Posted on 06/12/2002 3:41:56 AM PDT by Clive
author/source:Associated Press
published:Tue 11-Jun-2002
posted on this site:Wed 12-Jun-2002
Article Type : News
"The economic polices that he is pursuing are collapsing agriculture production in areas where there was rainfall. Mugabe's not even giving the land to the poor but to his cronies"
Rome - The United States said Tuesday it would provide a third of the 1.2 million tons of food aid needed to stave off famine in southern Africa, a crisis it said was being exacerbated by Zimbabwe's policies.
Andrew Natsios, the head of USAID, the US foreign aid agency, said the United States was contributing an extra 275,000 tons of wheat to the U.N. emergency relief effort for six African countries, bringing its total to 400,000 tons.
However, he told a press conference on the sidelines of the UN World Food Summit that the problem in Zimbabwe, one of the six affected countries, wasn't so much about food as it was food distribution.
Natsios said he was concerned by reports that President Robert Mugabe's government was preventing food aid from getting to opposition strongholds.
"We've even heard of children whose parents are suspected of supporting the opposition being turned away from feeding lines at schools," he said.
Zimbabwe's opposition has accused the government of withholding food aid from its supporters even as the country is experiencing a major food crisis.
The World Food Program says half the estimated 12.8 million people at risk of starvation in southern Africa are in Zimbabwe.
Mugabe's government has denied the opposition's allegations, but independent aid workers and human rights groups have raised concern over unfair distribution and interference in relief programs by officials and ruling party militants.
The head of the World Food Program, James Morris, said Tuesday he had raised the issue with Mugabe in a meeting Monday, and had received assurances aid would get through. "He assured me he would tell the world that there would be no political favoritism or disincentives for allowing us to do our work," Morris told a news conference.
He said, however, that Zimbabwe's land grab program had complicated relief efforts and contributed to the hunger problem. He cited a 55 percent to 60 percent decrease in commercial agricultural productivity this year over previous ones. "So it's a major factor," Morris said.
Mugabe's government has embarked on a campaign to confiscate 95 percent of land owned by the nation's 4,000 white farmers and redistribute it to landless blacks. But since it began in 2000, the program has helped drive hundreds of white farmers and tens of thousands of their black workers off the land.
Natsios dismissed Mugabe's defense of the program in his speech to the food summit Monday. "The economic polices that he (Mugabe) is pursuing are collapsing agriculture production in areas where there was rainfall," Natsios said.
Natsios said he didn't oppose the principle of land redistribution in Zimbabwe - where some 4,000 white farmers own a third of the nation's land - just the way it was being carried out. "Mugabe's not even giving the land to the poor but to his cronies," Natsios said.
This man speaks for our government.
Heck, from what I've been hearing, he's not even giving it to people that
know how to farm, can farm, or want to farm.
More like something to pillage or as a 2nd/3rd/4th home.
So the food isn't even going to get to people that need it.
Let South Africa deal with the migration of starving masses, since they didn't
want to deal with Mugabe when the situation was somewhat manageable.
No, it's not. What else can one expect from the corrupt cesspool known as Africa. The only ones foolish enough to believe otherwise is the US government. I say, Let them eat cake.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Don't tell me he really believed this.
Why?
Does no one else remember Somalia?
Feeding corruption and savagery only breeds more of it.
The returns have consistently been negative, brutal and deadly.
There was a book in the 50s or 60s that described feeding the enemy as the "dismal" and "utterly dismal" scenarios.
Deal with 5 million people who hate us? or arrange to have 20 million of them 15 years down the line demanding that we feed them and sustain their corruption and tribal mentality?
Mugabe is not our problem He is the problem of the Zims. If we intervene and entangle ourselves in the affairs of a foreign people we will not be thanked if successful. We will be reviled as Colonialists with dreams of empire lusting after the mighty resources of the dark continent. It is a no-win situation. Let the Zims reach a level of poverty and famine sufficient to motivate them to overthrow this maniacal despot. If they haven't the intestinal fortitude to do so then let them wear the chains of enslavement, grovel and lick the hand that doesn't feed them.
Let the regional powers surrounding the Zims save them from their own bad choices if the people won't rise to the occasion. Let the Europeans, the true Colonialists, intervene out of guilt. But keep the USA out of this briar patch. Africa will never be self sufficient until they buckle down and decide to stand on their own. Apartheid stunk up the joint but it was replaced by flaming tire necklaces and now "veterans" who take over farms but do not know how to farm. Let the Nobel prize winning ex-convict Mandela devise a solution to the great African failure. Perhaps he can call on his liberal supporters from all international communities who were instrumental in withdrawing capital investments from Africa to pony up for the wealth they destroyed. The investments never returned when they were successful in achieving their desired political ends because it wasn't liberals who made the investments. Good liberals will always help you spend your money but will not allow you to help spend theirs.
Africa has all the right resource ingredients to be successful but one. They are unable to articulate the rights of individulas beyond what is dictated by tribal custom. They are unable to create an overarching vision of what a state or confederation of states should strive to attain and then cooperate to achieve that vision.
There is a composite photograph of the world at night published by NASA. Find it and study it. All of the reasonably free and wealthy societies are well lit. The communist and third world countries are dim by comparison. The continent of Africa is conspicuous by the absence of light. I contend that there is a lesson in there somewhere.
Just ONCE,I'd like to see a prominent US politician stand up and say,"Screw 'em! Let the commie bastards eat each other if they get hungry enough!". All we've been hearing for decades now is how Africa was a paradise that was ruined by the white man,and that if whites would just get out it would be a paradise again. Well,the Africans mostly have the whites out now,so let them sink or swiim on their own. Seal the borders and don't let anybody in or out. Well,I guess we could send them experts like Quesey MF'er,JJ,Sharpton,Maxine Waters,Sheila Jackson-Lee,Major Owens,and other black American communists to help them. Go back and check 20-30 years down the road to see how things are going.
Of course. Many farmers will be THRILLED to send crops to Africa,as long as they profit from it. What other lobby group do you think it is that lobbies so hard for "food as foreign aid" programs. Farmers are mostly Dims,and they LOVE feral gooberment programs that provide a guaranteed income and welfare for farmers.
I don't see it as being entirely a double post.
While the main article is the same albeit from a different source, you have posted the deKlerk article as your reply number 1.
I suppose because only the thugs have weapons?
I thought the headlines were mostly about raping babies and other virgins to cure themselves of HIV?
A crisis may be just what the doctor ordered in this situation. Sometimes real pain must be experienced before real change can occur. I'm tired of seeing my government act as a crutch and a pain killer for despots.
And, yes, for crying out loud, if someone is going to be a crutch, let it be the Europeans. It's their baby, after all.
A brilliant and true response. Great writing illuminates. Thanks.
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