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Our intended 10 day holiday became 2 weeks because of the vagaries of Ethiopian Airlines (overbooking and cancelled connections). We spent 2 chilly nights in Addis Ababa waiting to be able to return to Harare, which we were finally able to do, yesterday.
Blogging will be back to normal from today.
Pol Pot Revisited
Zimbabwe suddenly looks like it has been in a war. The shops are empty, there is little traffic and everyone is walking around in a daze. People stop me and ask what is going on? Well just remember Pol Pot. He came to power in Cambodia in the mid seventies, launched what they called the Khmer revolution and in a matter of months they reduced the capital city to a shell occupied by 25 000 people – down from two million. In the process they had killed hundreds of thousands of skilled and experienced Cambodians, forced millions into the rural areas where they were required to undergo re-education and make a living from subsistence agriculture. It will take Cambodia millennia to recover after this rapacious and ideologically driven regime was removed from power by military intervention. People outside Zimbabwe have no idea of just what has happened in Zimbabwe in the past month. Conditions have gone from difficult to impossible. I am not exaggerating when I say there are no basics – no flour, no maize meal, no cooking oil, no margarine, no matches, no fuel, no meat, no eggs. On top of this there are widespread shortages of water and electricity. I simply do not know how people are surviving. These terrible conditions are being deliberately created in a Pol Pot style operation that is supposed to be dealing with run away inflation. Its real goals lie elsewhere. We now know that this operation was planned a long time ago – probably as soon as it became apparent that elections would have to be held in March 2008. This is no knee jerk reaction to inflation, or to remarks by the US Ambassador about regime change. It began with an exercise to generate a sudden spurt in inflation. This was achieved when the State started buying foreign currency on the open market in June, using freshly printed currency. In a week of frenzied activity the price of the US dollar went from about Z$70 000 to Z$400 000. Importers and industrialists were forced to raise prices to cover the replacement cost of stocks. The State then unveiled its “operation good governance”. Under secret orders, the security forces were instructed to impose price reductions on all businesses. There was no legal basis for these instructions – just orders to go into firms on a systematic basis and order them to cut prices or else. Managers and owners were specifically targeted to intimidate them into compliance. These have been arrested in their thousands, abused and held over in filthy, overcrowded cells with ordinary prisoners. Trillions of dollars of stock values were slashed from prices, no rational basis for these price cuts were sought or tolerated. Suddenly firms faced the situation where they could not restock, could not manufacture and sell for a profit – most of their established products were now being priced into the market at below cost. The more you produced, the faster your demise. Fuel was priced at half its landed cost and overnight some Z$400 billion in stock values was lost as customers scrambled to buy cheap fuel at half price or less. All imports stopped. The prices of all staple foods was likewise set at half or less the cost of production and when stocks ran out there was nothing to sell. Now many theories have been put out about this operation – it was popularist is one, “they are preparing for the elections and forcing firms to cut prices is an attempt to curry favor with voters”. Many actually say it was about time that business was brought to heel – a reaction to the sharp price hikes caused by the first stage of this operation. It is too early for that to be the real reason; they see it as one outcome, but with little long-term value in their strategy. My own view, based on what I know about the background, is that this is a carefully planned and ruthless exercise to reduce the urban voting population, undermine the remaining support base of the MDC and take full control of the population and the economy in time for the March 2008 elections. The dismantling of the commercial farm industry has reduced the voting population on commercial farms from 2 million to about 600 000 and all of them are now under the control of either the State or Zanu PF elements who can dictate how they vote. These resettled areas are virtually no go areas for the MDC. In Communal areas the food supply has been brought under control and direction, as has all other essentials for survival including the right of abode. Traditional leaders are tightly controlled by the State and are now under close supervision by resident CIO operatives who watch their every action. They have been through three elections and now believe that they can control the vote in these areas by these means. They are probably right. So the remaining threat is the urban vote. Now in the majority, with over 6 million people living in urban areas, the towns and cities are the last remaining centers of opposition. So like Pol Pot, the powers that be, in this case the small coterie of leaders surrounding Mugabe and the people involved in the Joint Operations Command, have decided to do some surgery. When this operation is concluded they hope to have reduced the urban population by as much as half, destroyed or taken over all major firms in the private sector and facilitated the takeover of all other surviving firms by loyal Zanu PF supporters. They are deliberately halting food supplies to the cities, destroying jobs and the transport industry. They will then take the pick of the commercial and industrial infrastructure that remains – intact, almost as if a neutron bomb had been used, and move on from there. The remaining urban population would then be in the same position as the population in the rural areas – under tight control and able to vote only under supervision. Then Zanu can allow an election to take place – probably in March as planned, even with observers for the last few days of the campaign and during the vote itself. Zanu feels confident that it can win a clear majority – even a two-thirds majority vote under such circumstances. The only other issue is what happens to the three million Zimbabweans displaced by this ruthless, but clever scheme. Most of them will swim the Limpopo or cross the border at Beitbridge. Once in South Africa, or Botswana, or Zambia or the UK or the USA, they will settle down, breathe a sigh of relief to be somewhere where sanity prevails and try to make a living, any sort of living. They will gradually be assimilated and will start sending small sums of money “home” to keep their relatives alive in Mugabe’s national detention camp. Most importantly, they will not be able to vote. What remains of Zimbabwe will be a sea of poverty and subsistence activity with Party controlled islands of prosperity. A few foreign firms will be allowed to exploit our resources under close supervision and control and the output used to support the lifestyles of the new elite who will continue to enjoy the luxury and pleasures that have become their norm in recent years on the gravy train. It has nothing to do with price control.
I just came from the Borrowdale "Bon Marché" grocery store. A serpentine queue for bread was the only real activity in the whole place. It stretched across the whole store as people waited for the hot bread to come out of the ovens.
Earlier in the day, after dropping off our eldest for the first day of school at Harare International School, we stopped by another grocery store, the Arundel "Spar", in search of yogurt. None to be found nor any milk.
As I sat in the car watching people filter out of the store, mostly empty handed, I noticed a middle aged man clad in a suit and tie eating potato chips. At 7:45 in the morning, potato chips struck me as an odd breakfast but as I sat there waiting for my wife to emerge from the store, I counted 3 more people munching on chips and "cheeze doodles" as they filed out of the near-empty store.
Eddie Cross' take on the urban food security crisis is here:
"I am becoming more and more concerned about the shortage of all basic foods in the towns and cities. This has reached serious proportions where people are unable to feed their families or themselves. A severe shortage of traditional protein foods has also become established with serious consequences for people who are HIV positive.
Virtually no one can produce maize meal at the controlled prices and all maize meal is now being produced secretly and distributed only via clandestine systems - many firms are buying this product for their staff and giving them a weekly ration. Those who do not have this facility are simply going without or relying on relatives in the rural areas to send them maize which they then custom mill. The capacity for this is very limited.
Although cooking oil prices have been allowed to rise, the new prices are still below cost and this is keeping all fats and oils off the market. This is an essential component of urban and rural diets. I see no action on this front by any of the UN agencies or international Embassies.
This is surely a situation that must be urgently addressed. It is tantamount to urban genocide on a huge scale and is driving people out of the country in record numbers. It can be reversed very quickly by simply restoring the ability of the private sector to manufacture, pack and distribute food.
Under present conditions this is impossible.
Eddie Cross
3rd August 2007"
The Crisis Deepens
We are now into our 5th week of price controls and the resultant shortages. I am becoming increasingly alarmed at the situation and hope that my misgivings are not misplaced. Today there is no rice in the urban areas, very little bread and what is available is being rationed, there is no maize meal, no cooking oil or margarine, no meat and very little milk and dairy products. I called the Dairibord today and they had no product to sell – nothing, they said they were having problems with their milk supplies. In addition to this situation, public transport is virtually at a standstill. This has developed following heavy fines imposed last week on the mini van taxis that provide 90 per cent of urban transport here. People are being forced to walk everywhere. The wholesalers and manufacturers are virtually out of stock. There is a thriving parallel market for everything but even here the supplies are very short. Maize meal is being sold at Z$250 000 to Z$300 000 for 10 kg’s – that is 4 times the official price, fuel is available but at prices ranging from Z$240 000 to Z$500 000 a litre. Hotels are running out of food – I stayed in a local hotel on Friday and found the staff serving a basic meal of rice with stew and a bit of cabbage as a salad. The queue stretched out onto the road – the manager said to me he was not running a hotel but a feeding station. The manger of the hotel over the road was eating there and said to me he could not even provide the basics to his clients. They had no beer! Local business that has a contract to supply the Prison said that they had 4000 prisoners and could not feed them, not from any source. The Army and the Police are in a similar predicament although the Police have been using their role in the price control exercise to loot business of goods in short supply. I hear that soldiers went through Ross Camp (the main Police camp in Bulawayo) looking for looted stocks. In addition to this crisis in domestic products nothing is being imported commercially. This is because the price control authorities are treating imported goods as local goods when enforcing the price controls. So people who would normally import products in short supply are holding off and no imported products are available. That leaves only cross border shopping, as a means of meeting family needs. Wealthy people are traveling to Botswana and Zambia for shopping trips and poorer families are calling their relatives in South Africa for help. For this reason on Saturday there were hundreds of vehicles from South Africa at the border – all trying to get up to their families in Zimbabwe, drop off supplies and then head back to South Africa. The road was littered with broken down vehicles, as many are old and overloaded. I see no signs of any response to this crisis in basic food supplies. What do the international community and the UN system think they are doing? I hear that when the State tried to stop retailers selling fuel against coupons purchased with foreign exchange that the UN agencies promptly told the government that if they did that they would close down and leave. The government backed down. I heard this morning that many embassies are considering flying food in for their local Embassy staff, one Ambassador told me they were evaluating the difference in buying from South Africa or direct from Europe – great to have options, but what on earth do they think the ordinary Zimbabwean is doing? I will tell you what he/she is thinking. It is how do I get a passport, how do I get to the border or get a ticket to anywhere where sanity prevails? The exercise to remove up to 3 million Zimbabweans from the country by simply denying tem the means to survive is well under way. I estimate that 500 000 have gone already to South Africa, with other destinations that probably means we are up to 600 000 – 20 per cent of the goal, 80 per cent to still go. That’s only 12 000 a day across the Limpopo – an easy target. No amount of border patrols, no amount of policing or forced expulsions will slow down or stop the exodus. There is only one way to do that – give Zimbabweans some hope that they have a future, any sort of future in the country of their birth. SADC leaders gather in Lusaka on the 14th August – just one week away. The future of this country and perhaps others in the region are in their hands. I must say that does not give me a lot of confidence, if they fail us again as they have in the past, we may well have to take things into our own hands, and that could be very nasty. Mr. Mugabe is in Malaysia staying in a five star hotel with no shortages. He could not give a damn. His own strategy for the immediate future is being worked out and he sees no possibility of his efforts being frustrated by regional leaders. Left to his own devices he will get want he wants by the year end, hold farcical elections in March 2008 without opposition and continue as before.
Eddie Cross 6th August 2007
Press Statement Sean McCormack, Spokesman Washington, DC July 26, 2007 Beatings of Zimbabwean Pro-Democracy Activists The U.S. calls on President Mugabe and the Government of Zimbabwe to respect the right of all Zimbabweans to participate in the democratic process and to guarantee the safety and well-being of its citizens. Yesterday’s beating of over 200 Zimbabwean citizens that were peacefully demonstrating for a new constitution is an overt attempt by the Government of Zimbabwe to eliminate any criticism in advance of elections planned for next year. This latest action continues to call into question the Government of Zimbabwe's commitment to the SADC (Southern African Development Community) mediation effort to establish conditions for free and fair elections. 2007/643 Released on July 26, 2007
The dry cleaning shop where I take my suits was closed on Friday afternoon when I stopped by to drop off clothes.
When I returned on Tuesday, the clerk on duty informed me that the "price control brigade" of the police had shown up on Friday, shut down the shop, arrested a clerk (he was kept in jail for 24 hours) and ordered the shop to reduce prices to June 18th "gazetted" levels (as all merchants have been ordered to do).
No matter (to the Mugabe regime) that June 18th prices, in an envoronment of 20,000% inflation, do not cover the dry cleaner's (or the grocer's, or the service station owner's or the baker's) costs.
Our general practitioner is one of 4 siblings, 2 of whom are also physicians, but who decided, like so many others, that enough was enough, and are now each relocated to Australia and the U.K., respectively.
He tried to convince them to stay, as he has done to many of his patients and acquaintances when they announce their intentions to flee.
But he said that lately, he has nearly given up his hard sell to friends and family for why they should stick it out in this dying country.
Conditions are detriorating so much and there is so little available (fuel, food, transport, even reliable medical care...) that he has been getting the feeling that his arguments about the need to stay were becoming more selfish in motivation (i.e., so that he would not be left all alone...).
He. however, continues to refuse to leave, even as his ability to make a living has been destroyed by Mugabe's "price controls" (I paid him the equivalent of $3.00 U.S. for a consultation) because that is precisely what Mugabe and his henchman want him and everyone else who might be opposed to his tyranny to do (to leave; or to die).
He is even, slowly, building a home outside of Harare, just to spite Mugabe and his thugs, to let them know that he is here for the long haul.
He sounded one hopeful note during our consultation: Mugabe may finally have gone too far in his crackdown on common people and may now have taken steps that will alienate his only remaining support base--and a tenuous one that already was--and that is the rural population.
Mugabe has been defeated roundly in all major and minor urban areas in every election since 1999 but it has been in rural areas that he has won some support by strategically injecting and politicizaing food assistance in pre-election periods and by taking a more or less hands-off attitude to rural popualtion (letting them eke out their meagre livelihoods).
But now, according to our GP--and this will need to be checked out--Mugabe has extended his calmitous economic dictates to rural areas, decreeing that no person may own more than one cow. According to the GP, the state will confiscate "excess" cattle from rural holders in an effort to ease the meat and milk shortages.
Such a policy, if it is indeed in the works, will turn thousands of erstwhile Mugabe supporters, or if they were not supporters, at least disinterested "neutrals", against the regime.
That would be good news if it means mobilized rural opposition.
An update on our post of yesterday:
It is unclear whether there is anything to this story or not. I checked with one person who should know and he said that it is untrue that the government has decreed a limit to the number of cattle a person may own.
Two other persons, however, told me that they had heard that a limit had indeed been imposed (of 7 cattle per person, not 1) and that seizures by state agents had begun.
Will follow up to try to find out what the true story is.
Myburgh quotes from Aristole's Politics an ancient desciption of a tyrant, which describes Mugabe's actions almost eerily:
"[He] should lop off those who are too high; he must put to death men of spirit: he must not allow common meals, clubs, education and the like; he must be upon his guard against anything which is likely to inspire either courage or confidence amongst his subjects; he must prohibit literary assemblies or other meetings for discussion, and he must take every means to prevent people from knowing one another (for acquaintance begets mutual confidence)."
"A tyrant should also endeavour to know what each of his subjects says or does... for the fear of informers prevents people from speaking their minds, and if they do, they are more easily found out. Another art of the tyrant is to sow quarrels among the citizens...."
Martin Niemöller, an anti-semite German pastor turned anti-Nazi activist (who narrowly escaped execution in Dachau) is the author of this famous poem:
First They Came for the Jews
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Eddie Cross has passed on this modified version of the poem, authored by a Zimbabwean Professor of Mathematics at University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), Dr. Temba Shonhiwa, entitled "First they Came for the Farmers":
First They Came for the Farmers
First they came for the Farmers
and I did not speak out
because I was not a farmer.
Then they came for the MDC activists
and I did not speak out
because I was not an MDC activist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the industrialists/merchants and I did not speak out because I was not an industrialist/merchant.
Then they came for the landlords
and I did not speak out
because I was not a landlord.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Dr. Temba Shonhiwa,
School of Mathematics,
University of the Witwatersrand
According to IOM (International Organization for Migration), almost 600 Zimbabweans are deported from South Africa every day.
In today's Telegraph (U.K.), Coltart points out that it is, ironically, the millions who have fled to South Africa and elsewhere who are the key to Mugabe's survival:
"Young people can vent their anger by going south. So you don't have
the people who would be the vanguard of any uprising."
The authors comment on the importance of the millions of dollars in remittances sent back by these expatriate ZImbabwe's, not only to the survival of family members left behind but also to the survival fo what remains of the economy:
But probably the main factor in Mr Mugabe's survival is, ironically,
the very people who have fled his rule. With unemployment around 80 per
cent, by some estimates three-quarters of Zimbabweans earning a living are
doing so abroad, and their families survive on the money they send home.
The funds also support the remains of the economy. Opposition figures
say the remittances help the government survive, but do not condemn those
sending money.
"They have no choice," said Mr Coltart. "Only a dreadful choice
between wanting the regime gone and keeping their families alive."
Maybe that would get the attention of the gutless SADC leaders:
"We need to get tough on the SADC leaders. We ought to be reassigning aid budgets from their nations to bring home to them the massive costs arising from their inaction and complicity in propping up Mugabe.
We cannot simply go on footing the bill. Thabo Mbeki and his friends have given Mugabe the green light to continue his tyranny.
My constituents are paying for his madness with their taxes; Zimbabweans are paying with their lives."
This is from the Combined harare Residents Association (CHRA). The Government newspaper itself, the Herald, admitted in a front page story on Monday that there are epidemic levels of diarrhoea in Harare:
Alert: Health situation getting out of hand
THE Combined Harare Residents’ Association (CHRA) warns of an unmitigated health disaster in Harare unless the City of Harare, the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA), the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare, the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and Urban Development, and the Ministry of Water Resources and Infrastructural Development moves fast to intervene.
This latest warning from CHRA comes in the wake of biting water shortages and a seemingly porous sewerage reticulation system that has collapsed by all standards. In every suburb CHRA has visited in the high-density suburb in the last two weeks, sewerage is flowing in almost every two streets, creating fertile environments for the spread of water borne diseases such as cholera, diarrhoea and dysentery, which have now become part of every day talk among residents.
In separate interviews with CHRA, residents said children are falling sick due to unhygienic living conditions. Women are having nightmares in dealing with the unfolding health disaster in various suburbs of the capital. The clinics have no drugs and the City health personnel are on strike. Plates go for days without being cleaned.
In Dzivarasekwa Brian Phiri, the Ward 39 Chairperson reported that almost 13 residents had reported illnesses related to exposure to dirty and other unhygienic conditions.
He said raw sewerage continues to flow at the intersection of Pasipanodya Street and Rujeko streets near the Poly-clinic, Gushungo Street off Pasipanodya Street, Corner Boterekwa Street and Robert Mugabe Way and at the railway station where most residents board the ‘Freedom Train’.
“The ticket seller no longer uses the small railway office due to sewerage flows,” Phiri said. “From the main road, four sewerage tanks are all burst and residents no longer use the road.”
In parts of Budiriro, residents have gone for three weeks without water and ZINWA has done absolutely nothing except to send in exorbitant water bills. A lady resident refused to be identified told CHRA that for the past five months they have been without decent water supplies but in the last three weeks their taps have gone dry without any explanation from ZINWA.
Other suburbs seriously affected include Glen View, Glen Norah, Highfield, Mbare Flats, Mabvuku, Tafara, Warren Park, Kuwadzana Phase 3 just opposite Dzivarasekwa High One and the rest of Kuwadzana. Reports have been partially attended to but the bursts are recurrent after a short time, implying that the sewerage piping system.
“CHRA for Enhanced Civic Participation in Local Governance”
IRIN news is reporting that child malnutrition is on the rise in Zimbabwe, with one in 10 children in the nation's capital even suffering from kwashiorkor, (a severe state of malnutrition most often seen in famine or conflict zones caused by inadequate protein intake).
From the IRIN article:
Food short for employed and unemployed
Esther Shereni, 28, of Hopley Farm, a settlement established in 2005 for Harare residents displaced by Operation Murambatsvina, a government campaign that demolished informal housing and business stalls, leaving about 700,000 people without shelter or income, is one parent among many unable to provide enough food for their children.
"Before Operation Murambatsvina, I ran a tuckshop in Glen Norah [township in Harare], in which I also slept, but when it was razed down I became homeless," said Shereni, a single mother who survives by selling flowers to mourners at a graveyard.
She was pregnant at the time, and "because I no longer had a steady source of income, I failed to feed myself adequately and when the child was born, she was underweight and my inability to feed her has continued to this day and she is always falling sick," she told IRIN.
Her two-year-old daughter has an extended belly, an unusually big head and thin limbs - a clear indication of malnutrition. Sherini said it was always a struggle to get the medicines her child needed; the public clinics rarely had any, and she could not afford to buy from private pharmacies.
My dream was to have a bouncing, healthy baby, for that is is what every mother looks forward to but, because of poverty, that has not been possible. I just pray that my little daughter will not die
Shereni's home is a shack made of plastic sheeting, she fetches water from a borehole that is used by thousands of other people, and the settlement has no sanitation or electricity. v "My dream was to have a bouncing, healthy baby, for that is what every mother looks forward to but, because of poverty, that has not been possible. I just pray that my little daughter will not die," she said.
Having a job is no guarantee that the children will be adequately fed. Samukheliso Sigodo, 30, a personal secretary at a Harare consultancy, cannot feed her six-month-old baby exclusively on breast milk because of work commitments, and leaves the child with a caregiver. "That means I have to give the child formula milk and porridge, but the tragedy is that you cannot get these from the shops," she told IRIN.
"While there has always been scarcity, and I have had to rely on traders who buy it from South Africa, the situation is now worse because the shops have completely run out of the products and the informal market has also dried up."
As many as 3,000 Zimbabweans are fleeing economic and political turmoil in their country for South Africa (and as many as 600 are deported back) each day; hundreds have been queuing at the South African Ministry of Home Affairs seeking asylum.
Better late than never, I guess, although UNHCR is still not calling for the opening of refugee camps in South Africa.
The opening 2 paragraphs of the piece capture the perilous future faced by ordinary Zimbabweans:
OVER 3m people are thought to have left the Zimbabwe in recent years, and the UN refugee agency says it is working on contingency plans in case the exodus worsens. There seems every chance that it will, given 80% unemployment, inflation that was said officially this week to be above 7,600% and severe shortages of the most basic goods. Zimbabwe’s situation is growing ever more miserable.
Another UN agency, the World Food Programme, reckons that 4m Zimbabweans—about one-third of the remaining population—will need food aid by next year. This year’s harvest of maize, the local staple, was meagre. Rains have been poor, and the government’s disastrous land-reform programme has turned once flourishing commercial farming into subsistence agriculture.
