Posted on 08/14/2005 10:02:31 AM PDT by Clive
Dear Family and Friends,
In a report this week the Washington based Centre for Global Development said that the purchasing power of the average Zimbabwean had plunged to levels that prevailed over 50 years ago in 1953. The CGD, which tracks economic and developmental trends, said that gains made by Zimbabwe over the past five decades had been wiped away in the last six years. The CGD said that the scale and speed of income decline in Zimbabwe was greater than that seen during recent conflicts in the Ivory Coast, the DR Congo and Sierra Leone. These are chilling figures to try and take in and it is very, very hard to see how Zimbabwe can come back from where it is without radical and dramatic changes at every single level.
Ever since the March elections, we have been slipping backwards and the pace has accelerated with each passing week. Inflation is soaring again, almost all basic commodities have disappeared from our shelves, fuel is virtually unobtainable, electricity supplies are erratic and the water, in my home town anyway, has literally been unfit to drink for the last fortnight. The country is in a state of almost complete paralysis and it is utterly absurd that we are sitting here like beggars waiting for a multi million dollar loan from South Africa when right there, on our front door step, nature is again holding out the key to change as summer arrives.
For the last half century Zimbabwe has fed itself from her own fields. We have survived crippling repeated years of drought. We mastered the art of growing crops that we could export in order to earn foreign currency; we filled our silos and warehouses in abundant years to see us through the bad seasons we knew would invariably follow. We built dams and reservoirs and dug wells and boreholes to give us water in dry times. We learnt to grow flowers under floodlights and exotic vegetables in plastic tunnels, to rear ostriches for their leather and to make fuel from ethanol and jatropha.
And now, hah, what shame upon Zimbabwe and her leaders with their masters degrees and doctorates. Now, in 2005, we wait for South Africa to give us food. We have no foreign money to buy fuel. Our fields are unploughed, our lands unprepared for the new season. Every year, as we get poorer and hungrier there is an excuse, a reason why, having produced more than enough food for fifty years, now we can't do it anymore. Our national newspaper tells us that our winter wheat crop has been severely depleted this year because Quelea birds are eating the grain. It does not tell us how, for half a century, our commercial farmers managed to keep bread on our tables and flour in our shops. Instead it tells us that this week the price of a loaf of bread went from four and half to seven thousand dollars and it tells us that instead of going hungry we should eat the Quelea birds that are stealing the national wheat crop. The Herald newspaper tells us we should find ways of catching, killing and canning Quelea birds and then exporting them to Europe for gourmet restaurants. Oh please, what shame, what utter shame.
Until next week, love cathy
Yeah, I'm sure they were all happy as clams around 1980.
Congratulations to them.
We are stretched pretty thin at the moment - Idealistically, we should. Realistically, we can't.
I agree.
I thought that was Oscar Wilde's?
I'm not so Swift!
is the Herald a NY times subsidiary?
"You would have left America for Rhodesia??"
This would have been when Carter was President. It sucked that much.
I would have been right behind you in that case. Used to be called Salisbury but now I believe it's Harare. A friend of mine lives there. If Kerry became prez, I may have given it some thought! LOL
"I would have been right behind you in that case."
Damn, if I'd known that I might have done it. Although I suspect you were probably a bit *young* then. :)
LOL maybe seven years old :o)
I believe it is from " A Modest Proposal" Jonathon Swift's 'solution' to the Irish famine of the time.
thanks. linked to my blog
http://makaipa.blogspot.com
"LOL maybe seven years old :o)"
Wow! That makes a guy feel old.
Congrats on the upcoming nuptials by the way!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.