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Mugabe
bars food aid distribution until after Senate polls
ZimOnline
October 08, 2005
http://www.zimonline.co.za/headdetail.asp?ID=10761
HARARE – President
Robert Mugabe’s government will allow international relief agencies
to feed an estimated four million hungry Zimbabweans only after
Senate elections in November, ZimOnline has learnt.
Authoritative
sources said the government wanted to maintain monopoly on food
aid distribution and use it to maximise votes in the election set
for the end of next month.
The government,
which accuses non-governmental organisations (NGOs) of backing the
main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, also
wanted relief agencies shut out of food aid distribution for now
because it feared the NGOs might use the exercise as a pretext to
mobilise support for the MDC.
"The Ministry
of Finance and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe have been ordered to
use the bulk of the foreign currency they have to import more grain.
The grain would be distributed in the rural areas to shore up support
for ZANU PF," said one government, official, who declined to be
named.
State Security
Minister Didymus Mutasa, also in charge of food aid distribution,
confirmed the government had held back until after the Senate polls
a decision on whether to invite international relief agencies to
help feed starving Zimbabweans.
But he denied
that this was because the government wanted to manipulate food aid
to win more votes in the election whose exact dates are yet to be
made public.
Mutasa said:
"Most of these NGOs play politics with food and they might as well
use the food handouts to influence our people to vote for the imperial
lapdogs, the MDC. We are busy with the Senate elections and after
that we will look at the situation. But it should not be lost that
we have the capacity to feed our own people."
Finance Minister
Herbert Murerwa in August told Parliament that the government was
suspending its Grain Marketing Board’s monopoly over maize and wheat
trade to allow private firms to also import the staple grains. But
to date private firms are being allowed to import only stockfeed.
Mugabe, who
in July told World Food Programme (WFP) director James Morris that
Harare would accept aid from the organisation, also promised United
Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan last month that he was not
opposed to international help although the Zimbabwean leader said
he was not happy with some NGOs he said politicised food aid.
The cash-strapped
Harare government has however refused to formally appeal to the
WFP for help and has also not permitted NGOs free reign to feed
hungry people insisting it has the capacity to ensure every Zimbabwean
has food.
The WFP and
other international relief agencies are allowed to feed only selected
groups of people living with HIV/AIDS, orphans, school children
and the elderly.
The MDC, churches,
human rights and civic groups have in the past accused Mugabe and
his government of denying food aid to opposition supporters as punishment
for not backing the government. The government denies the charge.
Zimbabwe has
faced severe food shortages since 2001 which critics say are in
large part because of the seizure by Mugabe’s administration of
productive land from white farmers and giving it over to landless
black villagers.
Failure by the
government to give skills training and inputs support to the black
villagers to maintain production on the former white farms has seen
food output plummeting by about 60 percent. The government however
denies its land reforms are responsible for Zimbabwe’s food problems
instead blaming this on poor weather. - ZimOnline
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