Posted on 04/29/2005 5:56:41 PM PDT by blam
Zimbabwe famine red alert as harvest fails
By Peta Thornycroft in Harare
(Filed: 30/04/2005)
A famine watch group issued a red alert for Zimbabwe yesterday, saying that most people were no longer able to buy enough food.
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network said the harvest was "insufficient to satisfy consumption needs" for the next year.
The maize harvest has been the worst in memory
It issued its warning the day after the head of the country's grain marketing board admitted to a state-run newspaper that it was planning to import 1.2 million tons of maize, a staple food which is now mostly available only on the black market.
It is estimated that only a third of the 1.8 million tons consumed annually have been grown this year.
Aid agencies say that about four million people - around a third of the population - will need food aid this year after the dire harvest.
The famine network is a long-established regional food monitor run by the United States Agency for International Development. Its cautiously-worded statement is confirmation of what farmers and Zimbabweans already knew.
The harvest was the worst in memory. Economists say that that was an inevitable consequence of President Robert Mugabe's confiscation of 90 per cent of large, productive white-owned farms over the past five years. His land grab has wrecked the economy.
Mr Mugabe pledged during his successful re-election campaign last month that no one in Zimbabwe, which was once a major food exporter, would starve.
For several months western countries have tried to persuade his government to sign an agreement to allow donors to launch an international appeal.
But Mr Mugabe said that donors should divert funds to other countries, as Zimbabweans would "choke" if any more food aid was delivered.
Renson Gasela, the agriculture secretary for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said this week: "Donors have not been approached; nor has a signal been given that the government would welcome assistance, even without a direct approach.
"We have fuel shortages and no sugar. There is no cooking oil and there is no milk.
"Many people who used to produce their own chickens have found to their horror that there are no day-old chicks or food for them and eggs are short.
"Maize is now treated like a security item that the country must be kept in ignorance about."
The grain marketing board, which is the only grain trader sanctioned by the government, is run by members of the Zimbabwe National Army.
didn't see this coming at all...
Not to worry... Mugabe has promised no one will starve. I guess that means he plans to have his goons shoot anyone who threatens to starve to death -- in the interest of national security, you see.
Watching this train wreck as it plunges over the bridge.
Its so sad - Another disaster because despotic thugs have plundered private farms
Zimbabwe is what we could become if we allow all our farmers to go broke.
Time to chide the ol' U S of A for not doing enough to help them out of their plight.
Perhaps the starving citizens will screw up their courage, and revolt...
Or -- are they determined to live like slaves until some dastardly evil white man comes to "free them" again??
Looks like colonialism was about the right length in India, but pulled from Africa too soon.
Our industrial farmers aren't going broke. Zimbabwe is what we could become if we abandon market principles in order to subsidize inefficient family farms. Sorry folks but the family farm is dead unless they adapt to specialized niches.
Afruca. They keep doing this to themselves and somehow it is always the fault of the rest of the world.
No more monetary aid, no more food packages and no more medical assistance unless they unconditionally submit to Western (read USA) rule and reeducation.
Western Marxists will have aneurysms over this but they should be ignored.
The only other option is a complete write-off of the entire continent and total disengagement. No travel in or out. Let Africa revert to the Pleistocene Era and then turn it into a giant theme park.
You have nothing to eat? Then eat Robert Mugabe.
I try not to buy into superstitious beliefs, but I've always been told that it's bad luck to kill off your whites.
Only a matter of time til the Kwashiorkor bloated kids appear on TV, the aid flows like water, and Mugabe's crew is entrenched for decades...
No, it took government intervention to produce what Zimbabwe has become.
The loose association of tribal thugs that calls itself
the government there has authorized taking of game from
the national parks to make up the shortfall.
They will be eating each other soon enough.
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