Posted on 07/08/2002 4:05:30 AM PDT by Clive
Harare - Beer drinkers in Zimbabwe turned gloomy Thursday after one of the country's largest breweries said there could be shortages of the drink in coming weeks due to the unavailability of a key ingredient: maize. Zimbabwe is facing a critical shortage of maize, which is also the staple food, and other cereals this year due to a crippling drought which has left an estimated 7.8 million people in the southern African country facing starvation. Chibuku Breweries chief executive Pearson Gowero said the company had resorted to importing its own maize requirements from South Africa after a state-owned grain procurement agency, the Grain Marketing Board (GMB), reduced supplies to the brewery to a trickle in order to concentrate on feeding people.
But he said critical shortages of foreign currency in the country had also limited Chibuku Breweries' own maize imports, leading to fears of a beer shortage. "In order to sustain our operations, we have been directly importing maize, principally from South Africa. This has taken cognisance of the GMB's primary focus of feeding the nation and has therefore meant that all allocations cannot meet our full requirements," he said. Beer will become the latest in a string of commodities, including sugar, salt, cooking oil, soap and bread to disappear from shop shelves in the country as it grapples with the worst economic crisis it has ever faced.
Not even a word about the commie destroying the agriculture industry.
"Beer will become the latest in a string of commodities, including sugar, salt, cooking oil, soap and bread to disappear from shop shelves in the country as it grapples with the worst economic crisis it has ever faced."
Yeah, those droughts really ruin the salt trees. What kind of a moron could write an article like this without even hinting that the policies of Mugabe are the cause of the forthcoming famine? Last time we had a hosepipe ban, the soap bush in our back yard only gave out three small bars the whole summer.
That said... those poor people. No beer? What kind of a world do we live in, when the poor people of another nation can't get hammered on some nice cool ones? Did you know that the amount of money the West spends on the military in just three days could keep Zimbabwe drunk for a whole decade? Makes you think.
Andrew
Beer enabled cities to form because it was the only safe thing to drink.
They have these ruins that were left from long long ago there and they call it "The Great Zimbabwe". It is something that the people there are immensely proud of and depictions of it are on their money. The reason they are so proud of it is because the whites had always claimed that the blacks could never have built anything like it- the Portugese who first found it assumed it must've been built by the Queen of Sheba- (or so I was told while I was there), but archeologists finally proved that the black Africans did, indeed construct it, if memory serves- between the 12th and 15th centuries. If you're in Zimbabwe and you've already done Vic Falls, it's worth a look and is a good way to spend a day.
Anyway, at the rate things are going there now, the Great Zimbabwe will surely look like high architecture to the country's citizens before much longer.
I'm sure Mugabe will not suffer any shortage or interruption of his comforts.
Me to Zimbabwe: Drop Dead!
I kinda like Vlad to tell you the truth. I think some of my family's blood line must go back to him because his methods make a lot of sense to me lately.
Bump!
Makes me think that we need to spend more on our military to defend against people that ruin their own countries and try to ruin ours too. (communists, islamikazis and the like)
Just a few neutron bombs and the problems go away.
God Save America (Please)
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