• Zimbabwe appeal to 'fight fear'
• Kidnapped accountant made to drink acid
• Farm occupations put Zimbabwe's cattle herd on verge of extinction
• JAG Communiques dated 19 December 2003
• JAG Open Letters Forum No. 210
• Zimbabwean human rights violations under the spotlight
• Mbeki's perceived support for Zimbabwe affects the rand
• Zim cops name 'bin bag' serial killer suspect
• Previously prosperous
• Zim illegals have nowhere to go
• Zimbabwe's MDC seeks anti-Mugabe alliance
• Zimbabwe state media spews 'hate speech'
• ANZ has no legal basis to publish - ZBC
• Churches throw down the gauntlet to Mbeki
• Food Crisis Looks Set to Drag On
• Mugabe’s farm compensation scheme disgusting insult
• Severe drought facing southern Africa

BBC

 

Zimbabwe appeal to 'fight fear'

Tsvangirai faces conflicting pressures inside the party Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has urged his supporters to fight fear as they campaign against President Robert Mugabe. He said the country was bleeding - and that a way forward must be found to stop it. Victory was in sight, he said, and 2004 would be the year of the people. On Friday, police occupied the offices of Zimbabwe's only privately-owned daily newspaper, despite a court ruling that it could resume publication. Difficult times Mr Tsvangirai was speaking at a conference of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in the capital, Harare. The Daily News has been strongly critical of the government He was given a warm reception by about 1,000 delegates, but the BBC's Barnaby Phillips - reporting from neighbouring South Africa - says the MDC has been going through difficult times. It has organised successful strikes and stay-aways but, in the face of government brutality, has failed to bring people out on the streets, our correspondent says. There are disagreements within the party, with some activists demanding more mass action, while others say greater efforts should be made to revive negotiations with the government. Our correspondent says that, with the government controlling the media, the MDC has little room for manoeuvre. Judge overruled The Daily News, a strong critic of President Robert Mugabe's government, was shut down by police three months ago, under tough media laws passed after Mr Mugabe's controversial re-election last year. DAILY NEWS TIMELINE OF WOE 1999: Launched 2000-2001: Editors, journalists arrested several times Jan 2001: Printing press bombed 2002: New media law passed July 2003: Appeals against media law Sep 2003: Closed 24 Oct 2003: Court rules it should be licensed 25 October: Back on the streets, closed again 19 Dec 2003: Court ruling upheld But a Bulawayo administrative court upheld a previous ruling that a government-appointed commission should have awarded the newspaper a licence. Despite this, a lawyer for the Daily News told the BBC that police had ordered home staff who were trying to produce the paper's first edition since October. Zimbabwe's Information Minister Jonathan Moyo said Friday's judgement had no legal force. He described the ruling as "outrageously political, unacceptable", adding that an appeal had already been lodged with the Supreme Court. Lawyers for the paper say Judge Selo Nare, who made the ruling, had now asked for police protection. Media monopoly Since opening in 1999, the Daily News has seen its editors arrested on several occasions and its printing press was bombed in January 2001. The paper was closed by armed police for not registering under the new media laws. The Daily News had challenged the laws on constitutional grounds. After its closure, the Daily News applied for a licence, but this was rejected by the Media Commission. The government controls Zimbabwe's two other daily newspapers and all television and radio stations.

The chief accountant for a British-owned tea estates in Zimbabwe's eastern
mountains died early yesterday after he was abducted and forced to drink
acid.

Phillip Laing, who was married with two young children, was found chained to
a tree in the bush yesterday and it is not known whether he died during the
night or instantly.

At least four of his co-workers from the Eastern Highlands Plantations Pvt
Ltd, in the Manicaland Province, about 40 miles north west of Mutare, were
also abducted and attacked with acid, according to businessmen in the
province.

It is not known whether the murder and attacks were political or criminal.
Police were not available for comment.

Last month, President Robert Mugabe sacked Opprah Rushesa, the governor of
Manicaland province, who was accused of being too friendly to the handful of
white farmers still on their land, and replaced her with Lt-Gen Michael
Nyambuya, a recently retired military officer who was in charge of
Zimbabwe's troops in the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The province had, until the new governor arrived endured relatively less
violence on the former white owned commercial farms than other parts of
Zimbabwe.

The tea estates were founded by James Findlay, a Scotsman, more than 50
years ago. Mr Laing's wife flew back from Australia yesterday.

      ZIMBABWE’S commercial beef cattle herd, which until three and a half
years ago produced exports worth more than £1.3 billion annually, is on the
verge of extinction because of political upheaval.

      The national herd, bred over 110 years to survive in Zimbabwe’s harsh
environment, stood at 1.4 million animals in 2000, when president Robert
Mugabe launched his farm occupation strategy.

      Today, fewer than 125,000 animals survive.

      "By the middle of this year only 210,000 beef cattle survived. At the
last count there were fewer than 125,000 animals, but the number will be
lower by now. It is declining by the day," Paul D’Hotman, chief executive of
the Harare-based Cattle Producers’ Association, told The Scotsman yesterday.

      "The entire national herd is on the road to extinction and the whole
gene pool is being wiped out."

      The looming disappearance of one of Zimbabwe’s most valuable assets is
perhaps the most dramatic illustration yet of the total meltdown in a
country with the world’s highest inflation rate, currently 620 per cent, and
the most rapidly declining economy.

      Dirk Odendaal was one of Zimbabwe’s leading beef farmers until last
year, when he was given 48 hours to quit his 5,000-acre farm and homestead
together with his herd of 1,200 pedigree cross Brahmin-Charolais cattle he
had bred over 22 years.

      "It was impossible to get such a large number of animals off the farm
in that time," Mr Odendaal said. "It was heartbreaking. I watched something
that I’d worked to build over decades being destroyed before my eyes."

      Mr Odendaal, who bought his farm in 1981, a year after Zimbabwe won
independence, said about 300 of his cattle were stolen. He managed to remove
others to an adjoining property and began selling them for slaughter.

      "Together with other farmers ordered off their land, I began going to
the abattoirs and auctions to convert my animals into cash because there was
no longer anything I could do with them."

      He estimates that in Masvingo only about 1,000 beef cattle survive out
of the 54,000 in the province less than 12 months ago.

      Des Brownlee, an award-winning farmer, is giving up and will take his
family overseas as soon as he has settled his affairs. Just four years ago
Mr Brownlee was earning £1.2 million a year exporting beef to the European
Union.

      The good times crashed around him when foot and mouth and virulent
tick-borne heartwater and redwater diseases broke out throughout Zimbabwe
following the land invasions.

      The EU banned the import of infected beef and his 320,000-acre ranch
was invaded by war veterans and peasant settlers.

      His herd, 8,000-strong four years ago, is down to 400.

      "I was given 60 days in August last year to vacate my home. About
2,500 of my cattle were stolen and loaded on to trucks in front of my eyes
and taken to private butchers."

      Ben Freeth, assistant director of the Zimbabwean farming organisation
Justice for Agriculture, confirmed forecasts of the extinction of the
national beef herd, which he said had been the backbone of the economy,
especially in times of drought.

Zim illegals have nowhere to go

Ryder Gabathuse

Francistown - A 24-year-old Zimbabwean woman - completely in a world of her
own - sits on her huge black luggage bag at the Francistown-Ramokgwebana
taxi stop. She ponders deeply as to what has happened to her two friends.
"Our plan was to leave in the morning by bus for Bulawayo. I have been
waiting here for the past four hours and my friends are nowhere to be seen,"
said a worried Sarah Ndlovu. The last time Sarah and her friends crossed the
Ramokgwebana border at the gazetted point of entry was about six months ago.
The three women have regularly illegally crossed the border into Botswana
from Zimbabwe to find menial jobs. Mostly they go unnoticed. The police, who
"trouble illegal Zimbabwean" have never managed to round up Ndlovu and her
friends. "I suspect that my friends could have been nabbed by police when
they left the houses where they had been temporarily employed as
housemaids," contemplated Ndlovu. She added that the three of them have been
hired by some teachers at a local secondary school to cook, wash clothes and
sometimes to baby-sit.

They have been renting a one-roomed house in town and shared it to be able
to afford the rent. Their employers have told them to leave because the
schools have closed. Wednesday morning was another chance to escape
unnoticed. As tough luck would have had it, Ndlovu fears that the police
nabbed her mates and took them to the centre for illegal immigrants where
border jumpers are kept while awaiting deportation. She finds herself in a
serious dilemma. She cannot go back to the house they rented because she
could fall in the trap of the police. "I have seen a number of Zimbabwean
illegals bundled into police vans before. We have been very lucky
ourselves - until today's incident," she said. When brought to her attention
that she had broken the law, she had no qualms. "My brother, have you ever
been to Zimbabwe, or read about Zim. Millions of people in our country are l
iterally starving", she explained. She claims to have been a teacher at a
primary school in Zimbabwe before, but was driven by hunger to Botswana in
the hope that things would work out here. "Prices are soaring everyday while
the value of the Zim dollar plunges almost daily. This is a sad reality
isn't it?" she asked.

She said that she breaks the law to survive. She finds herself in a fix
because her passport shows that she has an entry stamp from the Immigration
Department but that she has overstayed. "I cannot risk going into the bush
with people I don't know and trust. I would rather hand myself to the police
so that I join my mates at the centre until we are driven back home." Ndlovu
is one of the many Zimbabwean illegals that are arrested daily. She finally
stated that she would rather hand herself over than risk her life.
Zimbabwean illegal immigrants fleeing economic realities back home, flock to
the city in the hope of getting menial jobs. Daily they traipse the streets
and residences in search of jobs. Most of them are women. Male illegal
immigrants mainly flock the industrial sites in search of "piece jobs". Most
of them are qualified, but because they cannot be absorbed into the labour
force back home, they find themselves moving from yard to yard in search of
opportunities. They are mostly cheap to hire and are employed at cattle
posts and jobs shunned by Batswana. The Francistown Commanding Police
District Officer, Boikhutso Dintwa, has seen the many faces of illegal
immigrants. His officers have even set up special operations to nab
Zimbabwean illegals. "The situation is just like before. We still have them
living amongst us and we still arrest them almost on a daily basis,"
explained Dintwa. The police are worried that their budget for feeding
awaiting-trial prisoners while they are locked up, has been under strain
because they feed many illegals before handing them over to the Centre for
Illegal Immigrants. Government vehicles also transport them, which further
puts strain on the budgets.

Zimbabwe state media spews 'hate speech'

      Harare

      20 December 2003 11:34

Zimbabwe's state-controlled media has "blood on its hands" through inciting
violence against President Robert Mugabe's critics, according to a report
published in Zimbabwe this week.

The state-controlled media was using the same strategy as Rwanda's "hate
radio" which incited the violence that led to the deaths of about a million
people there in 1994, the report alleges.

In the months leading up to disputed presidential elections in March 2002,
the state-owned Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation's television and radio
services and the government-controlled Zimbabwe Newspapers group were
"active accomplices in the theft of a nation's democratic rights," said the
report by the Harare-based Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe, the country's
independent media watchdog.

"They were also, at the same time, accomplices to murder," says the report,
entitled Media Under Siege. The report is the first to link Mugabe's
propaganda war, directed by controversial Information Minister Jonathan
Moyo, with the hundreds of deaths and thousands of cases of torture,
assault, arson and destruction of homes in the last four years of
state-driven lawlessness.

"No longer is it adequate to say they are politically biased," the report
says.

The state broadcaster and Zimbabwe Newspapers, led by the Daily Herald in
Harare, broadcast "deliberately untrue and inflammatory statements" that
have "the effect of inciting people to violence."

"When one day, the perpetrators of violence are held to account, those who
incited them with 'hate speech' should not be forgotten", MMPZ says.

Earlier this month, the United Nations' International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda sentenced two journalists from the militant Hutu radio station, Radio
Television Libre des Mille Collines, known as Radio Machete," to life
imprisonment for incitement to genocide. A pro-Hutu newspaper journalist got
35 years on the same charges.

The journalists' outpourings of hate against the minority Tutsi population
was held as a principal cause of one of the worst cases
of genocide in recent history.

"The scale of the violence (in Zimbabwe) is clearly very different, but in
all other respects the parallel is a very close one," the MMPZ report says.

"The Zimbabwe echo is so uncanny, it would hardly be surprising to find a
copy of the (Radio Machete propaganda) manual on Jonathan Moyo's bookshelf."

Zimbabwe's state media hold an almost total monopoly, with independent radio
and television stations banned, and the country's sole independent
newspaper, the Daily News, closed down by heavily armed paramilitary police
in September.

The state media broadcasts a constant stream of news bulletins,
commentaries, talk shows and jingles that shower praise on the 79-year-old
president and pour scorn and insults on the British government, the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change and all other critical groups in
the country.

Media Under Siege says central to Moyo's propaganda strategy that the myth
of a grand British terrorist conspiracy -- with opposition leader Morgan
Tsvangirai cast as "a puppet" -- to overthrow Mugabe violently and replace
him with white, imperialist, neocolonial rule.

It is "more than a historical curiosity" that at the centre of the Rwandan
propaganda war were almost identical claims of conspiracy by the Belgian
government, the East African state's former colonial power.

MDC supporters, whites, journalists, priests, trade unionists "became
'sell-outs' and 'stooges,' dehumanising labels that made the MDC a
legitimate target for the people's righteous violence," says the report.

ZBC and Zimbzabwe Newspapers make "hardly any attempt to report what was
actually happening," MMPZ says. Instead they became "willing propaganda
organs" devoted to "mobilise a hard core of people who (around presidential
elections last year) who would make sure that Robert Mugabe won the
presidential election, regardless of what people wanted."

The state media has provided a diet of "straightforward lies" alleging MDC
plots to kill Mugabe, carry out bloody uprisings, spread anthrax, set up
"killer houses" and sabotage the economy by hoarding banknotes, to report
says.

"If the language of violence is addressed to those who already have violent
intent, then they will take it as an incitement to go ahead," it says.

Egged on by ruling party politicians, particularly Mugabe who is already
notorious for his violent rhetoric -- only last week he declared that the
regime would "unleash legal violence" on the MDC -- the state media has
created a climate of "fear and despondency" around the country, the MMPZ
says. - Sapa

PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki, who held talks with Churches throw down the gauntlet
to Mbeki
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and opposition Movement for Democratic
Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai this week, has received what amounts to a
vote of no-confidence from leading Gauteng church groups, who have urged the
government to act to avert a human rights catastrophe.

The church leaders, who represent several Gauteng denominations, have
released a statement saying they cannot remain silent any longer as silence
makes them complicit in the brutality Zimbabwean authorities mete out to
citizens.

Mbeki travelled to Zimbabwe this week to demonstrate that his efforts at
bringing about dialogue between Mugabe and Tsvangirai were working.

The churches' statement, which was signed by Roman Catholic Church
Archbishop Buti Tlhagale and Methodist Church leader Bishop Paul Verryn,
said: "We are appalled by the witness given to us concerning the extent of
torture being meted out on Zimbabwean citizens who flee to this country for
nothing less than fear of death. The constant litany of horror indicates an
orchestrated programme of violence and deliberate suppression of any
opposition."

This follows Cape Town Archbishop Desmond Tutu's criticism of the government
for downplaying human rights violations in Zimbabwe.

Tutu said: "Human rights abuses are human rights abuses and they are of
universal validity or they are nothing. There are no peculiarly African
human rights."
   The South African Council of Churches said it supported the statement
issued by their Gauteng chapter, adding it was clear "quiet diplomacy" was
not working.

SACC spokesperson Father Joe Mdhlela said while the church group supported
Mbeki's recent visit to Zimbabwe, "we cannot be blind to the atrocities
being committed in Zimbabwe. It's not Mugabe who is currently suffering but
the people of Zimbabwe. Quiet diplomacy is an unfortunate term our
government is using as no-one can afford to be quiet in the face of the
atrocities happening there."

The Gauteng church leaders called on the government to clarify its position
on the human rights situation in Zimbabwe. "We are confused by the constant
call from the SA government to moral regeneration in the light of
perpetuated corruption. We stand in solidarity with those people in Zimbabwe
who search for reconciliation and justice."

The church leaders suggested it was inevitable hundreds of Zimbabweans would
attempt to escape the brutality and called on "all churches to receive
asylum seekers with respect and understanding and, where necessary, to offer
sanctuary, material help, medical care and counselling.

"Humanitarian aid has been politicised, information is suppressed, the rule
of law has been ridiculed. The systematic manipulation of young people is
constantly testified to. We have been told they are lured by promises of
money and food to join the Zanu-PF stormtroopers in 'bases' that were
formerly schools. They are given alcohol and drugs to turn them into killing
machines and are told they have not earned their pay if the homes and
businesses of government opponents remain standing," said the statement.

The church leaders added they would reject any attempt by the government to
suggest their criticism was motivated by ignorance or racism. "We are
familiar with attempts to dismiss any criticism as stemming from ignorance
or racism. We reject this with contempt."    Presidential spokesperson Bheki
Khumalo was not available for comment.

HARARE, Dec 20 (IPS) - Once every month for the past two years, Komborerai
Moyo has joined hundreds of his fellow villagers and queued up to receive
food handouts from donor agencies.

Moyo's situation is not unique to the north-eastern corner of Zimbabwe where
his village is situated. More than half of the country's population of some
twelve million has, at some time or another, needed food aid over this
period.

Almost two months after the rainy season should have started, most parts of
the country have not received substantial rains. This has cast doubt on
whether Zimbabwe will harvest enough grain next year to begin restoring a
measure of self sufficiency in food production. In the past, the country
used to export grain to its neighbours.

”If the rains do come now some people may still harvest something,” says
Moyo.

But he adds that for most, the coming of the rains will not provide relief
as far as growing their own food is concerned. This is because many
Zimbabweans do not have seed for the staple crop - maize.

”We hear that the government is giving some seed and fertilizer to...people
with large farms - but so far, we have received nothing,” he complained.

Memory Chiwanza, another recipient of donor food handouts, is also
confronted with a seed shortage. ”We are going to select seed from the maize
we receive for food,” she said. However, these types of seeds typically
result in very low yields.

A seed marketing official who spoke to IPS on condition of anonymity says
while seed production was lower than normal last season, the main problem is
cost. Available seed is now priced beyond the reach of the majority of
Zimbabwean farmers in communal lands, and those resettled by government
under the land reform exercise.

”Commercial outlets are asking for so much, and because there isn't as much
as usual - seed is finding its way onto the black market where prices go up
substantially,” he said.

The official added that inflation also affects seed which is sold in rural
areas: ”The traders use the current difficulties of getting fuel to justify
adding hefty transport costs to the seed.”

”We hope that the government will help us,” says Moyo. But the extent of the
need is such that the cash-strapped Zimbabwean government simply cannot
cope.

Fertilizers have to be imported. The decline in the value of the Zimbabwean
dollar against other currencies means that farmers cannot even begin to
thing about buying the chemicals because of their high prices.

Donor agencies are trying to help people become self-sufficient, but they
can only do so much. Stewart Muchapera, a spokesman for World Vision, said
their Agricultural Recovery Scheme was providing about 70,000 households
with seed countrywide.

”Obviously we cannot help everybody, so we target the most needy...The idea
is to boost local food production,” he explained.

Besides maize seeds, the packs also contain seeds for small grains such as
sorghum and millet. These crops have adapted to dry conditions, and farmers
are encouraged to grow them in areas where rainfall is low, even during
normal seasons.

Nonetheless, the Drought Monitoring Centre for the Southern African
Development Community, based in Harare, says the chances of a recovery in
the Zimbabwean agricultural sector this season are ”not too bright.”

The center is forecasting normal to above-normal rainfall in parts of
Zimbabwe - but it's unclear which areas in particular might benefit from
these rains. This puts farmers who are in a position to plant at a
disadvantage.

”In agriculture, a week can make such a major difference, so the timing is
crucial,” says the centre's Co-ordinator, Emmanuel Dlamini.

He adds that if the rains don't come soon, Zimbabwe will need assistance in
meeting its food requirements for some time yet. ”It's not a question of
replenishing existing stocks but really starting from zero. So, the country
might need a few good harvests before things to get back to normal.”

Donor agencies like the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) blame the
food crisis in Zimbabwe on the drop in commercial maize production due to
the land reform programme, erratic rainfall, the government monopoly on
cereal imports and the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

While the government maintains a monopoly on the importation of grain, the
chronic shortage of foreign currency has meant that it is largely unable to
import enough food to feed its people. As a result, the supply of maize from
its Grain Marketing Board is erratic, and in some cases non-existent.

The WFP played a key role during the 1992 drought in Zimbabwe, when it set
up offices in the country. By 1995, all but one those offices had been
closed because Zimbabwe was on its feet again.

The land reform exercise, floods and droughts changed all that. In 2001 the
WFP made an assessment of the situation, and by 2002 it was back in the
country.

”We are looking at feeding more than five million people until next year's
harvest,” said Makena Walker, a spokesperson for the agency. She explained
that while the WFP does not plan beyond the next harvest in the hope that
things might change, the current situation in Zimbabwe was cause for
concern.

”The rains have been late, and going around the country you do not see too
much agricultural activity,” she said, adding that the lack of seed for
small-scale farmers and a shortage of fuel for tillage on large farms were
certain to undermine food production.

It might be early days yet, but the signs are that the WFP and other donor
agencies might be in Zimbabwe for a while yet. ( (END/2003)

      A MONTH ago Zimbabwe's minister of agriculture, Joseph Made, said that
if white farmers forcibly evicted from their farms over the last three years
did not come forward and claim their compensation, then the money would be
forfeited to the State.

      The Minister said that an amount of Z$20 billion had been allocated
for the purposes of compensating the legal farm owners for infrastructure
and improvements and that the money was not being claimed.

      This propaganda is now being regularly used to portray white farmers
as evil wrongdoers in Zimbabwe's land seizures and the record needs to be
set absolutely straight once and for all.

      If you buy a car for one million dollars and a man seizes it from you
and says he will pay for it, but is only prepared to give you one thousand
dollars for the car, is it a done deal?

      That is exactly what is happening in the agricultural compensation
system in Zimbabwe in 2003. It is the culmination of a series of illegal
acts and from beginning to end the white farmers have stood on the moral and
legal high ground and said they want nothing whatsoever to do with it.

      Made and ZANU PF have treated white farmers in Zimbabwe exactly the
way Nazi's treated Jews in Germany in the 1930s. Piece by agonising piece
they have stripped the entire process of land seizures and changed both
their minds and the country's laws to suit their own benefit.

      First they said they would not pay for the land itself, even if this
land had been paid for after 1980. Then they said they would only pay for
the improvements and infrastructure that they wanted and then they said that
equipment like tractors and irrigation pipes could not be removed from farms
as this was to be used by the so called "new farmers."

      The infrastructure that the government said they would pay for was
detailed to include roads, contour ridges, dams, bridges, fences, timber
plantations and buildings.

      Two and a half years into the violent land seizures they sent
unqualified and inexperienced government valuators onto the farms to list
improvements and infrastructure.

      By that time fences had gone, contour ridges had been ploughed over,
bridges had been washed away, timber plantations had been felled and
unoccupied buildings left empty by evicted farmers were being stripped of
tiles, fittings, roofs, window and door frames.

      Based on what they saw, government valuators made their lists.

      There were hundreds of farmers who sat helplessly and watched as a
valuator listed door and window frames but not burglar bars or pelmets.

      Valuators who counted wall and floor tiles in bathrooms but ignored
water pipes, geysers and cisterns. Valuators who measured the size and depth
of a swimming pool but ignored pumps, pipes and filters.

      Valuators who insisted that war veterans and squatters accompany them
on their inspections through people's private homes and valuators who then
spent the night in grass shacks with invaders.

      There was no professionalism in the exercise, no impartiality and no
fairness to the men and women who had spent decades building up their homes
and businesses.

      The exercise was a complete disaster, it was a scam and a con and yet
government valuators presented figures to the government.

      It is these figures which Minister Made says are now sitting unclaimed
in government coffers. Farmers are being offered 10 percent of the real
value of their stolen homes and the amounts now are not enough to buy even
one tractor tyre let alone a house, a tobacco barn or a milking dairy.

      Joseph Made's Z$20 billion to compensate 4 500 farmers is nothing more
than a disgusting insult and this is why the money is sitting unclaimed.

      It is blood money and a desperate move by a government trying to cover
up the illegality of the entire shambolic land seizures which have reduced
Zimbabwe to a destitute country unable to even feed itself.

      White farmers do not accept the compensation being offered, not
because they want to impede this so called "agricultural revolution" but
because it is a disgusting insult. To accept it would be as ridiculous as
accepting one thousand dollars for a million dollar car.

      By The Litany Bird.

Saturday December 20, 2003 09:17 - (SA)

Rain-starved southern Africa is bracing itself for a bleak New Year with
countries calculating the costs of a severe drought, especially in Zimbabwe,
where political factors worsen the situation.

A South African weather specialist says there is just three months' supply
of water for human consumption and irrigation left in the country's
"critically empty" dams.

In other nations, large proportions of populations are already dependent on
food aid -- and not much relief is in sight for 2004.

"The food security for the next five months (until April 2004) remains
precarious," the Famine Early Warning Systems Network said recently in a
report on Zimbabwe.

"The humanitarian community is urged to plan for the worse case scenario,"
it added.

The number of people in need of food aid in Zimbabwe's rural areas is
expected to increase from 4.8 million to 5.1 million between January and
March next year.

The shortages have been attributed partly to the drought, but also the
government's controversial land reform programme of taking white-owned
farmland and redistributing it to blacks, which brought commercial
agricultural production to a virtual halt.

Zimbabwe's neighbour Botswana is experiencing its worst agricultural
performance in 10 years - its total production enough to meet only 13
percent of national cereal requirements.

"The drought situation has seriously affected the animals' birth rate and
worsened their mortality rate.

"The impact of drought is clearly visible across the country," said Musa
Fanakiso, deputy director of animal health and production.

A livestock farmer on the outskirts of Gaborone, Keeinetse Keeinetse, said
the drought was eating into his profits.

"Drought has long been a problem in this country and it is threatening the
margins of the agricultural output," he said.

Meanwhile the UN World Food Programme (WFP) warns that Lesotho, an enclave
surrounded by South Africa, is "heading for its worst drought in memory".

"People are already talking total crop failure in Lesotho.

"We will need continued international assistance in the forseeable future,"
said WFP spokesman Michael Huggins.

In Namibia and the tiny kingdom of Swaziland, about a third of the people
will need food assistance next year.

"The situation is so bad... people are now losing hope since their livestock
are dying in numbers.

"You can imagine what will happen if people start losing their assets since
livestock sustain families," Nathi Vilakazi, a spokesman for an aid
organisation in Swaziland, the Save the Children Fund, said.

The majority of Swaziland's 1.1 million people live in rural areas where
subsistence farming is the main source of income.

The WFP will next year start distributing seeds in an attempt to encourage
Swazis to grow crops that can withstand severe weather conditions.

Namibia's deputy director of emergency management, Gabriel Kangowa, said the
Windhoek government had raised less than half the funds needed to cope.

"We could buy supplies to cover food distribution for this month and January
2004," he said.

In Malawi meteorological experts say there is hope for "good rains" soon,
and South Africa does not need food aid, but weather experts have warned of
a difficult year ahead.

"Large parts of the country received significantly less rainfall in November
than usual.

"Some even less than a quarter of what they are used to and that is a great
cause for concern," agricultural meteorologist Johan van den Berg told the
Afrikaans-language Beeld newspaper.

"Now we need far more than just the normal rainfall to bring the water
levels in our dams back to normal."

Zambia, where more than two million people were at risk of famine last year,
is steadily recovering from that crisis, but is still grappling with chronic
poverty.

This year, Zambian farmers have produced enough to feed the country, the WFP
says, with maize production doubling to 1.2 million tonnes, and Zambia has
even exported maize to Zimbabwe for the first time.

But "areas of chronic food insecurity" remain and about 500,000 people,
including farmers and their dependents, as well as AIDS orphans, still
require assistance from the WFP, the agency says.

AFP