August 31, 2002
Mugabe withholding food
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Zimbabwe's government is using a policy of "selective starvation" to punish political opponents, enrich supporters and ensure a victory in local elections next month, according to an American researcher who just completed a weeklong visit to the south African country.
"What we saw was selective starvation, the use of food as a political weapon," he said.
...
"Because government suppliers have a monopoly of the distribution networks, cutting back supply sends prices through the roof and is just one more way for the Mugabe government to steer money to its friends. Put that on top of the lack of nutrition, the high unemployment and the general economic decline, and you have a train wreck on the way."
...
Based on his tour of Zimbabwe, Mr. Prendergast said mortality rates among AIDS sufferers in Zimbabwe have already spiked because of the declining food stocks. At an estimated 35 percent of the population, Zimbabwe has the second-highest infection rate in the world after Botswana.
While much of the Western criticism has focused on the struggles of the white farmers, Mr. Prendergast said the government's food policies have been far more devastating for the 1.5 million black farm workers and their families who have been ousted from their plots as the white-owned farms are seized.
...
"If you broke the government's monopoly on the commercial food distribution chain, you could avert the famine tomorrow," he said.
[Go to the source for the complete article.]
JOHN FUND'S POLITICAL DIARY
Jeers for Johannesburg
A summit that cheers Mugabe isn't about helping the poor.
Friday, September 6, 2002 12:01 a.m.
Secretary of State Colin Powell was heckled and jeered twice during his 10-minute speech Wednesday to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa. It was easy to see why President Bush didn't go. The summit seemed to come alive only when speakers bashed America like a piñata.
...
But the summit's true failing came when it ignored the biggest cause of endemic poverty and suffering in the developing world: corrupt, tyrannical and quasisocialist governments. The elephant in the room was Robert Mugabe of neighboring Zimbabwe. Mr. Mugabe's two-year-old policy of throwing white farmers off their land has turned once self-sufficient Zimbabwe into a country where half its 13 million people face famine. His mobs enforce blatantly racist policies, the media have been muzzled, and this year he was re-elected only through massive voter fraud.
...
In contrast to Mr. Powell's reception, Mr. Mugabe's anti-Western diatribe drew three rounds of riotous applause as he attacked the conference's failure to confront a "half-baked unilateral agenda of globalization in the service of big corporate interests of the north" who "focus on profits, not the poor."
...
In speech after speech, the 104 heads of state who did star turns in Johannesburg failed to criticize Mr. Mugabe's tyranny. Even Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair scrapped his normally firm denunciations of Mr. Mugabe and dodged any mention of him during news conferences.
...
...
For the entire article, go to