Not everyone has a cell phone. On Sunday morning, more MDC youth made their way to the stadium from their homes to help pitch the tents and set up sound equipment. Little did they know what was in store for them. There were a few policemen at the stadium at the time and they literally escorted the MDC youth into the stadium fully aware that Mugabe’s militia were camped and waiting in the stadium. Within an hour the MDC office began to receive reports of badly injured youth stumbling out of the stadium. Vehicles were mobilised and the youth were sent for medical attention. Gibson Sibanda, along with other senior MDC officials, rushed to White City, only to find that the police had cordoned off the stadium.

By the time the Bulawayo public had begun to arrive at the venue for the 9 a.m. rally, the news had got out about the militia, and the beatings they had inflicted. The police were clearly protecting the militia and were not going to allow the rally to take place, despite the best efforts of Sibanda in his negotiations with the police. The public broke into song telling the police "Into yenza yo asi thandi" and toyi toying up and down the road facing the stadium. Predictably the police responded by sending in the heavily armed riot squad, who fired tear gas canisters at a peaceful crowd airing their grievances in song. The crowd immediately scattered, but the police went into hot pursuit mode and followed the public into the residential areas. More tear gas followed. Elderly women eking out a living selling vegetables and tomatoes were forced to flee the burning gas and could not carry their tables on their heads and flee. The scene was reminiscent of Soweto in the apartheid years, and yet SADC trusts Mugabe. In the end, thousands were teargassed, scores of MDC youth badly beaten by the militia and the rally was called off while Mugabe wined and dined with Obasanjo.

From The Guardian (UK), 22 January

Zimbabwe's cycle of starvation

Harare - The weary Zimbabwean farmer had been accused of a lot of things in the past couple of years, but this one was new. After armed government men burst through his gates and hauled off the last of the maize he used to feed his livestock, one of them accused him of trying to starve the country's black population. "I told them that the grain is for my stock and the men who work here and their families," said the farmer, who asked to be anonymous because he feared reprisals. "I told them that now I'll have to slaughter my pigs because I've got nothing to feed them, but they took it just the same. And why not? If you don't have enough food to feed people, then it's better to take it from the animals." With just seven weeks until the presidential election on March 9 and 10, President Robert Mugabe is all too aware that people will not vote for him on an empty stomach. The wholesale confiscation of the most productive farms has created a potentially catastrophic food shortage, and in desperation the government is seizing animal feed and any other grain it can find. This year's harvest will be the second disastrous crop in a row. And the impact of that catastrophe will fall at precisely the moment when Zimbabwe goes to the polls. By then much of the country's livestock will already have been slaughtered.

Many rural areas - notably parts of Matabeleland, Masvingo and Mashonaland - are already facing serious food shortages. In the cities, shops are bare of the cheaper basic maize, and supplies of the more expensive, refined variety are limited. Cooking oil has not been seen in many areas for weeks. The few stores that have milk, ration it. The government blames white farmers for the crisis, saying they are hoarding food to bring down Mr Mugabe. The president's critics say the situation is entirely of his making because the farm seizures by "war veterans" have left huge tracts of land fallow. The thousands of small-scale farmers Mr Mugabe said were desperate to start planting have yet to materialise. The north of the country is not untypical. Mile after mile, the land stands barren. The farmers have fled, had their supplies looted or been ordered not to plant by the armed gangs on the land. There is little incentive anyway. The "war veterans" often claim any crop as their own.

The World Food Programme and regional organisations warn that 500,000 Zimbabweans already face serious food shortages which could lead to starvation within weeks, and that grain supplies are sufficient to feed millions more only for another two months. The government says it needs 150,000 tonnes of maize immediately and a further 200,000 tonnes by April. And it will need many hundreds of thousands of tonnes more if the land remains idle. Zimbabwe's neighbours are as concerned about the consequences of a food crisis as they are about the political violence. South Africa is preparing a military base near its northern border as a refugee camp in case tens of thousands - possibly hundreds of thousands - flee what Pretoria describes as "meltdown". That is taken to mean a number of potential disasters, from starvation to civil war. The present food shortage was caused by the sharp fall in the maize harvest last year, initially because of poor rains but compounded by the farm occupations under Mr Mugabe's fast-track land redistribution plan. The 2001 harvest fell 40% short of the more than 2m tonnes of maize Zimbabwe consumes each year. This year promises to be even more serious, with the annual harvest in March and April expected to produce less than half the country's needs, according to the government's own statistics. The mostly white Commercial Farmers' Union goes further and says that large-scale farms will produce only 200,000 tonnes of maize this year - enough to feed the country for just six weeks.

On December 28, the government imposed new regulations which gave farmers, millers, packing companies and distributors a fortnight to deliver all maize and wheat to the state grain marketing board. After that, it began raiding farms to seize stocks. The GMB's manager, Justine Mutasa, has astonished much of the country by claiming that there is no shortage. "There is so much maize in the country and we may not even need to import if we manage to impound all the maize from commercial farmers," he said. The CFU's vice-president for commodities, Doug Taylor Freemen, said the accusation against the farmers was nonsense. By seizing animal feed to give to people, he said, the regime was forcing farmers to slaughter their stock. The numbers of cattle, pigs and chickens had fallen sharply. While their slaughter provides a temporary boost to the meat supply, the numbers of breeding animals has been drastically cut. And the seizures are taking food not only from animals but farm workers and their families. "The disruption of this new legislation is that it will have a domino effect on food security, namely the production of milk, eggs, chicken, pork and beef," he said.

Yesterday, the government trumpeted the seizure of 36,000 tonnes of maize from farms. But its critics say that it is merely trying to stave off the inevitable until after the presidential election. After months of denying that there was a crisis in the making, the government conceded the reality last November. It is now looking to foreign governments, through the World Food Programme, to bail it out. But donors are reluctant to give food if it is used by the ruling Zanu PF party to buy votes. "There is no way we are going to help Mugabe hang on to power by giving him the power to decide who eats and who doesn't," said a European diplomat. "He is the one who has dragged his country to the brink of starvation, and if he wants to stop it going over the edge, it has to be on our terms." After weeks of wrangling, the agreed terms include handing the distribution of food over to two foreign agencies, Care and World Vision, and a Zimbabwean Christian organisation. But the government insists that local officials are consulted during the food distribution, and it is highly likely that in rural areas they will be on hand to claim credit for the deliveries in languages that the foreign aid workers do not understand. An initial shipment of 8,500 tonnes of maize donated by the US is on its way from Tanzania and more has been pledged. Whether the supply is maintained will depend in part on whether the Zimbabwe government honours its pledge to allow food to be distributed without manipulating it for political purposes

Even after the immediate crisis passes, whoever governs the country after the presidential election faces a long haul to rebuild agriculture. Some white farmers who have seen their cattle herds slowly poached have decided to cut their losses and slaughter the lot in the hope of reaping at least some reward. As a result, according to the government's own central statistics office, the number of breeding cows fell from 508,000 three years ago to 378,000 last year. This year it is expected to fall to just 282,000. But statistics in Zimbabwe seem meaningless these days. What does it matter how many cows a farmer has, if they are competing with humans for food?