JUSTICE Sandra Mungwira yesterday reprimanded the Attorney-General's Office
for not doing their homework before agreeing to go to trial in the Cain Nkala
murder case.
According to defence lawyers, one of the accused who
appeared in court yesterday was not even implicated anywhere in the State
outline by any of the State witnesses.
The trial in the High
Court of MDC MP Fletcher Dulini-Ncube, accused of killing the Bulawayo war
veteran leader, failed to open as scheduled as the judge criticised the State
for agreeing to the trial date when it had not completed its
groundwork.
Postponing the matter indefinitely, Justice Mungwira
said: "How did the matter come to be set down without the necessary things?
This is highly undesirable."
Dulini-Ncube, the MP for
Lobengula-Magwegwe is being accused, together with five other MDC supporters,
of killing Nkala.
Advocate Edith Mushore, for three of the accused,
told Justice Mungwira the defence had not been provided with crucial
aspects of the State case.
But the judge is expected to make a
ruling later this week on an application by Advocate Pearson Nherere to
remove his clients Sony Nicholas Masara, Dulini-Ncube and Army Zulu from
remand.
Nherere said there was "nothing in the case so far put
forward by the State that would warrant putting the first three accused
persons to their defence".
Nherere said that Zulu's role in the
alleged murder was not outlined in the State papers.
"There is
absolutely no evidence, not even a shred of evidence, implicating Army Zulu,"
Nherere said: "As of this morning, the State had furnished the defence with
statements of 18 witnesses.
"None of those witnesses mentions Army
Zulu at all, let alone implicating him. There is no suggestion anywhere that
he has anything to do with the crime charged. What is he answering to? What
is he alleged to have done which constitutes an offence?"
Nherere said the only evidence implicating Masara and Dulini-Ncube were
statements made by their co-suspects Remember Moyo, Khethani
Augustine Sibanda and Sazini Mpofu during interrogation.
"This
court has already ruled that the evidence of a co-accused is not admissible
against an alleged co-conspirator," Nherere said.
"The evidence
that the State proposes to rely on is not admissible. If that inadmissible
evidence should be disregarded, there is nothing implicating Masara and
Dulini-Ncube. To insist that they be placed on trial would be a contravention
of their constitutional rights."
Applying for a postponement,
Mushore and Deepak Mehta, who are representing Moyo, Sibanda and Mpofu, said
the State had not furnished them with a video tape of indications made at the
scene of the alleged murder and a search warrant for a raid at the MDC
offices in Bulawayo during which various documents were seized.
"These are crucial aspects which we have not been furnished with," Mushore
said.
Prosecutor Neville Wamambo said a transcript of the video
tape was still being prepared and consented to the postponement of the
trial. Nkala was allegedly abducted from his Magwegwe West home in
Bulawayo on 5 November last year.
He was subsequently murdered
and buried in a shallow grave at Norwood Farm near Solusi University, about
40km outside Bulawayo.
KILLIAN Mupingo, the provincial administrator for
Manicaland, said last Friday that the government was facing serious
difficulties in evicting some of the illegal settlers on estates belonging to
Border Timbers Limited (BTL) and the Forestry Company of Zimbabwe (FCZ) in
Chimanimani.
Last month, the settlers set fire to about 1 400
hectares of gum and pine trees aged between five and 25 years worth $9
billion, while preparing land for this year's agricultural
season.
Pine and gum trees, a major foreign currency earner, take
at least 25 years to mature. BTL and FCZ are two of the biggest timber
producers in southern Africa.
Mupingo said although most of the
settlers agreed to move off the estates, some remained defiant.
"I received a report from the district committee in Chimanimani that they
managed to evict some of the settlers, but some hardheaded ones have remained
on the farm," Mupingo said.
"It was decided at a meeting held last
Monday that the district committee should remove the settlers."
Earlier Mupingo said the estates had not been designated and were therefore
not for resettlement. The settlers took advantage of the controversial land
reform programme and invaded BTL's Charter Estate in Chimanimani and other
estates in Manicaland run by FCZ and wholly-owned by the government. On 20
August, the Administrative Court in Harare turned down an application by Dr
Joseph Made, the Minister of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Development, to
have BTL's estates designated after the Attorney-General's Office failed to
defend its acquisition.
John Gadzikwa, BTL's managing director and
Veronica Gutu, FCZ's public relations manager, said there had been sporadic
fire outbreaks on the estates since the invasions.
Ken
Schofield, BTL's deputy chairman, said the loss could not be recovered as
there was no insurance against fire, throwing the company's future plans into
disarray.
MEMBERS of the Zanu PF youth brigade reportedly assaulted two
police officers in Gwanda town last Friday after the police intervened on
behalf of motorists who were being harassed by the youths.
The
assaulted officers were only identified as Constable Rali and Assistant
Inspector Moyo.
The youths were said to have been travelling in a
Zupco company bus. The bus pulled in at a Caltex service station and
the driver was ordered to jump the queue. They allegedly said they should be
given first preference since they were members of a special arm of the
State.
When the motorists protested, the youths allegedly
threatened to beat them up.
The police intervened, and the
youths allegedly turned on them. Sipho Ndlovu, who witnessed the
assault, said about 70 youths were travelling in the bus.
"On
Friday we witnessed an unusual event in Gwanda town when two police officers
were savagely beaten up by members of the notorious Zanu
PF militia.
"The two were Constable Rali and Assistant Inspector
Moyo. "They were assaulted when they tried to intervene in a heated
argument between the youths and other motorists who were queuing for
fuel.
"It all started when the youths ordered their driver to jump
the queue ahead of other queuing motorists," said Ndlovu.
"Those
Green Bombers also stated in no uncertain terms that the law was now in their
hands and that members of the police force should remain in their
offices."
Ndlovu alleged that Sunduza, the chief superintendent,
had to run away when the youths charged at him after assaulting Moyo and
Rali.
He said when he asked other police officers why they did not
arrest the youths, they said the current political situation did not allow
them to do so.
Efforts to get comment from the police in Gwanda
were unsuccessful.
PLANS by
the World Food Programme (WFP), to feed underprivileged people in the urban
areas are at an advanced stage following its request for Bulawayo City
Council to identify children in need of assistance.
The Daily News
could not establish the exact date when the programme would start, but
according to the latest council minutes, its launch is imminent.
Rotary International District 9210 recently wrote to the Bulawayo
City Council advising them that the WFP was ready to begin the programme
and would need their assistance.
"We will require the
identification and registration of those needing food assistance, including
those who are in institutions, old people's homes, street kids, homes for
handicapped and for Aids orphans," reads part of the letter .
They also requested the council's assistance in implementing the distribution
of the food. Moffat Ndlovu, the Town Clerk, said the council was prepared and
interested in participating in the programme.
"It is encouraging
that such a scheme will be extended to urban areas and the various council
departments will be permitted to make the necessary logistical arrangements,"
Ndlovu said.
He also called on the Bulawayo Residents' Association
to assist in identifying needy residents.
THE Speaker and Deputy Speaker of Parliament, like former Presidents and
former judges, will now be entitled to a pension equal to 100 percent
of their pensionable salary, according to the Parliamentary Pensions
Amendment Bill published in the Government Gazette yesterday.
Under the current arrangement, the Speaker was placed in the same category as
Cabinet ministers and was entitled to a pension not exceeding 75 percent of
their pensionable contributions.
"It is proposed to raise this
percentage to 100 percent, in line with the pension of former Presidents and
certain former judges. A similar provision is proposed to be made in respect
of the Deputy Speaker," reads part of the Government Gazette.
The amendments came exactly a week after the government announced salary
increments for President Mugabe, Cabinet ministers and other
senior government officials. The salaries were back-dated to 1 July
2002.
Under the increments announced last week, the Speaker of
Parliament's annual salary was increased to $1 437 408, up from $1 197 840
while the Deputy Speaker's salary was pegged at $1 170 979.
The
salary increments were met with stiff resistance from the public, who argued
that senior government officials should not award themselves increments when
the government was refusing to increase the pay of teachers and other
professionals.
THE International Crisis Group (ICG), a Brussels-based
international think-tank, has urged the United States and the European Union
(EU) to arrest visiting senior members of Zanu PF for crimes against
humanity.
In a recent report on Africa, the ICG lamented the
loopholes of the targeted travel bans on President Mugabe and his senior
officials.
"The wider international community, especially the
governments of the US and the EU, should enforce existing targeted sanctions
and rigorously tighten loopholes. When legal obligations require host states
to permit Zimbabwean officials to attend conferences, delegates must be
restricted narrowly to the immediate conference area of the city in
question," the ICG said.
Several Cabinet ministers and top
government officials have recently visited Europe, despite travel bans
slapped on them for causing Zimbabwe's political and humanitarian
crisis.
"The EU and the US should use the International Convention
Against Torture to arrest senior members of Zanu PF responsible for Zimbabwe
having one of the highest rates of torture in the world if these individuals
do travel into their jurisdiction without the benefit of international
legal immunity," the ICG report reads in part.
The report
castigates the current land reform programme for creating a new breed of
absentee landlords, growing very few crops at a time when the country is
faced with a famine. The government was castigated for using food relief for
political gain.
"The international response is still characterised
by too much bark and too little bite. More credible targeted sanctions,
wider, deeper and better enforced than those presently in place in the US and
the EU are a necessary start," the ICG said. The group called on regional
leaders to be resolute in ensuring restoration of the rule of law, a genuine
land reform exercise, an exit strategy for Mugabe, the establishment of fair
conditions for the conduct of elections and a revival of the inter-party
talks between Zanu PF and the MDC.
The ICG said the EU and the
US should expand the list of targeted persons to cover bankers, army and
police officers and family members of targeted people, especially those
studying in Europe.
Aid may give the country its
first real political leverage over neighbour. International Affairs
Editor
AS PETROL supplies run dry in Zimbabwe, SA sent strong signals
yesterday that it would consider a request for aid to its crippled northern
neighbour with fuel.
Petrol queues formed in Harare yesterday as
senior SA and Zimbabwean ministers met in Pretoria for routine bilateral
talks.
Fuel aid could give SA its first real political leverage over
Zimbabwe and bite to its policy of quiet diplomacy. Pretoria is keen to
pressure the government into talks with the opposition.
There was,
however, no sign yesterday that SA intended ratcheting up its pressure on
Harare.
In answer to a question about the possibility of fuel aid for
Harare, Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who hosted yesterday's talks
with Zimbabwean Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge, said "something like that
could be discussed". She said any fuel aid from SA would be made openly and
with public knowledge. This was not raised at the meeting yesterday as
energy ministers were not present.
She did not indicate whether or not
Harare had actually approached Pretoria on the matter.
The signs of
increased SA diplomatic and possibly economic aid for Harare came yesterday
during a meeting of the two countries' joint commission. The ministers said
it would in future meet every six months at ministerial level, instead of
annually at the deputy minister level.
Zimbabwe faces growing pressure on
its fuel supplies, with the collapse of a supply agreement with a Libyan
state-owned company. SA companies will supply fuel only if there are up-front
cash payments. But for government budgetary support for fuel for Zimbabwe
could risk heightening differences in the African National Congress alliance
in the run-up to next month's ANC conference.
Although the stated aim
of SA's quiet diplomacy is to ensure a resumption of talks between the ruling
Zanu (PF) party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC),
DlaminiZuma made no mention of the resumption of talks. Zanu (PF) broke off
interparty talks in May after the MDC challenged the March election results
in court.
Mudenge insisted that talks could not resume with a pending
court case. The MDC has said the talks should also be about creating a
climate that is conducive to holding elections. Harare has maintained that
the next elections would be in 2008, but Mudenge said yesterday that if the
court ordered a rerun the government would comply.
Both ministers
pressed for white commercial farmers to get compensation for their land.
Mudenge said the land distribution programme was ending. The UK should fulfil
its commitments at Lancaster House, where the Zimbabwean settlement terms
were negotiated in 1979, and compensate the farmers. Nov 12 2002
12:00:00:000AM Jonathan Katzenellenbogen Business Day 1st Edition
ANALYSIS November 8, 2002 Posted to the web November 11,
2002
Dr Ian Taylor
News that leaders of 12 African countries
have signed an agreement to monitor each other's progress towards governance
reform (the so-called "African Review Mechanism") should be met with
scepticism. The apparent decision comes after a day-long summit in the
Nigerian capital, Abuja, on Sunday, November 3. Scepticism is based on three
facts.
Firstly, despite now being a year old, no independent panel of
politicians and economists has been agreed upon. Exactly when this supposed
panel will actually be constituted is anyone's guess - yet this is supposed
to be one of the cornerstones of the New Partnership for Africa's Development
(Nepad).
Secondly, despite of all the hype, it still remains
highly-improbable that there will be any sanctions or counter-measures
against those countries that fail to pass muster. Without such measures, any
review mechanism is pointless as it will have no teeth. Nepad will stand or
fall on whether the continent's leaders possess the will to deal with
dictators.
This is doubtful as very few African heads of state appear
willing to break ranks. Thus we are left with a nonsensical plan whereby
African leaders "self-monitor" themselves voluntarily. How this is "new" or a
radical break from the past remains obscure.
Thirdly, the behaviour of
South African president Thabo Mbeki once again undermines any confidence one
might have in Nepad.
Prior to the Abuja meeting, Mbeki was claiming that
the African Review Mechanism would not review the political governance of
African countries.
Already slammed for its uncritical acceptance of
globalisation, Nepad's credibility has over the last year had to face a
barrage of criticism over its promoters' (primarily Mbeki and Olusegun
Obasanjo of Nigeria) manifest refusal to side with the oppressed people in
Zimbabwe. Mbeki's last-ditch attempt to sabotage the overseeing of African
elites, behaviour further undermines this credibility.
Farcically,
Wiseman Nkuhlu, the head of the Nepad secretariat, was caught unawares of
Mbeki's pronouncement, claiming that as far as he knew, the African peer
review mechanism would deal with political and economic governance. "It has
to," Nkuhlu was reported as saying. It was Nkuhlu, remember, who was on
record as saying that punitive action would be taken against countries that
failed to obey Nepad rules and that "we will act against those countries that
fail to respect human rights". It was this type of sentiment that led people
(including the writer) into foolishly believing that Nepad, despite its naïve
understanding of global economics, had some potential to rein-in dictators
and autocrats.
Despite Mbeki loudly trumpeting a host of noble sentiments
every time he met various Western leaders since the launch of Nepad in
October 2001, amazingly, South Africa's president sought to totally go back
on his own words. Mbeki claimed that Nepad was simply the African
Union's "socio-economic programme". Note, no mention of something basic
and fundamental to any serious socio-economic programme, namely good
political governance and accountability. Just as Mbeki falsely claimed that
there was some sort of clamour to "invade" Zimbabwe - hence, South Africa's
hands were "tied" - this lodestar of African leadership sought to falsely
assert that "there was never ever any suggestion that we have a Nepad peer
review process that would conduct the work of the commission on human
rights".
This contradicts everything the promoters of Nepad (such as
Mbeki) have been saying for the last 12 months or so. Indeed, the whole idea
of a peer-review mechanism, actively promoted until recently by Mbeki, was
based on the standards stated in a Nepad Declaration on Democracy, Political,
Economic, and Corporate Governance.
Mbeki has been one of the main
architects of Nepad and had repeatedly stressed the link between economic and
political governance and the importance of the peer review mechanism. Is he
not aware that his past public comments are recorded by the media and may be
consulted in any archive? Does he really think people have such short
memories? Sure, after Mbeki's refusal to do anything about Zimbabwe, most
observers had written off his rhetoric over Nepad as meaningless. What is
surprising is that he should at this time publicly try to wreck his own pet
project.
Coming so soon after Mbeki and Obasanjo's successful sabotaging
of the Commonwealth troika's mandate to impose stronger sanctions against
the Mugabe regime, Mbeki's announcement and his seeming attempt to confuse
all and sundry over what exactly Nepad is, will indeed be welcome news
in Zimbabwe State House and in all other African countries where
corrupt autocrats rule the roost.
l Ian Taylor is a Professor in the
Department of Political & Administrative Studies at the University of
Botswana.
JOHANNESBURG -- Facing severe famine and a chronic shortage of fuel
and foreign currency to pay for new supplies, the beleaguered
Zimbabwean government made a desperate appeal to South Africa yesterday to
assist in the transport of famine relief and help fund oil
purchases.
South Africa, insisting that it was time to close the book on
the past in Zimbabwe and look to the future, made clear that it would
consider a wide range of requests for assistance made at a two-day meeting of
a bi-national commission which had not met for six years.
Zimbabwean
Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge, who headed a cluster of Zimbabwean ministers
who met their South African counterparts for several hours in Pretoria
yesterday, attempted to reward South Africa's "quiet diplomacy", which he
praised, by stepping up bilateral contacts, highlighting the
recent withdrawal of Zimbabwean troops from the Democratic Republic of Congo
(DRC) and giving assurances that the era of land seizures was
over.
Zimbabwean Land Minister Joseph Made, noting that 300000 families
had been settled on 11 million hectares of land seized over the past two
years, said he had issued instructions that there should be no further land
occupations by war veterans.
Mudenge said the South Africa-Zimbabwe
bi-national commission, which had only met once before in 1996, would now
meet twice a year while three clusters of ministers would meet more
frequently to discuss co-operation over a broad front.
"President
Thabo Mbeki has an effective policy of 'quiet diplomacy' which works,"
Mudenge said. "Megaphone diplomacy does not work."
When asked to cite
what the fruits of quiet diplomacy were, Mudenge was vague other than to
point to the meeting taking place in Pretoria.
When asked why six years
had elapsed since the last meeting with Zimbabwe's largest trading partner,
Mudenge said: "We have been rather busy in the last few years ... now we are
out of the Congo and land seizures are finished so we can concentrate on
intensifying relations between our two countries again."
Foreign
Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said that South Africa would attempt to
repair relations between Zimbabwe and those countries that had
imposed sanctions against it -- the European Union, the United States and
Australia.
Mbeki held a meeting with Mudenge, Dlamini-Zuma and their
delegations early yesterday before the ministerial meeting
began.
Dlamini-Zuma, supporting a Zimbabwean call for Britain to
compensate white Zimbabwean farmers stripped of their land, said that South
Africa would work with Zimbabwe to help the farmers and their farm workers
who had lost their jobs as well as those newly settled on land to farm
productively.
Mudenge, insisting that human rights and democracy issues
should not be mixed up with the need for compensation of white farmers, again
called on Britain to meet its commitments under the Lancaster House agreement
and compensate the farmers to alleviate their suffering. But a
British government spokesman immediately ruled out Britain paying
compensation for what it called "fast track" land reforms as carried out by
the Mugabe government over the past two years.
"While we are willing
to help fund a properly constituted land reform programme approved by the UN
Development Programme, we are not willing to fund the fast-track programme,"
a British government spokesman said. -- DDC
First in a four-part series looking at six African nations on the
brink
By Danna Harman
The Liberty Grace set sail from Louisiana on
a hot, sticky evening in late August. Capt. John Codispoti and his crew
steered downriver to the mouth of the Mississippi, across the Gulf of Mexico,
and in the early morning hours of Sept. 3, hit the open ocean and turned
toward Africa. On board, sealed in six cavernous holds, were 50,000 tons of
yellow corn kernels - a small part of the US government's donation to an
international emergency effort to help 14.5 million men, women, and children
facing hunger in six Southern African countries.
In the months ahead,
this consignment of corn will travel from Midwestern farms to the ports of
East Africa, where it will be unloaded and bagged. It will be piled high onto
trains and trucks, and hauled to warehouses scattered across the region. And
it will be balanced on heads and dragged in carts to the huts of the
hungry.
But along its journey, this corn will encounter many of the
continent's problems, both old and new: corruption, Western trade barriers
and subsidies, concerns about genetic modification, and AIDS. It is
these problems, more than just the current drought, that are at the heart of
the growing hunger here.
The solutions to the African hunger crisis
are as complicated as the problems themselves. The challenge for the six
countries - Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and Swaziland - is
not just to get through the immediate food shortage, but to find ways to keep
the problem from happening again next year.
"This is not the same old
story. There are deep-rooted problems in the region," says Tim Osborne,
Malawi country director of CARE, an Atlanta-based nongovernmental
organization (NGO) that helps fight global poverty. "Various factors have
combined to make the populations so vulnerable that they cannot cope with any
new crisis. This is an emergency all right - a
long-term emergency."
The handbag factory
Moreblessing Tigre
stands guard at a small grain warehouse on the outskirts of Bulawayo,
Zimbabwe, jiggling her ring of keys. She is the senior logistics officer and
takes her job very seriously.
Five months ago, World Vision, another NGO,
rented an old handbag factory and transformed it into a warehouse for
emergency food aid. Today, the rooms are filled with hundreds of bags of corn
from the US, ready to be put on trucks and sent out to distribution centers
scattered around these barren plains. Ms. Tigre is in charge.
Some 6.7
million Zimbabweans - approximately half the whole population - face hunger
this year, and are depending on food aid to get them through the coming
months, according to the World Food Program (WFP).
When the warehouse is
emptied out, Tigre explains, pushing back her thick glasses and pulling her
hair into a bun, new truckloads of corn are supposed to come in. Part of the
consignment on board the Liberty Grace will soon make its way here.
"I
am so busy moving the corn in and out that I really have no idea where
it comes from," Tigre admits. "To be honest, I don't much mind. As long
as enough gets here on time. That's good. That's a start."
A start,
but not an end. Because in Zimbabwe, as in other countries, even when the
corn arrives at the warehouses and is sent out to distribution centers, there
is no guarantee that the neediest will receive it. Here, the problem is
government mismanagement and corruption.
"There is no doubt that the
developing famine in Zimbabwe is rooted in bad governance and corrupt
practices," says John Prendergast, Africa director at the International
Crisis Group (ICG) think tank.
As elsewhere in the region, there has been
a drought in Zimbabwe. But in years past, Zimbabwe was able to sustain itself
though similar drought periods - and even continue exporting to the
neighbors.
This year is a different story. President Robert Mugabe's
controversial land-reform policy - taking land from minority white farmers
and giving it to the landless black majority - has crippled the commercial
farm sector.
'That's the way life goes'
For Mildred Rashal, this
has been a good year. Her restaurant "Taks Tenth Avenue," in downtown
Bulawayo, is packed every day with the city's bigwigs.
"People are moving
into new opportunities. There is a lot of money floating around," she says,
touching up her lipstick. Outside, a long line of fellow Zimbabweans queue
for bread. They have been there since dawn. Mrs. Rashal pays them no
attention.
Because Rashal's father was a politician, Rashal grew up in
the suburbs and had more money than most other black girls in town. She was
the first nonwhite to attend the neighborhood private school.
"I was
not accepted," she states matter-of-factly. "Sometimes one of the girls would
bring back lollipops from vacation in South Africa. There were 30 of us in
the class and she would bring back 29. Nothing for me."
Rashal leans
forward. "That was then - and this is now," she says slowly. "That's the way
life goes. It's not about revenge. It's just a cycle. We have reclaimed what
is ours."
What black Zimbabweans have reclaimed is land. Mr. Mugabe's
fast-track land-reform policies were intended to redress the imbalance in
land ownership and wealth in Zimbabwe by transferring farms from the
minority white commercial farmers - who sat on vast tracts of fertile land
and produced over 80 percent of the country's food - to the majority
landless blacks.
But in practice, over the past two years, many of
these farms were handed over to wealthy Zimbabweans connected to the
government, like Rashal's family, who have little interest in farming. In
other cases, the landless were trucked in to squat on these farms, but were
not provided with the tools, seeds, or know-how needed to tend them properly.
The former breadbasket of the region can no longer support even
itself.
Now, the continuation of bad governmental practices is making it
hard for international aid organizations to remedy the food
problem.
Mugabe's government banned private food imports late last year.
The government-run grain marketing board, which is managed by top military
and intelligence officials, was given control over imports, allowing many
of them to make a profit from the resale of food at exorbitant
prices.
Worse yet, there are charges that food distribution is being
politicized, with aid organizations being steered toward or away from certain
areas. The government denies these allegations, but several aid
organizations, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed this was taking
place.
Last month, the WFP officially suspended the distribution of
relief supplies in a district of southwestern Zimbabwe, charging that
Mugabe's party was interfering with distributions - seizing food aid and
intimidating workers.
"Relief food distributions are not the place for
any kind of political activity," said a WFP statement. "WFP will only
distribute its food on the basis of need without regard to partisan
affiliation."
"This is not a black-white issue, although it is portrayed
this way," says Zimbabwean economist Erich Bloch, a vocal critic of
government. "This is about destroying the economy and hurting the poorest of
the poor - all blacks - for the sake of the rich and powerful. The next six
months will be the worst this country has ever seen, and the region will
suffer for our suffering as well."
Foosball with unripe
berries
On the old road leading from Dete to Binga, in the northwest part
of Zimbabwe, there is a little village with no name. People here are
feeling the effects of food politics.
Only two children in this
village attend school. The rest, barefoot and half naked, hang around all day
by the rusting foosball machine, using unripe berries as the game balls when
they get up enough energy for a match.
This area should be getting food
shipments from Bulawayo, but no trucks have come this way. In Binga town, the
nearest center, an attempt at distributing food a few months back was stopped
when war veterans from a different area came in and claimed the food for
themselves, according to eyewitnesses.
"We all went and voted for the MDC
[the opposition party Movement for Democratic Change] in the elections, but
we did not succeed," says one villager, Matias Muleya. "So now other regions
get aid, but the government doesn't let the food come here."
Back at
"Taks," Rashal is rushing to pick up her son from cricket practice. One of
the World Vision trucks, stacked high with bags of corn, passes by. Rashal
does not seem to notice.
"I'm running a business. I don't really care
about hunger issues," she says. "I have my connections. I phone this one,
that one - get what I need. It's not that I don't care. It's just, well, what
could I do to help? I have nothing to do with the weather."