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Zimbabwe - Descent Into Madness
Continues - Starvation Mounts
From Cathy Buckle
cbuckle@zol.co.zw
3-30-2


Dear Family and Friends,
 
This week Agriculture Minister Joseph Made said that commercial farmers being evicted from their properties could not take their moveable assets, such as tractors and irrigation equipment, with them. He said that the Government were considering introducing a Statutory Instrument to stop farmers from removing their farm implements when they are evicted from their land. I quote: "These agricultural assets must be left on the acquired farms for use by new commercial farmers. We are stopping forthwith the exportation of agricultural machinery and equipment. .... No asset of an agricultural nature should be moved off the commercial farms."
 
To summarize two years of pronouncements by Dr Made on behalf of the Zimbabwe government: We are taking your land; you may not grow food; any grain that is grown may only be sold to the State; we are taking your homes and now, we are taking your equipment as well. I am reading Schindlers Ark (List) and in places the similarities to the persecution of Jews is frightening. When the author talks of Jews being forced to move into ghetto's he says that people seemed almost relieved by the horrific outrage. "...there were strange elements of homecoming to it, as well as that sense of arriving at a limit beyond which, with any luck, you wouldn't be further uprooted or tyrannized..."
 
Farmers in Zimbabwe have reached their limit. They need a directive and a direction and sadly many are now being forced to make plans to leave as they have no way of earning a living. Farmers in Zimbabwe have begun to realise that there is no point at which our government will stop, there are no guarantees and many cannot go on. While Dr Made continues to make pronouncements stripping farmers of every single thing they have worked decades to build up, hunger has begun to take hold.
 
Even the ZBC television this week finally saw fit to tell us what we already know. There is no food in the ground and hundreds of thousands of people have applied for food aid. The television cameras showed footage of dead, shrivelled maize in all areas of the country. The commentator explained how drought had devastated crops but said nothing about billions of dollars of irrigation equipment lying idle because farmers with knowledge, experience and equipment had been forcibly stopped from saving us from starvation. It is a diabolical situation and I believe unparalleled in world history. So many people have chosen to stay silent for two years as the outrages on farms have continued and now, with no sugar, oil, milk and roller meal, they are paying the price of their silence.
 
As I predicted some months ago, the shortage of maize for stock feed has begun to be felt in the supermarkets. Egg supplies are dwindling, chicken is becoming harder and harder to find and undoubtedly bread will be next as Dr Made has said that 100,000 hectares of land will be used to grow maize through winter. There are only 160,000 hectares of irrigable land in Zimbabwe and 60% of that is supposed to be used for growing wheat in winter. Other government agricultural officials this week said they intended to cull 50% of sugar plantations and put that land to maize as well.
 
Inflation is over 110%, unemployment over 60%, hundreds of thousands of people have no food and decades of development have been completely destroyed for political gain. People who have chosen to stay silent - farmers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, shop assistants - must stand up and be counted now or think of ways of telling their children why there is no supper tonight or breakfast tomorrow.
 
Until next week,
 
with love,
Cathy


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