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Mugabe feted as nation fails
Christina Lamb, Sunday Times (UK)
December 10, 2006

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2496229,00.html

ZIMBABWE has the highest inflation and lowest life expectancy in the world, not to mention the highest percentage of orphans. So desperate is the shortage of food that President Robert Mugabe's own guards have been spotted shooting squirrels in Harare's Botanical Gardens.

However, Mugabe, 82, may be rewarded by being made president for life at his party's annual conference this week.

Among the main proposals to be discussed is postponing presidential elections from 2008 till 2010. But Didymus Mutasa, the powerful national security minister and secretary for administration in the ruling Zanu-PF party, said last week that Mugabe had done "so many wonderful things" for Zimbabwe that it was likely that delegates to the conference would appoint him for life.

"There is a realistic chance that someone among the delegates or one of the provinces could come up with a proposal that he remains the party's presidential candidate until Amen," said Mutasa.

"He has done so many wonderful things for this country and its majority population and he is not showing any signs of tiredness. So if it is raised, as I am sure it will be, why not?"

Among those "wonderful things" is turning the country from the breadbasket of southern Africa to a land so famished that there are now long queues at abattoirs to buy waste such as pigskin marked "not fit for human consumption".

The last official figures issued in October put inflation at 1,070%. But the cost of living shot up by almost 50% last month, according to the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe. An urban family of six now requires Z$209,000 (£442) to meet its basic food, housing, transport and clothing needs for a month, way above the average wage of Z$50,000. So bad is the economic crisis that while people around the world are stocking up on treats for the festive season, Zimbabweans are staring at empty shelves.

"This will be the worst Christmas ever," said Joyce Taravinga, a single mother in Mbare, one of many who lost their homes in the government's slum demolition operation. She now has to live with relatives in an already overcrowded shack.

"It's hard to imagine that we used to have meat and presents. This year it will be a bowl of sadza [maize porridge] and leaves."

She is hoping to have saved enough from selling bananas to be able to flavour the food with "meat sawdust" - gristle and bone sold as dog food by the abattoir. "We are happy if we can afford dog food," she said. "We have no dignity left."

Even the government's own information shows that living standards have dropped 150% in the past decade. A survey by the social welfare ministry revealed that between 1995 and 2003, more than 63% of rural people could not afford to meet basic food requirements, while the figure in urban areas was 53%. Since then the situation has got far worse.

The lack of nutrition is hastening so many Aids-related deaths that new figures from Unicef reveal that a quarter of Zimbabwe's children - 1.6m - are now orphans.

"This number is growing," said Dr Festo Kavishe, the Unicef representative in Zimbabwe. "HIV and Aids have dramatically increased children's vulnerability in recent years to the point where Zimbabwe now has the highest percentage in the world of children who are orphans."

Zimbabwe's register office has suspended issuing identification cards, passports and other crucial documents to citizens as a shortage of foreign currency means that they are no longer able to import the necessary ink and paper. Anyone who dares to complain about the situation risks being beaten or arrested. The government is also attempting to block access to outside media by confiscating shortwave radios in rural areas in a crackdown that started this month. Wind-up and solar-powered radios were distributed by non- governmental organisations to give people access to broadcasters such as the BBC.

According to Nelson Chamisa, spokesman for one faction of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, its offices have been inundated with complaints from people who have had their radios seized.

Members of so-called listening clubs, which meet to listen to news on shared radios, have been threatened and told they are "selling out the country" by listening to "foreign" broadcasts.

"The government is becoming more and more paranoid," said Lovemore Matombo, president of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. "The more desperate they become, the more violent they get."

However, he vowed: "We won't be deterred. Everything is falling apart. The health system has collapsed. Hospitals have no drugs. People cannot afford school fees. There are power cuts all the time. We can no longer just wait."

The congress has threatened protests in the new year if the government fails to meet demands to raise minimum wage levels, stop the arrest of street traders and provide life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs to those living with HIV.

Despite the increased repression and ever worsening situation, there are moves within the European Union to avoid reimposing travel sanctions on Mugabe and his cohorts when they expire in February. France and Portugal are among the countries that no longer want sanctions.

Kathryn Llewellyn, campaign director for the London-based organisation Action for Southern Africa, which is lobbying MEPs, said: "If the EU sanctions drop we will be turning our backs on the millions of Zimbabweans suffering daily."

Our tragedy, by a priest working in the slums of Harare I do not know how people survive with more than

1,000% inflation. Just last month the mealie meal that everyone lives on went up 190% and last week bus fares went up 60%.

Murambatsvina (drive out the filth), Mugabe's clean-up operation from last year, continues to take its toll: there are still homeless people in the suburb of Harare where I work. You find 20 or 30 people in a shack because people whose homes were demolished are squeezing in with friends and relatives.

Yesterday a widow, mother of five children, came to ask for help. She used to stay with her uncle. He has thrown them out onto the streets because he is afraid she might die on him, leaving him the five children. She is visibly sick with Aids.

No one outside government can be seen to be doing anything for the people. Just like food distribution: government wants to monopolise it and then give only aid to its known supporters.

The economic collapse destroys our culture and our humanity. It is so bad now that people give false names when they leave sick relatives in hospital. This is so they cannot be traced when the relative dies, because they cannot pay for the funeral. Their relatives receive a pauper's burial in a mass grave.

Zimbabwe's awful record:

• 1.6m orphans - one in four Zimbabwean children - the world's highest rate
• Average life expectancy: 34 for women, 37 for men, world's lowest
• Inflation: 1070.2% (October), world's highest
• Minimum monthly budget for a family of six: Z$209,000 (£442)
• Average salary: Z$50,000 (£106)
• Budget deficit: 43% of GDP
• Unemployment 70%

Sources: Unicef, World Health Organisation, Zimbabwe government

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