Zimbabwe -- Famine: Hell for millions, salvation for Mugabe

Famine: Hell for millions, salvation for Mugabe ZWNEWS Date posted:Mon 29-Jul-2002 Date published:Mon 29-Jul-2002

We must ask the West for two things: firstly that they help us. Secondly, and yet more difficult, that in helping us they help Robert Mugabe, the founder of our misfortune, as little as they possibly can

Famine stalks our country, quietly pulling the sick, the old and the very young down into death. Far away, philanthropists and NGOs stretch out their hands once again to ask the West to help us. But one old man will neither be dying nor appealing; he will be smiling to himself and reflecting upon his good fortune. Robert Mugabe does not care for the people of Zimbabwe as people - to him they just a means to a political end. And this famine will, for a time, protect him from the consequences of his own evil policies.

Mugabe's line on the famine is characteristic: Zimbabweans live in poverty because of colonialism. Poor rains, and British plots, have turned this poverty to famine. He will permit certain countries to distribute aid to the people in Zimbabwe but only if they do so on his terms. Only through wholesale re-distribution of productive land can poverty be eliminated.

As with all Mugabe's propaganda this line carries us down into some twisted grotto hung with folly and racism and hatred. The United Kingdom provided over 50 million pounds for land reform in Zimbabwe up to 1998 and far greater sums were on offer at the donors' conference of that year. Mugabe chose to ignore them. His land reform was, for the most part, an exercise in patronage and corruption. When Mugabe decided to drive Zimbabwean commercial farmers forcibly from the land he did so because they were white and because they opposed him - not to reduce poverty. It is this mad and racist policy that has plunged Zimbabwe into indefinite famine.

Far from plotting to sabotage food supplies, the British and the Americans, seen by Mugabe as his sworn enemies, have already provided more food for our people than any other nations. Mugabe's friends: China, Cuba, Libya, Vietnam, have provided almost nothing. It is Britons and Americans who are now leading the appeals in the West. And poverty and starvation will endure as long as Mugabe keeps his expensively-shod foot on the throat of Zimbabwe's once admirable agricultural sector.

And we should be in no doubt what Mugabe's terms will be for NGOs who would distribute food to 'his' people. State distribution of cereals remains firmly housed in the Grain Marketing Board, a Zanu PF-run parastatal which enriches Zanu PF apparatchiks and withholds food from those who do not support Zanu PF. NGOs that would help Zimbabweans have been subject to harassment by the regime for over a year: their stores attacked, their officers kidnapped, their supplies stolen or threatened with state confiscation.

In November 2001 state media announced that all aid would have to be distributed through government channels. This year we have seen clear and repeated evidence of Zanu PF attempts to steal or divert food aid for their own political or personal ends - the reports of NGOs such as Physicians for Human Rights are unimpeachable. Zanu PF ministers make no secret of the fact: if you support the MDC you go hungry.

So - not content with smashing our country apart Mugabe will now seek to steal from those who would save us and use that aid to save himself. He benefits, anyway, from the famine for his own follies, and Zimbabwe's peculiar circumstances, will be forgotten in the rush to feed Africa. He will not have to confront the hungry, desperate people that his policies would have conjured up - drought or no drought. And every sack of maize paid for by Britain or Sweden or Italy is a sack of maize that he, Mugabe, does not have to buy to keep we Zimbabweans from his throat. He can spend his money on guns instead, or oil or patronage or his hideous youth brigades or some other means to preserve his tyranny.

And yet the West will give - even though it knows that it is propping up Mugabe, even though it knows that some of its aid will directly benefit and enrich his cronies, even though it knows it will get nothing but abuse from Mugabe in the way of thanks. It gives to save the emaciated child, the starving mother. We should be profoundly grateful for that, although our leader would regard such altruism as weakness.

But we must ask for more from the West as well. We must ask for the manpower and structures and clear-thinking management to ensure that Mugabe derives as little benefit from the aid programme as possible. Donors should have the courage to withhold aid from areas where it goes directly to Zanu PF, to restrict aid to the sick, the very young and the very old where there is doubt, and to refuse aid to those who continue to dismantle the agricultural system and drive farmers from their farms.

Donors must report every instance of harassment, intimidation and theft. Donors should accept that some much-needed resources must be spent on monitors and security rather than food. And donors must be honest with those who, yet again, are giving their money to help us. To say "forget the politics - it?s about saving lives" is well-intentioned but simplistic and in some ways dishonest. Instead donors should say: "We know that we are helping Mugabe. This is unavoidable. But we are really trying to help his suffering people as much as possible and him as little as possible." And they must seek to put that policy into practice here on the ground.

There is more than honesty at stake here. Zimbabwe will depend upon aid to survive as long as Mugabe endures. The horrible irony that he has manufactured is that saving the starving today is to ensure that there will more starving tomorrow and for the foreseeable future. So we must ask the West for two things: firstly that they help us. Secondly, and yet more difficult, that in helping us they help Robert Mugabe, the founder of our misfortune, as little as they possibly can.

....the British and the Americans, seen by Mugabe as his sworn enemies, have already provided more food for our people than any other nations.

A report on the radio this past weekend, stated the USA had sent XXX tons of food to Zimbabwe. I am livid! The socialists and '60's hippies who work in our government have no idea how to correct the problem in Zim. Sending food is a waste of maney and resources. Who says Mugabe will distribute the food? He may sell it to China or Viet Nam!

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Food aid is distributed through the World Food Program.

Maize, the regional staple, is a fungible, it gets mixed in with other maize and distributed on a regional basis.

The problem is that Mugabe's bureaucracy is interfering with the logistics and Mugabe's thugs are interfering with the distribution.

We must ask for the manpower and structures and clear-thinking management

. A return to when the European countries controlled your nation?

The problem is that Mugabe's bureaucracy is interfering with the logistics and Mugabe's thugs are interfering with the distribution.

Exactly! The thugs really don't want the people to see "Made in USA" on the packages.

Their interference is the same mode of operation used by Cambodia and others. The food aid rotted in boxcars on deserted side tracks. Never got to the starving people.

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