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Posted on 05/02/2002 4:11:09 AM PDT by Clive
ZWNEWS
Date posted:Thu 2-May-2002
Date published:Thu 2-May-2002
Those who said in February, “All the 'nonsense' will stop once Mugabe is securely back in power," are no longer smiling
Comment
By Michael Hartnack
The sheer wickedness and folly of what is going on in Zimbabwe is reflected in the simultaneous onset of famine, escalated looting of commercial farms, while the regime remains cock-a-hoop.
It is a wanton, selfish stupidity worse than you see in stampeding queues for maize meal and sugar, when the bags are ripped apart by clutching hands and piles of the precious substances are trampled into the dirt.
"Zimbabwe is facing an unprecedented food catastrophe, which will ripple throughout the region," said the United Nations' World Food Programme in late April.
The WFP has, incidentally, received only U$3 million of the U$69 milllion it needs to avert starvation caused, in Zimbabwe's case, by "a severe drop in production due to government activity".
Already, children are reported to be dying of malnutrition in remoter rural areas, like a gangrene or leprosy starting at the extremities of the body politic and spreading inward, inexorably, toward the vital organs.
The near bankrupt country is squandering U$1.2 billion domestic product this year alone due to lost farm output. Next year is likely to be much worse.
As predicted, President Robert Mugabe's state-funded "war veterans" have extended their extortion threats from whites to the 12 000-strong Asian community. They say they plan a "door to door" campaign to force handover of Asian properties and the deposit of Asian community savings with indigenous banks.
A courageous and prescient leader of the Asian community told me the ultimatum was "not unexpected - but there is nothing we can do about it. If we get Supreme Court injunctions, they will just be ignored by the police. This will increase emigration."
Those who said in February, “All the 'nonsense' will stop once Mugabe is securely back in power," are no longer smiling.
White farmers are being evicted by a gang of jeering, violent militants with little except the clothes they stand up in.
The plight of their workers is terrible - 50,000 of them wandering the highways and byways, homeless and destitute. There may be 500,000 families in this situation by August.
Police who, say the Commercial Farmers Union, are following orders not to come to the aid of besieged whites, are mounting road blocks to turn back those trying to take equipment or even household effects to safety.
Vice- President Simon Muzenda and Mugabe's brother-in- law, Reward Marufu, head the list of prominent political figures touring the country "cherry picking" holdings for themselves. Many of those implicated already have farms and businesses that are either derelict, or kept afloat only by lavish subsidies.
Then there was the visit by Zambia's President Levy Mwanawasa, unrecognisable as the heir to the Movement for Multi Party Democracy which came to power committed to sweeping economic and political reform.
Brought to power by an election less violent but hardly less dishonest than the one which Mugabe declared himself to have won, Mwanawasa duly endorsed the Zimbabwe poll, the land seizures, and denounced Western institutions.
He has also recently promulgated laws to punish Zambians who refer to him as "The Cabbage" - an allusion to his mental lapses since a near fatal road accident.
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change, the election stolen and subjected to worsening state-sponsored violence and treason charges, has internal problems, too.
There is disappointment with the party’s new executive mayor of Harare, who swiftly took delivery of a Zimbabwe $60 million Mercedes Benz in a city that is bankrupt, its roads cratered with potholes, and where malarial mosquitoes breed in mounting piles of rubbish.
The MDC also suffered a propaganda setback recently when its information section released details of a 53-year-old woman allegedly beheaded in front of her two daughters by ruling party militia at Magunje, 300 km north of Harare.
Journalists were presented with an elderly bereaved husband who gave a lurid first hand account. The MDC said party leaders would attend the funeral, invited reporters to accompany them, and then called off the trip without explanation. The police, in a belated statement, said the story was a fabrication.
This incident may be the omen of a more frightening social disease – the husband appeared genuinely deluded.
As Zimbabwe goes into a period of extreme social distress we must expect the wildest tales to fly around and gain general credence.
There could be an explosion of violence triggered by some entirely fanciful tale of atrocity, after years of apathetic response to real horror.
The official attempt to demolish all the signposts of a rational, modern society - a Cabinet minister last week branded teachers as drunks - only increases the dangers.
not another dime ....
I remember this line. Could they have possibly believed it? Or did they mean "opposition nonsense" will stop?
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At least they were smart or lucky enough to get out before this latest madness.
In the context that the auther uses it, it means "self congratulatory" or perhaps "delighted with oneself".
Also spelled cock-a-whoop.
About 10 years.
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