Posted on 12/26/2002 4:59:17 AM PST by backhoe
From News24 (SA), 25 December
Govt: We messed up
Harare - Zimbabwe's government has admitted failing to ensure adequate fuel supplies for thousands of people to travel over the festive period. Long and winding queues of cars formed at a few petrol stations that had the scarce commodity in the capital on Wednesday while the majority went dry. "I have to admit that the situation is bad," Reuben Marumahoko, the deputy minister of energy and power development told the state daily The Herald in a story on Wednesday. The southern African country has experienced intermittent fuel shortages since December 1999. The acute shortages have been attributed to lack of foreign exchange to import petroleum-based fuels and to corruption at the sole oil procuring parastatal, National Oil Company of Zimbabwe (NOCZIM). Despite promises by the government last week that it had acquired supplies to ease the shortages over the Christmas holidays, petrol remained critically scarce in Harare. The shortage of fuel has led some public transport operators to raise their fares to four times the normal rates.
The government announced last week that it had bought fuel worth more than $15m from Independent Petroleum Group (IPG) of Kuwait, Sasol and Engen of South Africa and Sandstone of Mozambique. A vital fuel deal that President Robert Mugabe struck with Libya appears to have run into problems of late. Over the past two years, Tamoil, Libya's international oil firm had become the single largest fuel supplier to Zimbabwe, accounting for about 70% of the country's needs. Under the deal Zimbabwe paid for fuel in local currency paid into a Zimbabwean bank account. The payments would be offset with exports of beef, tobacco, sugar and other selected products to Libya. But the energy minister last week said "because of the reality on the ground, we have not been able to meet Libya's requirements." Zimbabwe is also experiencing shortages of basic commodities such as sugar and beef, among others.
From Associated Press, 25 December
Troubled Zimbabwe marks cheerless holiday
Chirunya, Zimbabwe - Frail from hunger and desperate to quiet the crying of her two starving children, Patricia Marapananga received a welcome Christmas gift from international donors - a handout of corn meal. "They cry because I don't have anything to give them. But today we are lucky," she said. Zimbabweans, suffering their worst-ever economic crisis, faced a bleak, cheerless holiday in this predominantly Christian nation plagued by starvation, fuel shortages and a financial meltdown. The economy has been crushed by nearly three years of political violence. The government's seizure of thousands of white-owned commercial farms has caused a collapse in agriculture, worsening the country's hunger. Inflation hit a record 175 percent this month, according to the government, but analysts say it is actually far higher. Marapananga and another 1,470 families were given corn meal and protein supplements by the World Food Program and the Christian Care charity on Tuesday. But even that gift was bittersweet. Marapananga received only half what she needs to feed her family for the next month, when aid agencies will again bring food to this remote, impoverished district 160 miles northeast of Harare. "There isn't enough to go round," said Hosea Muchapondwa, a Christian Care project officer.
Donors have given only 60 percent of the food aid needed to help feed the 6.7 million Zimbabweans - more than half the population - in danger of starving, according to the World Food Program. Addmore Mukumura, a Christian Care relief official, said careful families might be able to squeeze one meal a day from the limited aid rations. Interviews by relief officials in recent weeks showed some families only scraped together one meal every two or three days. "There isn't the money in this area to buy food, even if it was readily available," Mukumura said. Many in the village have resorted to eating wild fruits and roots, some of them chopped and repeatedly boiled to remove toxins. Most years, relatives from Harare visit the village for Christmas, bringing food, soft drinks, cigarettes and other gifts. "They are not coming. There's nothing to bring and they can't afford the bus fare," said Brighton Hokonya, a father of eight.
Officials at Harare's main Mbare Msika bus station, which usually ferries tens of thousands of city dwellers to their rural families on Christmas Eve, have reported a sharp slump in passengers. "Business is very bad. Our buses haven't been able to get enough fuel and people are worried if they get home they won't be able to get back," said Johnson Kumbula, a ticket seller. Long lines of vehicles still coiled around city blocks Tuesday as motorists waited for promised gas deliveries the government said would ease shortages ahead of the Christmas break. Because drivers spend so much of the day waiting for gas, taxis have stopped using their meters and buses have begun ignoring government-fixed fares. Commuter fares have more than doubled in the past week. In Chirunya, the traditional Christmas meal of bread, chicken and rice is a distant dream for Marapananga's family this year. Instead, she will mash seed pods from a stunted acacia tree to make a sauce to go with the bland, boiled corn meal porridge she will cook over an open fire. "There is nothing else," she said.
From The Baltimore Sun, 24 December
A few enjoy wealth and food, millions confront starvation
Shortages: Despite ingenuity in the face of drought and hunger, a nation is increasingly divided into a few wealthy and many very poor.
By John Murphy
Harare - From the Mercedes-Benz he drives to work to his new three-story mansion set in the hills outside the city, it is clear that Zimbabwe refrigerator manufacturer Callisto Jokonya is having a good year. In any other country, such success would not be remarkable. But this is Zimbabwe, a country on the verge of economic collapse, where half the population is threatened by starvation and even the wealthy suffer from acute shortages of everything from milk to beef to cooking oil. Jokonya acknowledges that his fortune defies logic: Why would Zimbabweans be buying refrigerators when they have no food to put inside? The answer reveals less about what Jokonya is doing right as a businessman than how much has gone wrong in Zimbabwe. The country of 12 million people, once the breadbasket of Africa, has slid into its worst economic, political and humanitarian crisis since independence in 1980. President Robert G. Mugabe's seizure of the country's white-owned farms - launched more than two years ago - has unraveled the agriculture-based economy, disrupted food production and left thousands of people out of work. If that were not enough, Zimbabwe is one of six southern African countries hit by the worst regional drought in more than a decade, threatening the lives of 14 million people - nearly half of them in Zimbabwe. "Zimbabwe is at the epicenter of the crisis in southern Africa. It's the country where everything is at its worst," said Stephen Lewis, a United Nations special envoy to Africa, during a recent Zimbabwe visit.
To enter Zimbabwe today is to see a country turned upside down: Where 6.7 million people face starvation in a nation that was once celebrated for its ability to produce surplus food. Where a severe fuel shortage has crippled transportation in the country, creating long lines of cars, taxis and buses waiting to fill up at gas stations nationwide. Where Zimbabweans not waiting for fuel spend much of their days and nights standing in equally long queues for such basic commodities as bread, sugar, salt and maize. Where inflation is so high - 144 percent this year and predicted to jump to 500 percent next year -that some stores announce hourly price increases over loudspeakers. Where, according to one recent economic report, workers who earned $150 a month in 1980 take home less than $15 today. Where that worker would be considered lucky because more than 60 percent of the country's population is unemployed. And where 10 percent to 20 percent of the population, frustrated with life here, has fled the country. The Zimbabweans left behind, no longer trusting their currency, are scrambling to put whatever meager savings they have into assets that might keep their value: cars, bicycles, cell phones, houses and - much to Jokonya's benefit this business year - refrigerators. "If I buy a fridge and I don't even use it, two months down the line it will be worth more," says Jokonya, who has invested his savings in apartments, an extra car and a second house. The absurdities of Zimbabwe's economy are not limited to refrigerator sales. Although the vast majority of the country is hopelessly poor, there is a small group of people getting rich. The stock market is booming. So is the property market, with housing costs up 400 percent in the past two years. Both, like the refrigerators, are viewed as investments that might keep pace with the runaway inflation.
There is a bizarre mix of affluence and poverty. Zimbabwe's well-to-do drive sports cars, build summer homes and flock to Harare's finest restaurants for three-course meals of filet mignon, prawns and goose. The poor flirt with a devastating famine. "There are two classes of people in Zimbabwe today: the low class and the high class. There is no more middle class; they have fallen away to the low class," says Fungai Mutizhe, a used car dealer who is doing a brisk business this year. "In these hard times, there are people doing well taking advantage of the situation." What's driving these economic distortions is the government's refusal to acknowledge the collapse of the currency. Officially, one U.S. dollar is worth 55 of Zimbabwe's currency. But on the black market, one U.S. dollar fetches 30 times that much. The government, however, has bristled at calls for it to devalue the currency, blaming the crisis on enemies of the state. Inflation? That's the result of greedy money traders and businessmen. Shortages? Whites and opposition party leaders must be hoarding goods. In an effort to curb inflation, the government recently slapped price controls on almost every imaginable item, from toilet paper to television sets, and shut down all foreign exchange dealers. These measures only made life more difficult. Unable to sell their products at a profit with price controls, manufacturers are either closing their factories or selling their goods on the black market at hugely marked-up prices. One Zimbabwe family complained that it spent one quarter of its $4 weekly income on a bar of soap. Everyone, it seems, from flower sellers to restaurant owners to bellhops, is involved in the underground trade. No one appears to be afraid to get caught because, traders say, government officials are heavily involved in it themselves. The only concern for currency traders is that the higher inflation grows, so does the weight of the Zimbabwe dollars they must haul around town. "Have you ever carried 3 million Zimbabwe dollars [about $3,000]?" asked Krishna Makurumidze, a black market money trader. "It's heavy. You have to use a shoulder bag to carry it."
One measure of just how far Zimbabwe has fallen is that Mugabe's government freely admits that the country has problems. Not too long ago, government officials offered perpetually sunny forecasts for the economy and the country's harvests. Speaking this month at a conference of his ruling party, the Zanu PF, Mugabe appealed to the country to work together to reverse the economic decline and end the shortages of food and almost all other goods. But he did not accept responsibility for any of these problems. Instead he blamed a regional drought and his growing list of enemies: the British, the West, members of the country's main opposition party and, as always, the country's white population. "We wish that more would join us as we seek common solutions to the hardships imposed on us by our detractors," Mugabe told his party leaders. The solution to all the country's challenges is land reform, Mugabe said. But what's clear, critics say, is that land reform is the source of the country's ills. Consider the case of Stan Magutakuona, 55, a peasant farmer who tilled a small patch of inferior farmland while he watched his white neighbors grow rich with their large commercial farms. Like most Zimbabweans, Magutakuona wanted the government to correct the historic imbalance of land ownership that left former white colonists - who make up less than 1 percent of the population - with the majority of the best farmland. But few were prepared for the tactics employed by Mugabe. His popularity waning in 2000, Mugabe unleashed bands of so-called "war veterans" on the countryside who seized the country's richest commercial farms for redistribution to black peasants. Of the country's 4,500 white-owned farms, about 4,000 were shut down in this way. In the winter of 2000, Magutakuona was one of several dozen peasants who each received 30-acre plots of prime land on Rona Farm, a large white-owned commercial farm north of Harare. Magutakuona left behind his smaller, inferior piece of communal farmland nearby and moved his family onto his new property. He was overjoyed, he recalled, at the prospect of perhaps living someday as well as the previous owner. But two years later, that dream, he says, is gone.
On a recent morning, Magutakuona emerged from the mud hut where he lives with his wife and two children. He was barefoot and dressed in a torn suit coat and tattered pants. His land grant did not include the white owner's home, his farm equipment or any guidance. Tilling the land with an ox-drawn plow, Magutakuona produced 10 tons of maize last year. That harvest gave him enough for his family and a little left over to sell. He hoped to grow more, but without modern farming equipment it was difficult, he said. This year about half of his property was left fallow. "Giving the black man the land is a noble idea, but the government must understand that we are in need of help," says Magutakuona. "It's not what I dreamt of." Without the capital to invest in tractors, seed and fertilizer to plant, many resettled farmers have found it difficult to grow crops. They can't go to a bank for a loan because the government has not given the resettled farmers title to the property. In the hands of a commercial farmer, who could use modern agricultural techniques, Magutakuona's plot might have produced more than 10 times that amount of maize. Now repeat this exercise across thousands of pieces of farmland and it is easy to see why Zimbabweans - even without a drought - will be hungry, critics say. "A single resettled farmer will be able to feed his own family, whereas the farmer he replaced could have fed thousands of families," says John Robertson, a Harare-based economist.
Despite the clear shortcomings of the land-reform program, Mugabe has clung to it as the central policy of his government. Anyone who disagrees with him is dismissed as a supporter of the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC. "They are the enemies of the people and our government. We must be on our guard. Our survival is an ongoing war," Mugabe said at the party conference this month. A deep political divide separates the ruling party and the opposition. Just how deep it has become is clear in the town of Chegutu, about a two-hour drive southwest of Harare. A year ago, Francis Dhlakama, a former primary school teacher and member of the MDC, won the mayoral race in Chegutu, an agricultural and mining community of 50,000 people. He defeated a member of Mugabe's Zanu PF. But winning the office was not as difficult as taking it. Members of the Zanu PF refused to allow the newly elected mayor to enter City Hall, blocking the entries to him for more than a month. When he finally got in, the mayor discovered that the deputy mayor, a Zanu PF member, had taken over the mayoral office. Later, the deputy mayor also seized the mayoral car. His year in office has been hazardous work. When he tried to clean up corruption in the town finance department and reshuffle members of various departments, a band of Zanu PF supporters tossed a gasoline bomb in his window. When he went to the news media last month to voice his complaints, his house was pelted with rocks and his bushes were burned down. The next day when he showed up at City Hall for work, a mob of 30 Zanu PF supporters wielding pickaxes and iron bars attacked him. He barricaded himself inside the office until riot police arrived an hour later. He has not returned to City Hall since that day. "I'm afraid of going to the office," said Dhlakama, in an interview from his Chegutu home, where he has been hiding for much of the past month. Two guards stood watch outside. "I'm trying to evacuate my family out of the country." "Zanu PF's strategy is to crush the opposition and crush them into insignificance," said a Western diplomat in Harare. "But even if they crush the MDC, they can't crush the opposition because at least half of the population, or more than half, is unhappy with the government."
In these times of hunger, whether you eat is political, too. In Chegutu, members of the Zanu PF party who sit on the City Council receive government food to distribute in their districts; the mayor and the one opposition party council member receive none. MDC members here accuse the ruling party of handing out the food only to party supporters. Chegutu is not the only place where such accusations have been made. Aid groups have accused Zimbabwe's government of withholding food from opposition party supporters. In October, the United Nations' World Food Program suspended operations in the southwestern district of Insiza when members of Mugabe's party seized tons of donated grain. The WFP, which has warned that it would not tolerate any politicization of its food, has since agreed to restart distribution. There is a joke told on the streets of Zimbabwe these days: One Zimbabwean says to another: "Have you heard that Zimbabweans have the highest IQs in the world?" "Really?" says the second Zimbabwean. "Yes. I queue for gasoline. I queue for bread. I queue for sugar. I queue for maize. I queue for" (the latest item in short supply). The ability to joke in times of crisis reveals one of the oddities of the country. For all the problems here, people manage to limp along. "The collapse of the Zimbabwean economy has seemed imminent for several years but, the more bleak things look from the outside, the more ways to survive are found in this resilient country," concludes a report released this month by South African Institute of International Affairs. From a distance, it could almost appear that nothing is wrong in the capital, Harare. Despite the fuel shortages, business carries on. Despite having to depend on a line of credit for electricity, the government held a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony. While hungry rural dwellers forage for roots and leaves and grow more dependent on international aid, the country's elite hold elaborate year-end banquets and dances in Harare's five-star hotels.
But look closer, and all the hardships come into view. In the past month, Harare residents worried about the safety of drinking water because the government lacked hard currency to import chemicals to keep the water clean. Dozens of companies were considering shutting down because they could no longer afford to do business. A Harare woman tried to bite off the lip of a man who tried to steal her two loaves of bread. At Jokonya's refrigerator manufacturing plant in the outskirts of Harare, Jokonya remains open for business despite all the uncertainties. When there were food shortages, he started giving his 200 employees a free lunch so they would be able to work. When there were fuel shortages, he bought his entire staff bicycles so they would show up at work. He learned recently that the government price controls will apply to his refrigerators. That will no doubt hurt his sales to people looking for a hedge against inflation. He is not so sure business will be as good next year. That is part of the unsettling future he can already see.
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