 AfricaWatch: for AfricaWatch articles. Other Bump Lists at: Free Republic Bump List Register |
I say again, one day soon the watchword will be
"Pity about Africa..."
Posted on 08/01/2002 4:29:41 AM PDT by Clive
WHO would have ever believed that Zimbabwe would one day be referred to as a country facing famine?
In our wildest dreams and worst nightmares I don’t think any of us could have imagined the day when almost half of our population would be starving.
Did we ever think we would see all our elders reduced to hungry beggars? Could we have foreseen the old women and men standing in endlessly long queues waiting patiently for someone to give them a small bowl of beans or grain?
How can it be that our beloved Zimbabwe is now no better than the Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia?
How can it be that in our warm and fertile Zimbabwe whose dams and rivers are full, one banana costs $10, a single egg costs $25 and people sit picking maize grain off the side of the road behind the donor grain trucks.
Why, in just 29 months, have people in the countryside, been reduced to eating leaves and field mice? Is it really possible that the tail end of a cyclone in March 2000 and a single drought in 2002 could have caused such massive starvation?
I wonder if the men and women who lead and govern us knew what they were doing when they sanctioned the takeover of 95 percent of Zimbabwe’s commercial farms.
I wonder why those men and women with their doctorates and degrees could not see the day when we would have no salt or sugar, no cooking oil and no maize.
I always thought tertiary education was a sign of great wisdom, but now I know that I was wrong.
A master’s degree or doctorate may give a man letters after his name but without a doubt those letters do not spell the word common sense.
I wonder how much longer the people and leaders of Zimbabwe are going to sit back and do nothing about this hell we live in.
During the last week the President made a few public speeches.
In one he said that he was going to widen all of the country’s main highways to cut down on the number of traffic accidents.
In a country whose roads are littered with potholes, where street signs are non-existent because they have been stolen, and where only one in 10 street lights work, we are talking about widening thousands of kilometres of main highways.
In another speech last week, the President said that the British were secretly recruiting all of Zimbabwe’s doctors and nurses.
If I was a nurse in Zimbabwe I don’t think it would take an awful lot of secret plotting or clandestine recruiting to get me to go and work in another country.
Why would I want to work in a Zimbabwean government hospital when there are not even disposable gloves, let alone drugs, pain killers or the most basic of equipment needed to comfort and care for my patients?
Instead of addressing the real emergencies in Zimbabwe, like 6 million starving people, we are talking about widening roads and secret British plots.
I just cannot believe that all the men and women in Cabinet with degrees and doctorates are going to let this go on for much longer.
As a nation we look to you, our leaders, Cabinet, government and President for wisdom and guidance.
We look to you for example and national pride. We have become the laughing stock of the world. Our people have become starving beggars, our lush fields have become barren, weed-filled, dust bowls.
Surely now the time has come for all our leaders to stand together and stop the madness. When people have crops in the ground and food in their bellies, we can talk about widening highways and secret British plots. The time has come to stop the politics and get our priorities right.
|
AfricaWatch: for AfricaWatch articles. Other Bump Lists at: Free Republic Bump List Register |
I say again, one day soon the watchword will be
"Pity about Africa..."
Oh, you can bet they knew exactly what they were doing. They intended to enrich their supporters at the expense of the white minority, and they intended to suppress the opposition movement by starving them out while keeping his cronies fat and happy.
He has no more regard for the Zimbabwean people as a whole than Pol Pot and his gang of thugs had for the Cambodians they "liberated".
Every action Robert Mugabe takes is to enrich himself and those who serve him while at the same time purging the country of all who disagree with him. He is a monster, and I am terribly frustrated that the world seems too busy now to correct this terrible wrong. Talk about state-sponsored terrorism - look to the way the Zim government treats its own citizens.
The trouble with zimbabwe...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.