Mugabe starves Zimbabwe

One of the most wretched regimes in the world continues its imposition of death and chaos on its own people. The Times of London reports on Mugabe's unrelenting destruction of  Zimbabwe, as its children are "dying like flies":

THE first time Knowledge Mbanda found a dead baby in the drains of Harare, he was horrified. "It is completely against our culture to abandon children," he said. "I thought it must be of a woman who had been raped or a prostitute."

But now he and fellow council workers find at least 20 corpses of newborn babies each week, thrown away or even flushed down the lavatories of Zimbabwe’s capital.

The dumping of babies, along with what doctors describe as a "dramatic" increase in malnourished children in city hospitals, is the most shocking illustration of the economic collapse of a country that was once the breadbasket of southern Africa.

Mugabe has long used food as a weapon. But there is something even more pathological at work, it seems: The pathology of totalitarianism. From it, we are now seeing the results of Mugabe's destruction of Zimbabwe's food security.

According to Africa’s food security early warning system, Zimbabwe will harvest only 600,000 tons of maize this season. The country consumes an annual average of 1.8m tons, leaving it the highest cereal deficit in southern Africa.

Zimbabwe will also have to import 200,000 tons of wheat, 40,000 tons of sorghum and 6,000 tons of rice to avert widespread deaths related to starvation.

The government has no money to pay for this and Mugabe has consistently refused to appeal for food aid. To do so would mean admitting the failure of his land distribution programme.

I'm too sick with rage to comment further. Get more precise detail on Zimbabwe's food security at USAID's Famine Early Warning System. Given production implosion, combined with 1000% inflation, things are only going to get worse.

I blog this topic occasionally, for those who want more context. Some previous posts:

• Zimbabwe's "cleanup costs" (22 June 2005)
• Zimbabwe going hungry (1 June 2005)
• Zimbabwe vote already lost? (28 March 2005)

Comments

[Gabriel]

It is a travesty what Zimbabwe has been reduced too. The former bread-basket with often too much food even for export, having to import from neighbours to feed starving people. It does not surprise me the infant mortality rates... bread is costing $70,000 Zimbabwe dollars, rent for a small appartment is $10 Million... the US to the Zim Dollar is $220,000 to 1.
It is very sad.
I am a former Zimbabwean and it pains me to see what Zimbabwe has become. Economic rubble.