2002: Zimbabwe: Mugabe blocks food aid while Zim starves

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[This is from my old website. This is just some of the insane stuff that was going on back then. Jan]

Original Post Date: 2002-11-17 Posted By: Jan

From the News Archives of: WWW.AfricanCrisis.Org
Date & Time Posted: 11/17/2002 7:45:01 PM
Mugabe blocks food aid while Zim starves

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s government appeared to have been caught out on Friday over a five-week blockade imposed by ruling party militias on food aid from a British charity for a famine-stricken district, hours after United Nations (UN) Secretary General Kofi Annan warned the regime of “the politicisation of food distribution”. The latest “humanitarian situation report” issued by the UN Relief and Recovery Unit said that the Zimbabwean government had announced during discussions with local UN officials that it had agreed to allow the British charity, Save the Children Fund (SCF), to resume food deliveries to about 10 000 starving people in the remote northern district of Binga. The charity’s Zimbabwe director Christopher McIvor denied the report. A draft agreement between the two sides over the handling of food aid had been drawn up after “lots of discussions” but it had not yet been signed, he said. “While all the indications are we will hopefully be able to resume our programme sooner rather than later, until we sign the document we cannot say that food supplies are resuming,” he said.

In early October, members of Mugabe’s militia, made up of guerrilla war veterans, ordered the SCF to stop food distribution in Binga and accused it of favouring members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) when it handed out food aid. The charity imported about 300 tons of food from South Africa for the first part of the its programme to feed 45,000 people in Binga in October, which has been locked inside the charity’s warehouse in the administrative centre of the district. With famine biting deeper into the severely impoverished area, the SCF was planning to step up its operation and feed 100,000 people this month, but that too has been blocked. In a statement in New York on Thursday, Annan referred to “the continuing reports of politicisation of food distribution and humanitarian assistance in general” in Zimbabwe. He said Mugabe’s regime had “an obligation to ensure that it (famine relief) is given to beneficiaries based on their needs and not upon political affiliation”. He warned that members of the UN supported “the zero tolerance policy on the politicisation of food distribution” maintained by the World Food Programme, the UN’s emergency food relief arm.

Earlier this year, Binga was the first area in the country to report famine-related deaths when 27 people died in the district hospital. The closure of the SCF operation is the second time this year that ruling party militias have blocked food aid in the district, after its people voted overwhelmingly in favour of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. In May, war veterans for two months closed down a child supplementary feeding programme run by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe, over allegations that it was “favouring MDC supporters”. Church officials who asked not to be named said that the local Catholic Church, which ran the programme, and SCF agreed to suspend food deliveries in the run-up to local government elections in the district in September, to avoid being accused again by the ruling party of supporting the MDC. The local leadership of Mugabe’s ruling Zanu PF party was informed of the suspension, the church officials said. However, soon after the elections, in which the MDC won 15 out of 21 wards, ruling party officials accused both organisations of withdrawing food aid “to put the government in a bad light so that people would vote for the MDC,” the church officials said. The church was later allowed to resume supplies but SCF remains closed in the district.

This week, Bishop Pius Ncube, the outspoken head of the Catholic church in the famine-stricken western provinces of Matabeleland, said 160 people had starved to death in the area because Mugabe’s administration was deliberately withholding food from people suspected of supporting the MDC. “Mugabe is using the food crisis in Zimbabwe to force people to vote for his party,” he said while on a visit to South Africa this week. Last month, the World Food Programme (WFP) suspended famine relief operations in the south-western district of Insiza when ruling party militias stole three tons of WFP maize and handed it out to Mugabe supporters immediately before a by-election there. Analysts say deprivation of food aid and other state support has been a weapon used repeatedly by Mugabe against his opponents since soon after independence in 1980. Areas dominated by opposition groups have complained of being ignored while the regime pours money, food and infrastructure into traditional Zanu PF regions.

The “Humanitarian Situation Report” reports that rural hospitals “have noted a marked increase” in the number of cases of malnutrition and pellagra, a disease caused by starvation, it said. Maize, Zimbabweans’ staple diet, was selling on the black market in urban areas at around four times the price fixed by the government. “In most areas, it is not even available for purchase,” the UN said. Also in short supply were bread, milk and sugar. About six million people in Zimbabwe are facing famine. The World Food Programme is planning to feed three million people this month, while the number is expected to reach 5,9 million by January. Three months ago WFP director James Morris said during a visit to the southern African nation that after a meeting with Mugabe he had been assured that private procurement of grain would be permitted. The report said that there was enough seed available to grow between 600,000 tons and 800,000 tons of maize in the cropping season just started. “However, that is far below the national requirement of about 1,8 million tons,” said the UN. The report said that the government had bought 15,000 tons of seed for distribution from private seed companies, while another 15,600 ton had been sold directly to farmers.

Source:Mail & Guardian (SA)
Published:Sat 16-Nov-2002
URL: http://www.zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID…

Source: https://archive.africancrisis.info/?p=101406