Mugabe is starving his own people

People are being starved in Zimbabwe by President Robert Mugabe's deliberate and systematic ploy of using food shortages to cling to power.

Millions of people are going hungry not, as Mr Mugabe's government claims, because of poor rains but as a direct result of its policy of denying food to opposition supporters and enriching its loyalists.

Last night, the deadline passed for the mass eviction of 2,900 of Zimbabwe's white commercial farmers, for decades the mainstay of the agricultural sector. Mr Mugabe ordered them to abandon their homes, land and livelihoods by midnight.

An investigation by The Telegraph found that control of the Grain Marketing Board (GMB), Zimbabwe's state-owned monopoly supplier of commercial maize, was passed this year to one of Mr Mugabe's most loyal henchmen, Air Marshal Perence Shiri, an alleged war criminal.

With Zimbabwe's economy in chaos, Shiri's mission was to spend a £17 million loan provided by Libya buying just enough maize to stave off food riots, which would then be supplied through the GMB.

The organisation, which is meant to supply maize at subsidised prices to all Zimbabweans, has instead been selling maize only to supporters of the ruling Zanu-PF party. Backers of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change went hungry.

Worse still was the country's Food For Work programme. Thousands of opposition supporters would provide 15 days' labour only to be told at the end there was no GMB food for them.

The GMB is so corrupt and politicised that aid groups shipping food into Zimbabwe are being forced to set up their own expensive parallel storage and distribution facilities, rather than using those of the GMB - the traditional way of bringing food aid into Zimbabwe.

There is also evidence that the Zimbabwean government is deliberately blocking the work of these international aid groups and keeping the flow of aid down to a trickle.

That trickle is enough to stave off threats of public unrest, but not enough to provide food for all of the country.

"What we are seeing is nothing but humanitarian torture," an aid worker said. "It takes three months to die of starvation and this is a torture every bit as bad as beating someone with barbed wire or hanging them from handcuffs."

One British Government source said: "The irony is that the food shortage is one of the reasons the people in Zimbabwe might be impelled to rise up against the government but we are morally obliged to provide food that removes that impulsion and secures the Mugabe regime."

A warehouse of supplies organised by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace was blockaded for three months by Zanu-PF militants and an attempt to increase the flow of humanitarian supplies by the World Food Programme (WFP) has also been blocked. The WFP relies on recognised agencies to do the final distribution on the ground and aid sources said the mere presence of a British charity, Save the Children (UK), on a list of possible distributors is hindering expansion.

Aid groups are routinely criticised in the state-owned media in Zimbabwe, accused of being tools of the "imperialist, colonialist West".

The situation is being worsened by logistical problems in neighbouring countries such as South Africa, where management errors in the state-run railways mean there is a drastic shortage of goods wagons to move grain.

And in Mozambique a malfunction in a bagging machine at the port of Beira means six ships carrying grain remain in the approaches to the harbour, unable to offload supplies for Zimbabwe.

In effect, the regime in Zimbabwe is doing just enough to help its own supporters while blocking efforts to help the millions of needy people in the country.

So far, there have been only a handful of deaths connected to food shortages. Without any basic food supplies, families have been forced to live off what they can find in the bush and some children have died from eating poisonous berries.

By early November, however, before the next planting season, aid experts predict widespread malnutrition in Zimbabwe unless significant food supplies can be brought into the country.

The WFP, the world's largest humanitarian aid organisation, currently estimates six million people in Zimbabwe out of a population of 13 million are suffering from food shortages.

There have been intermittent rains in the region this year but observers believe most of the shortages have resulted from Mr Mugabe's policy of land invasions, which have all but destroyed the country's once thriving commercial farming sector.

South of the Limpopo in South Africa the same intermittent rains have not stopped farmers producing a surplus of about 1.8 million tons of maize.

For almost all of the 1990s, Zimbabwe was a net exporter of maize and so good were its supplies that the WFP had an office in Harare, not to distribute maize in Zimbabwe but to procure Zimbabwean maize for distribution elsewhere.

Mugabe must face trial for his crimes (By David Coltart, Zimbabwe's shadow Minister of Justice - Filed: 11/08/2002) *** The only way that catastrophe can be averted is by the restoration of the rule of law in Zimbabwe. This alone will ensure that a massive summer maize crop is planted and irrigated by experienced farmers and that the exodus of thousands of talented Zimbabweans of all races stops. However the rule of law will only be restored through holding a fresh election that complies with acceptable standards.

There appears to be much hand wringing in the West about what to do. Food aid has been increased but that will deal with the symptoms, not the cause, of famine. Pleas have been made to Zimbabwe's neighbours to act but few African states have the political will to deal with the crisis. Mugabe has shown in recent weeks that he is quite prepared to divide the African Union and the Commonwealth to remain in power. The regime has not hesitated to play the racial card both domestically and internationally and the crisis is constantly portrayed as a spat between Britain and her former colony. Mugabe's purpose is to raise the stakes in the hope of deterring the West from taking sterner measures for fear of, for example, splitting the Commonwealth.

The crisis is now so grave, however, that the West must not be deterred from taking decisive action. Two distinct courses of action should be followed. First, those in Zimbabwe guilty of torture (as defined by the International Convention) should be investigated and prosecuted. Aside from the abuses of the past two years, food is now being used as a political weapon which is already resulting in thousands suffering. Many could die unless those responsible know that they will be held accountable for their actions. The vast majority of those who may die will be MDC supporters denied food solely because of their political beliefs. That is clearly a crime against humanity.

Second, the West, in conjunction with its democratic African allies, must now seriously consider its responsibility to protect Zimbabweans. The report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty published in December 2001 points out that where a population is suffering serious harm as a result of repression or state failure, and the state in question is unwilling to halt the suffering, the usual principle of non-intervention yields to the international responsibility to protect.

The principle of state sovereignty, so readily used by the Mugabe regime to protect itself, is not absolute. With sovereignty comes a responsibility for the state to protect its people. But more than six million Zimbabweans face starvation as a direct result of the state's failure and its use of food aid as a political weapon. In these circumstances the civilised world has a responsibility to protect the Zimbabwean people and to do so it should intervene in the manner proposed by the International Commission. If future famines are to be avoided and if what was once the jewel of Africa is not to become another Somalia, governments in the West must must act urgently with their African colleagues to address the root cause of the catastrophe now unfolding in Zimbabwe.***

Rhodesia shall arise once more from this rubble. The UN forced the end to a government and country that worked and the bastardization that resulted has killed and oppressed more black Africans than the white majority did.

Enough of the social engineering crap! Look what has happened to two thriving states, Rhodesia and South Africa! Once strong economies, they were taken from those who built them, given to those who benefited from them, and run into the ground by the latter.

The ugly truth is that Rhodesia and South Africa were the main obstacles to a world Communist triump in Africa, and had to be eliminated using the UN and world opinion (take a bow, NYT and Wash Compost). In a morbidly ironic way, by the time these two states were neutralized, Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher had neutralized the perpetrators. No one was able to step into the vacuum and left to themselves, the Africans have degenerated into tribal warfare.

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