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Zimbabwe -- Stricken by hunger among the lush fields
Telegraph (UK) ^ | July 28, 2002 | Christina Lamb

Posted on 07/28/2002 4:32:00 AM PDT by Clive

Mugabe blames the famine in Zimbabwe on drought, yet the dams and rivers are full. Christina Lamb finds plenty growing in the Mazowe valley

Shorter than the dead wheat all around her, 18-month-old Alice sits in a field toying with the corpse of a tiny mouse. Tears spill silently from her large eyes. For this is not a game.

Alice is hungry and her mother Brenda and aunt Winnie, who has an even younger baby strapped on her back, are hunting field mice. Scrabbling in the red earth, they pull out the tiny creatures which they will roast on a fire with salt, their only meal of the day.

There are similar scenes all over southern Africa, where the worst drought for a decade has left millions facing starvation and prompted Britain's leading aid agencies to launch an emergency appeal last week.

Yet there is something not quite right about this picture. For the field in Zimbabwe's Mazowe valley in which the starving women and their babies are mouse-hunting overlooks Mwenje dam, which is overflowing with water. There are two more small dams on the farm itself.

On the properties all around, extensive sprinkler systems are watering lush green fields full of mangetout that will end up on the shelves of Sainsbury's. There are plantations of roses, too, and acres of ripening wheat.

Of the 14 million people on the brink of starvation in southern Africa, more than six million are in Zimbabwe, half the country's population. Yet travelling thousands of miles across the country from Matabeleland in the north and west to Mutare in the east, posing as tourists - the regime refuses to allow in British journalists - The Telegraph found the vegetation green, dams full and rivers flowing.

There is no doubt, however, about the lack of food. Villager after villager took me into huts in which there was absolutely nothing left to eat and showed empty granaries. Four weeks without rain at the critical germination phase has led to the failure of their small crops. There will be no harvest again until next June.

The inescapable truth of the famine in Zimbabwe is that it is man-made: and the man who is making it is President Robert Mugabe. The lush fields belong to those white farmers who are now cultivating their crops illegally, and the stricken farms are those that have been handed over to so-called war veterans or officials of the ruling Zanu party.

Already, the country has run out of maize, the staple food for most of the population. According to a director of Lobels, the country's biggest bakery, soon there will be no wheat left to produce the bread which people are buying instead. Cooking oil is in such short supply that it now sells at Z$900 (£10) a litre, a quarter of the average monthly wage.

In Bulawayo, I saw queues for sugar, in which women with babies had waited from 4am until mid-afternoon in the baking sun - only for a government official to come and take away the lot.

"Average rainfall for the last farming year was only down from 24in to 22in and we only had four weeks without rain," said David Coltart, the legal affairs spokesman for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

For Zimbabwe's commercial farmers, who grow 90 per cent of the country's food, those four weeks made no difference as there was plenty of earlier rainwater available for irrigation.

Unfortunately for most of the farmers, Mr Mugabe has used his mobs and laws to make it either impossible or illegal for them to work their land. As a result the amount of staple maize under cultivation has been slashed. This year's cereal harvest is estimated by the United Nations at 687,000 tonnes, less than a third of the annual needs of 2.3-2.5 million tonnes.

Two years ago, output was 2.48 million tonnes - enough to feed the whole country and still have enough left over to export to its neighbours.

"This is Mugabe's famine," said Marcus Hale, whose family farm used to produce more than one per cent of the country's wheat needs, but who was forced to leave last month after two years of violence, which culminated in the "war vets" digging a grave for him outside his front door.

"This year we would have produced 3,000 tonnes of wheat, but we produced nothing because we weren't allowed to," he said.

"It's total insanity that one would close down the very producers of food at the same time as begging for food aid," said Jenni Williams, from Justice for Agriculture, a breakaway group of farmers who intend to contest the seizures of their farms in court.

Yet in his opening-of-parliament address last week, Mr Mugabe said: "No one can fairly blame us for the situation of want, naturally caused." He accused Britain of "using the drought to try to undermine the country's sovereignty" and proclaimed the land-reform programme "an unparalleled success story".

With 90 per cent of arable land in the hands of 4,500 white farmers, almost all agreed that land reform was necessary. But as the August 9 deadline for farmers to abandon their land draws near, many of the war veterans who occupied the farms are also being thrown off to make away for Mugabe supporters and cronies.

More than 110 government ministers, senior military officers and their wives, mayors and police chiefs have now taken over farms.

"This is not land reform - it's theft," said Liz Coulson, whose tomato farm in Matabeleland has been taken over by a police superintendent.

Among the many new farm owners around Harare is Mr Mugabe's brother-in-law, Reward Marufu, who took over Leopardville Farm, and Jocelyn Chiwenga, wife of the army chief, who seized Shepherd Hall Farm. When Hortico, the local wholesale company, refused to export her roses, she seized that too, although this has subsequently been returned.

On most of the "liberated" farms, previously planted crops have gone untended and no new ones put in. Some of the occupiers have even asked the white owners to manage the farms for them for a share of the harvest.

At Glenwood, the farm on which Brenda and Winnie were hunting mice, the owner had fled to Ireland. Field after field of paprika for export is dying.

The original war veterans who occupied the farm were recently replaced by Elijah Gumbo, the owner of a dishwasher factory, and some police officers. Mr Gumbo's brother Paul, who was manning the gate, admitted that they had no idea how to run the farm.

"This is not our environment," he said. "I used to work on a white-owned rose farm and get a monthly salary and that was better. Now I have no money."

It is not only the farmers who are losing their homes. The law requires all farmworkers to leave, too. More than 76,000 have lost their homes and livelihoods since February and more than 500,000 will be homeless by August 9.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Extended News; Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: africawatch; zimbabwe

1 posted on 07/28/2002 4:32:00 AM PDT by Clive
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To: *AfricaWatch; Cincinatus' Wife; sarcasm; Travis McGee; happygrl; Byron_the_Aussie; robnoel; ...
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2 posted on 07/28/2002 4:32:33 AM PDT by Clive
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To: Clive
No, it's not a game- life & death are so deadly serious. I wish we could arm those poor souls so they'd have at least a chance at throwing off their oppressors.

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3 posted on 07/28/2002 4:51:23 AM PDT by backhoe
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To: Clive
I can only wonder where the U.N. is during this build-up to tradegy. Perhaps they are completly occupied with The Balkans and Israel? Trying to foist the ICC on the world? You know, important stuff.
4 posted on 07/28/2002 5:07:55 AM PDT by jimtorr
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To: Clive
Yet in his opening-of-parliament address last week, Mr Mugabe said: "No one can fairly blame us for the situation of want, naturally caused." He accused Britain of "using the drought to try to undermine the country's sovereignty" and proclaimed the land-reform programme "an unparalleled success story".

Hmmm, Britain, a basically socialist nation, has done nothing yet to help a brethren nation. Don't worry thought. Communist party headquarters in New York will pass a resolution blaming the "wealthy" United States and demand we send 100 billion bucks to bail out the commies as usual in Africa.
5 posted on 07/28/2002 5:10:57 AM PDT by Nuke'm Glowing
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To: Clive
"It is not only the farmers who are losing their homes. The law requires all farmworkers to leave, too. More than 76,000 have lost their homes and livelihoods since February and more than 500,000 will be homeless by August 9.

And as the owners of these farms were thrown off, they were required to give severance pay to the workers who were also thrown off the land. It is indeed Mugabe's Famine! That he says otherwise is of course a lie and if he won't step aside, he should be forced to do so any way 'they' can make him.

6 posted on 07/28/2002 5:14:43 AM PDT by yoe
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To: Clive
If the new war crimes tribunal is looking for its first genocide defendant, they could do no better than Mr. Mugabe.

Not that it will ever happen.
7 posted on 07/28/2002 7:58:01 AM PDT by The Iguana
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To: Clive
And these people have not rebelled why? Contest in court against a jury rigged system? Please, what do they expect to get or find? This is rediculous. If you want your land fight, otherwise die from the very starvation you were afraid to fight and die against.
8 posted on 07/28/2002 9:35:04 AM PDT by Stavka2
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To: The Iguana
Sorry but he's a third worlder and they never commit crimes...and if it's found out he's either an atheist...or better yet, a musli, then he's as good as a saint.
9 posted on 07/28/2002 9:37:55 AM PDT by Stavka2
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To: Clive
I would not give 1 penny for food aid. I would happily advocate giving 20,000 AK47s and a few million rounds of ammo for the overthrow of the resident dictator. In the short run, the AKs would also provide the means for the starving to get food from those in power.
10 posted on 07/28/2002 12:50:28 PM PDT by Freedom_Is_Not_Free
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To: Clive
Let's airdrop in a couple of thousand M-16s and plenty of ammo. "Now you can fight. Let's see if you do."
11 posted on 07/28/2002 1:49:49 PM PDT by Jonathon Spectre
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To: Clive
If most of the country starves to death it would make it easier for the next door neighboring countries to send in armies to take the land away from Mugabe.
12 posted on 07/28/2002 8:13:11 PM PDT by Chewbacca
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