The Times
December 3, 2007
Martin Fletcher
Robert Mugabe is "probably the cleverest
politician in the world", a
European diplomat conceded.
A prominent
opponent of the President of Zimbabwe said: "If he was a chess
player he
would be a grand-master, if not a world champion."
The great fear among
many of Mr Mugabe's opponents is that the wily
octogenarian may spring a
propaganda coup about his future on the EU-Africa
summit this week. They are
concerned that he is close to clinching a deal
enabling him to win
reelection next March with a veneer of legitimacy - then
press for an end to
the international sanctions against his regime. Indeed,
they believe that he
would desperately like to unveil the outline of such a
deal at the Lisbon
summit and make Gordon Brown look churlish for boycotting
the
event.
Such a deal is being overseen by Thabo Mbeki, the South African
President,
who flew to Harare for an unexpected meeting with Mr Mugabe last
Thursday.
Mr Mbeki has been mediating talks between Mr Mugabe's ruling
Zanu (PF) party
and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change since the
summer, and Zanu
(PF) appears ready to offer concessions. Mr Mugabe's
critics, however, are
deeply divided on whether they will be genuine or
merely cunning window
dressing.
For example, the two sides have
already agreed a constitutional amendment
that, among other things,
abolishes the President's right to nominate 30 MPs
and increases the number
of elected seats from 120 to 210. Most of those new
seats, though, would be
in rural constituencies where the ruling Zanu (PF)
is strongest.
Zanu
(PF) appears ready to ease media restrictions, but there are few
independent
media voices left. It may agree to a new electoral commission,
but has
already appointed loyalists as key administrators. It may ease its
repression of opposition leaders, but opponents claim that it is already
cracking down on grassroots activists in remote areas far from the public
eye. It could agree to let the four million Zimbabweans who have fled the
country vote, knowing that many are illegal immigrants and that registering
them would be almost impossible.
David Coltart, a prominent MDC MP,
supports the talks because he thinks that
the "Gorbachev factor" will kick
in: if Mr Mugabe agrees to even the
slightest liberalisation the process
will run away from him. He also
believes the Southern African Development
Community, the regional grouping
that instigated the talks, will insist on
economic reforms that would
destroy Mr Mugabe's power of
patronage.
Trudy Stevenson, another MDC MP, argues that "the economic
crisis in this
country is so bad that [Zanu (PF)] have to find some way
forward and have no
alternative but come to some form of
compromise".
Sceptics, including the British Government, counter that Mr
Mugabe will
either make promises that he has no intention of honouring or
will concede
the bare minimum required to persuade the MDC to fight the
elections and to
give the party the appearance of legitimacy. Once
re-elected, he may even
appoint a few token members of the MDC as ministers
and then demand
international aid and the lifting of sanctions.
One
senior diplomat called Mr Mugabe a "wily bastard" who was "pulling the
wool
over peoples' eyes to get through the election . . . Everyone is in
such a
wishful-thinking mood".
Mike Davies, the chairman of the Combined Harare
Residents' Association,
called the talks a huge diversion that was draining
the MDC's energies and
causing a deep rupture with civic society groups such
as his own. "Mugabe is
not going to commit political suicide," he
said.
Despite Zimbabwe's economic meltdown, most experts believe that Mr
Mugabe
and his party could win the presidential and parliamentary elections
without
rigging them too blatantly.
The MDC is demoralised, depleted
and split into two opposing factions.
Leading members admit privately that
it is as weak as it has been since it
was founded in 1999.
Zim Online
by Prince Nyathi Monday 03 December
2007
HARARE - Zimbabwean teachers have demanded that the
government hikes
salaries and other cash benefits more than 18 times to
Z$318 million per
month or they will not return to schools when the new term
begins next
January.
The militant Progressive Teachers' Unions of
Zimbabwe (PTUZ) that has in
recent years led strikes for more pay and better
working conditions said
"labour unrest (was) inevitable" if the teachers'
demands were not met, in a
November 30, letter to the Public Service
Commission (PSC) that employs
civil servants.
"We advise you to take
these concerns seriously in order to avoid collision
with teachers when
schools open for first term in 2008. Labour unrest is
inevitable if these
concerns are not sincerely addressed," the letter signed
by PTUZ secretary
general Raymond Majongwe, read in part.
Teachers, who are winding up the
last term of 2007, are among the lowest
paid workers in the country earning
an average $17 million per month.
Economists say an average family of five
requires about $30 million for
basic goods and services per
month.
The PTUZ, one of two unions that represent teachers in the
country, said
teachers want a new salary of $150 million, a transport
allowance of $88
million and housing allowance of $80 million per
month.
PSC chairman Mariyawanda Nzuwa and Minister of Education Aeneas
Chigwedere
were not immediately available for comment on the
matter.
Strikes for better pay and working conditions by Zimbabwe's
teachers as well
as nurses and doctors have become routine in recent years,
as the country
grapples its worst ever economic crisis.
Zimbabwe is
in the grip of a debilitating political and economic crisis that
is
highlighted by hyperinflation, a rapidly contracting GDP, the fastest for
a
country not at war according to the World Bank and shortages of foreign
currency, food and fuel.
A shortage of local currency has further
choked Zimbabweans who are living
on less than US$1 per day. Four out of
five people are out of work, while a
quarter of the country's 12 million
people are in urgent need of food aid.
The crisis - critics blame on
mismanagement by President Robert Mugabe -has
driven thousands of skilled
workers into neighbouring countries and as far
as Britain and the United
States in search of better pay and living
conditions.
The PTUZ
estimates that 25 000 teachers have left the country since the
beginning of
this year.
Zimbabwe employs about 108 000 teachers but educationists say
the country
requires about 120 000 fully qualified teachers to ensure
effective learning
in schools.
Mugabe, in power since Zimbabwe's 1980
independence from Britain and seeking
another five-year term in polls next
year, denies ruining the economy and
instead blames his country's troubles
on sabotage by his Western enemies. -
ZimOnline
Zim Online
by Regerai Marwezu Monday 03 December
2007
MASVINGO - Zimbabwe government officials in Masvingo are
holding on to 100
tonnes of maize seed donated by non-governmental
organisations (NGOs)
demanding that the seed be first tested to determine
its quality.
Two international NGOs, Care International and Christian
Care, donated the
maize seed to communal farmers in the drought-prone
Chiredzi and Mwenezi
districts in the southern province of Masvingo last
September.
The seed has been gathering dust at warehouses in Masvingo
town after the
provincial administrator Felix Chikovo insisted that they
would not
distribute the seed until laboratory tests had been conducted to
determine
its quality.
The move to hold on to the maize seed could
however hit hard the communal
farmers in Chiredzi and Mwenezi who have
relied on food handouts from
international food relief agencies over the
past seven years due to drought.
Zimbabwe's planting season began around
late October.
President Robert Mugabe's government, blamed for ruining
the
agriculture-based economy through his seizure of white land, has touted
the
2007/8 season as "The Mother of All Agricultural Seasons" in a bid to
boost
yields.
"We do not want a repeat of what happened in 2003 when
our farmers in the
same districts suffered heavy losses because of donated
seeds which were of
bad quality.
"We want to ensure that farmers get
the right (type of) seed so that they
maximise production. Once tests have
been done and the consignment is
certified to be good, then the NGOs can
begin distributing the seed," said
Chikovo.
The provincial
administrator was referring to an incident that happened four
years ago when
an NGO allegedly distributed sorghum seed that was later
proved to be of
poor quality.
Josaya Hungwe, the then governor of Masvingo later ordered
the NGO to
compensate the farmers.
Chikovo said laboratory tests on
the seed maize were due to be conducted and
completed in two weeks'
time.
A severe shortage of maize seed has threatened to derail Zimbabwe's
2007/8
farming season.
Last October, Harare said of an estimated 50
000 metric tonnes of maize seed
that it needed for the agricultural season,
it only had 36 000 metric tonnes
in stock.
Seed houses were expected
to import the rest of the country's maize seed
from neighbouring
countries.
Zimbabwe, also grappling with its worst ever economic crisis,
has since 2000
relied on food imports and handouts from international food
agencies mainly
due to failure by new black farmers resettled on former
white-owned farms to
maintain production.
Poor performance in the
mainstay agricultural sector has also had far
reaching consequences as
hundreds of thousands have lost jobs while the
manufacturing sector, starved
of inputs from the sector, is operating below
30 percent of capacity. -
ZimOnline
Zim Online
by Own Correspondent Monday 03 December
2007
ACCRA – Zimbabwe is set to lose 20 percent of its labour
force to the
HIV/AIDS pandemic by 2020, a continental conference in Ghana
called to
discuss ways of dealing with the disease heard at the
weekend.
Stephen Kwankya, an official of the United Nations Regional
Institute of
Population Studies in Ghana, told the three-day conference that
Zimbabwe
will record a 22.7 percent loss in its workforce by
2020.
“According to figures and projections supplied by the Food and
Agricultural
Organisation (FAO) and cited in a United Nations report
compiled last year,
Zimbabwe will lose 22.7 percent of its labour force due
to HIV and AIDS by
2020, a rise from a loss of 9,6 percent recorded in
2000,” said Kwankye.
Statistics on Zimbabwe’s southern Africa’s
neighbours, also ravaged by the
disease, were not immediately
available.
Zimbabwe has one of the highest HIV/AIDS infection rates in
the world with
the pandemic mowing down an estimated 2 500 people in the
country every
week.
The AIDS crisis has been worsened by a severe
economic crisis that has
manifested itself in the world’s highest inflation
rate of around 14 000
percent, rampant poverty and
unemployment.
Zimbabwe has however been making huge strides in fighting
the disease with
Health Minister David Parirenyatwa last October saying
Harare had succeeded
in reducing the HIV prevalence rate from 18.1 percent
to 15.6 percent.
Addressing the conference in Accra, Kwankye said the
AIDS pandemic in
Zimbabwe was also impacting negatively on agricultural
production as the
majority of the workforce died from the
disease.
“In Zimbabwe, agricultural output declined as follows: there was
a decline
of 61 percent in maize production, 47 percent in cotton
production, 44
percent in vegetable production and 33 percent in groundnut
production and
the majority of the factors that contributed to the decline
were attributed
to HIV and AIDS,” he said.
The Accra meeting, which
was held under the theme: ‘Strengthening
interventions – Towards the
elimination of HIV/AIDS in Africa, was organized
by the Wofome Foundation
for Africa (WOFA) that seeks to help fight AIDS and
the Ghana Ministry of
Health.
The workshop also touched on the provision of anti-retroviral
therapy to
those infected by HIV, care and support for people living with
the disease
as well as reducing stigma and discrimination against those with
the
disease. - ZimOnline
Zim Online
by Wayne Mafaro Monday 03 December
2007
HARARE – The Comptroller and Auditor General,
Mildred Chiri, has
unearthed financial irregularities and mismanagement at
the Zimbabwe
Electoral Commission (ZEC), casting a dark shadow on the
commission’s
ability to manage large sums of cash it received for next
year’s polls.
The commission, that runs elections, was last week
allocated Z$209
trillion to cover costs for next year’s joint presidential,
parliamentary
and local government elections. The commission received $27
billion for the
2005 parliamentary polls.
However, an audit
report by Chiri’s office dated May 3, 2006 and shown
to ZimOnline at the
weekend revealed disbursements of cash to teams running
the 2005 poll were
done haphazardly with little or no accountability.
The report says
there were no proper financial control of funds and
that in some instances
people who conducted voter education were paid twice,
while in some cases
large sums of money were transferred between ZEC teams
in different
constituencies without proper procedures being followed.
The report
did not say how much money exactly could not be accounted
for, but noted
that due to lack of financial control systems it was
difficult to do
reconciliations for cash advanced to electoral teams.
“All
provinces had problems in reconciling the figures of cash
disbursed. The
other problem was that the teams would give each other money
without any
written authorizations. This had an effect on the
reconciliations,” the
report said.
There were no cashbooks, journals and ledgers in use
and there was no
budget for the three Command Centres in Harare and cash
disbursements were
made whenever asked for, it added.
The
auditors said the audit conducted between February and March 2006
was
carried out long after the elections and some accounting personnel could
not
remember relevant details due to the lapse of time. Several audit
queries
could not be explained as a result.
ZEC chairperson George Chiweshe
was not immediately available for
comment on the matter.
Under
new constitutional provisions enacted last August, the ZEC
oversees voter
registration, delimitation of constituencies and the general
conduct of
elections. - ZimOnline
The Times
December 3, 2007
David Charter, Europe Correspondent
Baroness Amos, the
Labour peer, will represent Britain at this week's
EU/Africa summit and
plans to join criticism of President Mugabe during a
session on governance
and human rights.
The former International Development Secretary and
Leader of the Lords is
preparing to go to Lisbon in place of Gordon Brown,
who announced a
government boycott should the Zimbabwean leader carry out
his promise to
show up.
A war of words between Britain and Zimbabwe
threatens to overshadow the
first meeting between the 53 African nations and
27 EU countries since 2000.
The Portuguese hosts are concerned that it will
divert attention and energy
from a full agenda of issues such as trade, aid,
governance and climate
change, as well as deep problems in other African
nations such as Sudan and
Somalia.
Lady Amos, who was Britain's first
black Cabinet minister and also served as
Africa Minister at the Foreign
Office from 2001-3, will not just sit in the
summit meetings "like a spare
part", British diplomats said yesterday.
Along with several other EU
leaders, including the Dutch Prime Minister, Jan
Peter Balkenende, she is
expected to speak out about the humanitarian crisis
caused by President
Mugabe's mismanagement of the economy. Mr Brown recently
nominated Lady
Amos, 53, for the post of EU envoy to the African Union but
she was rejected
by Brussels.
Mr Mugabe said on Friday: "Zimbabwe is an African country.
We are totally
independent from Britain. Let Britain there listen to this
simple lesson
that Zimbabwe is no longer a British colony. Britain has no
right to discuss
Zimbabwe almost every week in their stupid
parliament."
- President Mwanawasa of Zambia urged Mr Brown yesterday to
continue
speaking out against Zimbabwe but said he was disappointed by his
boycott of
the summit.
Once again we had an enormous
attendance - more than 200 Zimbabweans from
all over the UK. There was a
queue to sign the register. We should start
thinking of a Vigil crèche!
First at the Vigil was Juliet Ngulube who got
up at 5 am to travel all the
way down from Manchester. Happily, she was
soon joined by an old friend,
Dorcas Nkomo, from Southampton. It's so
encouraging to see the efforts
people make to join our protest against
Mugabe.
But the main subject
of discussion as we sheltered from the rain under our
tarpaulin was the EU /
AU Summit in Lisbon. The Vigil has booked for 29 of
our supporters to go to
Lisbon (thanks to several generous donors). Many of
our most committed
supporters wanted to come but lacked the right travel
papers. They will be
at our usual London Vigil to support us from a
distance. For details of our
plans see the News Release below. As you will
see the Vigil is central to
several other protests.
What we don't say in our news release is that we
have heard from informed
sources that we should try and track members of the
Zimbabwean delegation to
try and establish in which banks they deposit their
stolen money and to whom
they sell their Murange diamonds. While in Lisbon
we will displaying a new
poster: it shows three photographs contrasting
Mugabe's new mansion with the
squalid living conditions of the
masses.
We were pleased that Judith Todd found time for a farewell visit.
She is to
speak about the Zimbabwe situation in the United States, where her
new book
is being launched.
We thought the weather was pretty lousy
but two people from the Faroe Isles
dropped by. For them the weather must
have seemed tropical! Grateful thanks
to the kind lady who works locally
who dropped by again and, without any
fuss, dropped off three packets of
biscuits.
Stendrick of our new partner ROHRZimbabwe said that he'd been
in contact
with activists in Zimbabwe who dismissed the Mugabe propaganda of
a large
turnout in the so-called 'million man march'. Stendrick said the
event was a
flop and many of those who took part had been forced to attend.
He said the
real lesson was that Mugabe could still instill fear. His
comments were
supported by a report in the Times today in a unprecedented
three-page
report on Zimbabwe.
For latest Vigil pictures, see the
link in the updates column.
FOR THE RECORD: Over 200 signed the
register.
FOR YOUR DIARY: Monday 3rd December at 7.30 pm. Central London
Zimbabwe
Forum. This week the Forum hosts a double event featuring Sarah
Harland of
the Zimbabwe Association and a poster party in preparation of the
Portugal
demo. Sarah will address the forum on the recent judgement on
returning
failed Zimbabwean asylum seekers. Venue: downstairs function room
of the
Bell and Compass, 9-11 Villiers Street, London, WC2N 6NA, next to
Charing
Cross Station at the corner of Villiers Street and John Adam
Street.
News Release - 2nd December 2007
Zimbabweans to protest at
Summit in Lisbon
The Zimbabwe Vigil, which has been demonstrating against
Mugabe outside the
Zimbabwe Embassy in London every Saturday for more than
five years, is to
send a group of about 30 to Lisbon this week to protest
during Mugabe's
attendance at the AU / EU Summit. The Vigil is linking up
with a Portuguese
human rights organisation, ADDHU (Associação de Defesa dos
Direitos
Humanos), to stage a demonstration as close to the Summit venue
(Parque des
Noacios) as the police will allow (100 metres). The
demonstration will be
on Saturday, 8th December from 2 - 5 pm. There will be
singing and dancing
to the sound of drums. Available for interviews will be
Zimbabwean
political activists and survivors of torture, rape and other
abuses of
Mugabe's Zimbabwe.
For further information on the
demonstration and other activities planned
for the summit, contact Vigil
Co-ordinator Rose Benton 07940 996 003.
Details of other action will be
announced later.
The normal Vigil will take place from 2 - 6pm on
Saturday, 8th December, in
London as usual augmented by supporters from
ACTSA (Action for Southern
Africa) and trade unions. For more information,
contact: Luka Phiri,
07951293 766 or Chipo Chaya, 07904 395
496.
ACTSA, supported by trade unions and Vigil activists, is also to
stage a
protest outside the Portuguese Embassy, 11 Belgrave Square, London
SW1X 8PP,
on Thursday, 6th December, from 12.30 - 2pm. For more
information, contact:
Simon Chase 07809 396 128, 020 3263 2001.
Other
action is planned in Cardiff and Harare. The Cardiff demonstration is
organised by the Zimbabwean Development Support Association and will be held
from 12 - 2 pm on 8th December at Bevan Statue, Queen's Street, Cardiff. For
more information contact: Kuchi Cuthbert Makari 07939 721 419
The
demonstration in Harare is being organised by Vigil partner Restoration
of
Human Rights in Zimbabwe (ROHRZim) www.rohrzimbabwe.com. For more
information, contact: Stendrick Zvorwardza, 07960 113 496.
Vigil
co-ordinators
The Vigil, outside the Zimbabwe Embassy, 429 Strand,
London, takes place
every Saturday from 14.00 to 18.00 to protest against
gross violations of
human rights by the current regime in Zimbabwe. The
Vigil which started in
October 2002 will continue until
internationally-monitored, free and fair
elections are held in Zimbabwe. http://www.zimvigil.co.uk
The Times
December 3, 2007
Their father died of Aids; their mother left
them. Now they huddle away from
sexual predators amid violence and
destitution
Martin Fletcher in Harare
The Mbare Flats in the slums
of southern Harare are a complex of bleak,
two-storey concrete blocks that
make the unprepared visitor recoil in
horror.
They are packed with
the destitute and violent, rural labourers who have
come to the capital in
search of work, and those exploiting them - and with
government
informers.
The windows are smashed. The place stinks. It has open sewers
and communal
lavatories. Men hawk home-made alcohol.
We hurried
across a courtyard, up a staircase and along a corridor, and
there we found
them - five children huddled in one small, dark room and left
to fend for
themselves in the most brutal surroundings.
There were three brothers and
two sisters, aged 3 to 16, named Wish, Sythia,
Dephine, Anesu and Given
Nechavava. They looked frightened and bewildered.
The room was lit by a
single naked lightbulb and divided by a ragged
curtain. At the far end, next
to the broken window, was a double bed covered
in a filthy blanket on which
all five slept.
At the near end were some old, sagging chairs, a
primitive stove and a few
cooking pots. The floor was bare. Dark green paint
peeled off the walls.
The children's father died of Aids in 2001. Two
months ago their mother
abandoned them. She simply walked out one night,
saying that she was going
to Mozambique, and never returned. A church worker
found the siblings a
fortnight later.
"It was terrible," he said.
They had no food, were very hungry and were
begging. They still possess a
small framed photograph of their parents,
taken in happier times.
The
Church is now giving them enough food to survive, employing two as
cleaners
and sending the other three to school. But these are stop-gap
measures.
"They have no future," the local activist who took us into the
flats said.
"They'll end up as street kids - the girls as prostitutes, the
boys as
thieves." They were already easy prey for sexual predators, she
added.
Of all the victims of Robert Mugabe's regime, the children of
Zimbabwe are
the most vulnerable and heartrending. Their families have been
destroyed by
Aids, poverty and emigration. The social welfare systems that
might have
helped them have collapsed in the country's economic meltdown.
Millions go
hungry. Many are severely malnourished.
Unicef estimates
that 1.6 million Zimbabwean children, a quarter of the
total, are orphans -
the highest percentage in the world. The headmaster of
a secondary school
outside Bulawayo told The Times that a third of his 600
14 to 16-year-old
students were parentless, and expected that number to rise
by another 100
within a year.
In a rural primary school 30 miles (50km) from Bulawayo we
found 16 orphans
in a class of 32 six-year-olds. By some estimates as many
as a third of
Zimbabwe's children no longer go to school.
Unicef
believes that 90 per cent of those without parents are taken in by
grandparents and other members of their extended families. But it also says
that there are at least 100,000 "child-headed households" left - like the
Nechavavas - to fend for themselves "We have an entire generation of
children who are at extreme risk of abuse, of contracting HIV and a downward
spiral of dropping out of school and taking their trauma into adulthood,"
said James Elder, a Unicef spokesman in Zimbabwe.
It is not hard to
see how the five siblings will end up. In the sanctuary of
a Mbare church a
21-year-old man named Godknows told The Times how both his
parents died of
tuberculosis, and he had been living on the street for the
past four years.
He survived by breaking into cars and protecting
prostitutes. "I am not
ashamed because it's the only way I can stay alive,"
he said in a listless
whisper. He looked sick.
In March in Mbare The Times met Tatenda Banda, a
pretty 16-year-old orphan
living in a rudimentary shelter. To survive she
was selling herself to as
many as half a dozen men a day for less than 30p a
time. "I feel ashamed but
there's nothing else I can do," she said then.
"I'm afraid of Aids but there's
nothing to be done about it." We tried to
find Tatenda last week, but were
told that she had died of Aids.
On
the morning that The Times visited a Harare cemetery, 24 children had
just
been given a paupers' burial. They now lie rotting in an unmarked mass
grave.
IOL
December 03 2007 at 02:27AM
Harare - Zimbabwe's opposition leader
Morgan Tsvangirai on Sunday
dismissed as "paper discussions" ongoing talks
with the ruling party of
President Robert Mugabe aimed at solving the
country's crises.
"If you check how far we have gone with the talks
in the last five
months, it's just paper discussions," the leader of the
Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) told hundreds of supporters in Glen
Norah suburb of
the capital Harare.
He accused Mugabe's
Zimbabwe African National African Union-Patriotic
Front (Zanu-PF) of being
"not sincere" in its commitment to concessions made
during the
talks.
"We thought we were negotiating for free and fair elections
and a new
constitution. Yet they (Zanu-PF) don't want a new constitution.
The question
that confronts us today is 'what is in the talks for us?'," he
asked.
Tsvangirai said he expressed his
disappointment with the talks to
South African President Thabo Mbeki, who
met Mugabe and the opposition
en-route to the Commonwealth summit a week ago
in Uganda to brief them on
the progress of the talks.
Mbeki in
March was mandated by leaders of the regional Southern
African Development
Community (SADC) to broker talks between Zanu-PF and the
MDC.
Tsvangirai told the rally: "They (Zanu-PF) are continuing with
violence,
they are continuing with discriminatory food distribution, they
are
continuing with voter registration and the delimitation process despite
our
objections.
"We are saying to Zanu-PF, 'you have to demonstrate to
the world that
you have changed your ways'. Mugabe may hoodwink the world,
but he cannot
cheat Zimbabweans forever. We know his attitude... He wants to
die in
power."
The MDC has also insisted on an amendment of the
country's strict
security and media laws which critics say have been used to
muzzle a
once-vibrant independent press and suppress dissent, he
said.
'He wants to die in power'
Tsvangirai had last
September defended his deal with Mugabe's
government over constitutional
reforms, saying it would help create a
conducive environment for elections
next year.
He had said only free and fair elections in 2008 would
end the
country's chronic political and economic crisis.
In a
surprise show of unity with their Zanu-PF counterparts, MDC
lawmakers that
month had approved constitutional reforms which provide for
joint
parliamentary and presidential polls next year and redrawing
constituency
boundaries. - Sapa-AFP
Africare
Date: 01 Dec 2007
Mr. and Mrs. Bonde live in Chivhaku village in Zimbabwe, Southern
Africa:
the region that is the world epicenter of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Every day,
this family battles HIV/AIDS and its effects. Today, World AIDS
Day 2007,
Africare honors these parents as they care for the health and well
being of
two chronically-ill adult children and an extended family of five
with
assistance from Africare's Nutrition on Wheels
Program.
CHIVHAKU, ZIMBABWE, December 1, 2007 - "I have a large family of
nine,"
begins Mrs. Bonde of the Chivhaku village in the Buhera district of
Manicaland province, Zimbabwe. "My husband, who is 65, is too old to work. I
have two chronically ill children: Kidwell, age 30, and Stella, age 33. And
I take care of their children as well."
It was only recently the
household of Mr. and Mrs. Bonde, Sr., grew to nine.
The Bondes' son,
Kidwell, married and with two children (a boy and a girl,
ages 6 and 4
respectively), returned home to his parents in 2004. He had
developed an
unremitting illness that had left him bed-ridden for almost a
year. The few
resources his family had were diverted toward his treatment.
Fate struck
again when Kidwell's sister, Stella, was diagnosed HIV positive.
In 2006,
her husband died; now a widow with two children, she, too, had to
return to
her parents' home.
In a matter of two years, Mr. and Mrs. Bonde, Sr.,
became the caretakers of
seven close relatives -with no added income or
resources to care for them.
The Bondes were heartbroken as they nursed their
son and daughter, who were
both facing imminent death. As their adult
children grew weaker by the day
without proper nutrition, it seemed clear to
the senior Bondes that they
would soon bear sole responsibility for their
grandchildren.
On the surface, the Bonde family had more odds against
them than
opportunities to succeed. Still, this family of nine managed to
provide
food, shelter and a limited income for each family member - largely
due to
the initiative of Mrs. Bonde, Sr., who found a food aid program
carried out
by Africare/Zimbabwe to meet the daily needs of her
family.
"I am really grateful for the food aid support that I am
receiving," she
says. "Our harvest this year did not last us two months. We
did not have
enough inputs to plant on our two-hectare piece of land. The
little that we
planted was severely affected by the dry spell."
In
February 2005, the family was registered for the Nutrition on Wheels
Program
under an Africare/World Food Programme collaboration that assists
(1)
individuals who require home-based care as well as (2) children who have
been orphaned and are considered vulnerable as a result of HIV/AIDS. The
Bondes are receiving a monthly food ration that consists of cereals, pulses,
vegetable oil and a corn soya blend to meet their nutritional needs: needs
the family became hard-put to meet in the face of a failing harvest and
limited income.
A combination of medical treatment and nutrition has
enabled Kidwell to
regain his mobility. He now engages in gardening, brick
molding and many
other activities to support his family. Stella, who was
also house-bound, is
now able to walk around and do light household chores.
Additionally, the
senior Bondes are able to invest in the education of their
grandchildren,
sending each child to school with money freed up from the
provision of food.
Monthly food rations through Africare/Zimbabwe's
Nutrition on Wheels Program
have given the Bonde family the break they
needed to take life back into
their own hands. The family has since been
able to launch an
income-generating business, provide nutritional meals for
their family,
nurse their adult children's failing health and give their
grandchildren an
the opportunity to receive an education.
Their story
is one of thousands. Since 2004, more than 80,000 people in the
Zimbawe's
Buhera district have been touched by the Nutrition on Wheels
Program.