution programmes he
cannot control. They say that he intends to reward supporters with
food before next year's parliamentary elections, and withhold it from
famine-stricken areas that support opposition parties until they cave
in through hunger. "They have a plan to starve people to death for
political ends, to get everyone aligned to their party at all costs,"
Pius Ncube, the Catholic Archbishop of Western Zimbabwe, said this
week. Indeed, Mr Mugabe once remarked that "absolute power is when a
man is starving and you are the only one able to give him food".
In truth, the emptiness of Mr Mugabe's claims about Zimbabwe's food
production - and of the state radio propaganda jingle that "Our land
is our prosperity" - is everywhere apparent. A tour of what was once
Zimbabwe's most intensive farming region shows that Mr Mugabe's
mythical agrarian revolution has instead reduced what was once the
breadbasket of southern Africa to subsistence agriculture and
desperate poverty. In July the land around Banket, about 70 miles
north of Harare, used to be a panorama of stunning green winter wheat.
Today there are a handful of green patches, the work of the two white
farmers still able to farm, and a few black "A2 settlers" - state and
ruling party officials who have taken over white-owned land. Ben
Hlatshwayo, the High Court judge who last month dismissed the
opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's challenge to Mr Mugabe's
fraudulent election victory in 2002, occupies the lands and homestead
of Vernon Nicolle, formerly one of the biggest wheat and barley
producers in the country, who is now in Australia. The judge's summer
crops consist of a patch of stunted maize and sunflowers. He has
planted barely any winter wheat.
Massive rotating watering systems stand gaunt above fields of maroon
buffalo weed and elephant grass. The 1,000-tonne steel grain bins are
empty and vandalised, their function usurped by the rickety wooden
cribs of peasant farmers holding perhaps a tonne of maize cobs. "Some
of them have made it, but they are few and far between," said a white
farmer who asked not to be named. "They don't have capital or
know-how. The Government hasn't delivered the fertiliser, seed and
fuel it promised. They farm at weekends. They planted late and their
yields will be hopeless. They will be able to feed themselves, but
that's all. There will be no profit to farm with next season. It's
poverty replicating itself." Nearby, the tattered plastic sheeting
over the ribs of a desolate 30-acre horticulture greenhouse flaps in
the wind. Six months ago the owner, a widow, was forced off by
soldiers with AK-47s. Other agricultural sectors are in similar
straits. Zimbabwe was the biggest exporter of tobacco in the world,
producing 245,000 tonnes in 2000. This year's crop will be a quarter
of that. At the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair in April in
Bulawayo, the heart of the country's cattle industry, the sole entries
in the livestock section were two donkeys. There are about 300 white
farmers still able to farm, says John Worsley-Worswick of the Justice
for Agriculture organisation, but the Government has recently passed
laws to seize farmers' machinery and to hasten the procedure of
"compulsory acquisition". Lists of farms for seizure are published
with increasing frequency. "We're losing one or two farmers every
day," said Mr Worsley-Worswick. "It's a very real possibility there
will be no white farmers by the end of the year."
FAILING CROPS
Tobacco 2000: 245 million kg; 2004 (forecast): 65 million kg;
Maize 1995: 2.1 million tonnes; 2004: 900,000 tonnes;
Cotton 2000: 353,000 tonnes; 2004 (forecast): 228,000 tonnes;
Wheat 2001: 314,000 tonnes; 2003: 50,000 tonnes;
Milk 2001: 160,000 tonnes; 2003: 100,000 tonnes
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| User: "Tadapope" |
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| Title: Re: Zoo Behaviour |
10 Jul 2004 11:08:13 AM |
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I think they should store the palaces and eat the rich.
Tangents are infinite in all of nature in
all 21 universes constantly and at random.
Oh Joy & Lysergically Yours!
Tom
The Psychedelick Pope
Patron Saint of the Internet
Saint Isadore of Laytonville
http://www.apple2.org.za/gswv/me/
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| User: "R. Foreman" |
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| Title: Re: Zoo Behaviour |
10 Jul 2004 11:57:11 AM |
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(Tadapope) Spat the Words
Tadpole, you're starting to sound distinctly like another
poster from the past, someone named Saint Isadore.
I think they should store the palaces and eat the rich.
Tangents are infinite in all of nature in
all 21 universes constantly and at random.
Oh Joy & Lysergically Yours!
Tom
The Psychedelick Pope
Patron Saint of the Internet
Saint Isadore of Laytonville
http://www.apple2.org.za/gswv/me/
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| User: "Absolute Zero" |
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| Title: Re: Zoo Behaviour |
10 Jul 2004 05:35:33 PM |
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R. Foreman wrote:
tadapope@aol.com (Tadapope) Spat the Words
Tadpole, you're starting to sound distinctly like another
poster from the past, someone named Saint Isadore.
Read the sig.
-A
I think they should store the palaces and eat the rich.
Tangents are infinite in all of nature in
all 21 universes constantly and at random.
Oh Joy & Lysergically Yours!
Tom
The Psychedelick Pope
Patron Saint of the Internet
Saint Isadore of Laytonville
http://www.apple2.org.za/gswv/me/
.
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