Tag Archives: Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe Beginning to Experience Sharp Grain Shortage

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With grain production falling from 2.04 million tons in 1999-2000 down to a mere 1.48 million tons in 2000-01, Zimbabwe is beginning to feel the effects of the grain shortage created by Robert Mugabe’s tyrannical policies.

Mugabe urged the seizure of white-owned farms despite warnings that this would create massive grain shortages. Then Mugabe pretended that there really was not going to be any grain shortage at all. As a result, Zimbabwe did not stock up on grain for the inevitable emergency.

Now, even if Zimbabwe could afford to buy grain from its neighbors — and it does not have the money to do so since Mugabe has driven the economy into the ground — most of the grain surplus in southern Africa has already been allocated.

So, Zimbabwe has now joined that exclusive group of nations to go begging for food from liberal democracies in the West to prevent it from falling into starvation thanks to the result of its illiberal policies. Robert Mugabe gets to hold on to power and the United States, Great Britain and France get to feed Zimbabwe’s hungry.

The World Food Program is asking for $60 million to feed 600,000 people in Zimbabwe’s countryside. And don’t worry, the World Food Program will almost certainly be back asking for a new round of money to prevent starvation in Zimbabwe next year.

Source:

Grain shortages bit in Zimbabwe. The BBC, January 22, 2002.

Zimbabwe to Take Final Step Toward Police State

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Zimbabwe, which just a few years ago was on its way to fulfilling its destiny as an African economic jugernaut, is now detouring into a full blown police state with the introduction of a bill that would end all pretenses that the country is anything but Robert Mugabe’s personal fiefdom.

According to SMH.Com.AU, the bill would make it illegal to “excite people or express dissatisfaction with the president, the government or the police.” This will effectively outlaw all opposition to Mugabe and put a rubber stamp on his roundup of journalists and opposition politicians.

The chairman of Lawyers for Human Rights, Tawanda Hondora, is quoted by SMH.Com.AU as saying that this bill is far more extreme than anything that either European colonialists or the apartheid regime in South Africa ever tried to impose on African nations.

Zimbabwe is likely to be a living hell for years to come.

Source:

Liberty and speech stifled in laws ‘as bad as apartheid.’ Peta Thornycroft, SMH.Com.AU, December 20, 2001.

Zimbabwe Plans to Complete Its Suicidal Path

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Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe apparently has decided to complete his plan to place that African nation on a path to national suicide by announcing plans to seizure the remaining 4,500 or so white-owned farms. The main result of such an idiotic plan will be a severe risk of famine over the next year or so.

Zimbabwe is already in significant trouble thanks to Mugabe’s policies. Over the past few years, Mugabe has desperately used racial animosity to hold on to power. When Zimbabwe first won its independence, many white landowners fled the country. Mugabe appealed to white farmers to stay and help build a new, prosperous Zimbabwe.

Over the past few years, however, his government turned on the white farmers and began seizing their farms. This policy was almost single handedly responsible for transforming Zimbabwe from a nation that was a net food exporter to one that today has appealed to the United Nations for more than $360 million in food aid to prevent serious famine.

Now, Mugabe has use newly won powers to effectively nationalize almost all white-owned land. The results are predictable — with their land set to be seized by the government, the farmers will not plant crops and next year at this time Zimbabwe is going to be a basket case.

John Robertson, an economist living in Zimbabwe, appraised the likely outcome for The Times (UK), saying,

It is suicide. Anything that has been planted will go to waste. Gross domestic product will be cut by half. It will make us equal to the poorest countries in the world. These are the actions of madmen.

This is why people starve in the developing world — not because of any problem with overpopulation, but because of the idiotic actions taken by governments more concerned about maintaining autocratic power than feeding people.

Source:

4,000 Zimbabwe farmers to be evicted. Jan Raath, The Times (UK), November 13, 2001.