Surprise, surprise:
President Robert Mugabe’s rosy forecast of a bumper harvest in Zimbabwe was contradicted by his own government yesterday, when an official report said 2.3 million people needed immediate international food aid.
The seizure of white-owned farms has combined with drought to cripple agriculture in Zimbabwe. But Mr Mugabe’s official message is that his land grab has markedly increased production and made Zimbabwe self-sufficient. Last month, he refused help from the United Nations World Food Programme, saying: “Why foist this food upon us? We don’t want to be choked.”
He brushed aside the fact that Zimbabwe has lived on food aid since 2001 and that 6.5 million people, more than half the population, depended on international help last year. By contrast, his office forecast a maize crop for this year of 2.4 million tons, more than enough to meet domestic needs.
Yet a report from the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee provides a strong antidote to the president’s optimism. It concludes that 2.3 million people in rural Zimbabwe “will not be able to meet their minimum cereal needs during the 2004/05 season”.
The report adds that food aid “for the most vulnerable people” should be sought immediately. The UN, aid agencies and Zimbabwean government departments compiled the assessment based on a survey completed in April. Mr Mugabe’s officials appear not to share his optimism.
Food aid be damned. Someone should invade the place. Almost anyone would now be an improvement. Handing food aid over to the existing regime will not feed the “most vulnerable”. It will merely feed the existing regime, and allow them to shove some more people into the most vulnerable category.
“Someone should invade the place. Almost anyone would now be an improvement.”
Don’t you people have enough blood on your hands? Don’t you realize the money spent on the Iraq invasion could have been much better spent on the NHS.
An that prat with the firecracker, his money should be taken off him and given to Mugabe to distribute among the poor of Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe’s economy is in this condition is because Ian Smith ran it into the ground, asset stripping the industrial base and smoking all the tobacco.
You lot are just apologists for the racist Smith regime.
Hahahahaha. Well done Ziany Parklet, who says the art of satire is dead?
While I agree with Brian that almost anyone would be an improvement on Mugabe and that sending food aid would only exacerbate matters I think that calling for invasion is the wrong thing to do.
These African states insisted upon their independence, they must now sort out these problems for themselves. Zimbabwe poses no threat to England.
Moreover, invading Zimbabwe would rsult in the deaths of many innocent people. Mugabe (unlike Saddam) is not difficult to find. He could easily be either assasinated or captured. Invasion is neither necessary nor desirable. If people want to intervene in Zimbabwe they should go straight for the tyrant personally.
I have suggested several times that a few truck loads of arms and ammunition in the hands of Mugabe’s local opponants is probably the best way to go. If a more elightened state will not do it, it seems that some philantropist with some useful contacts in Africa could probably get a great deal of ‘bang for the buck’ by lending a healping hand. The state in Zimbabwe is far weaker than in Iraq, so it seems rather excessive to send in the Paras when some determined locals could probably do the trick at far less cost.
Perry de Havilland wrote:
‘ . . . when some determined locals could probably do the trick at far less cost.’
. . . thereby virtually ensuring that the present vile, murdering dictator, who does not hestitate to kill others to further his political goals, is duly replaced by another vile, murdering dictator who does not hesitate to kill others to further his political goals. And, when it turns out that way (and it always does, in that part of the world, at least) what will we do about it then? Encourage a third murderer to kill the second murderer, who we encouraged to kill the first? And all the while, the people starve?
Don’t get me worng, Mugabe is pond scum and the world will be better off the minute he’s starting to turn crisp at the edges, but for heaven’s sake, given the history of that part of the world, think before you make such a flip suggestion.
Africa Wins Again.
llater,
llamas
One wonders what his plan is for 2.5 million starving people. Kill them when they riot for food? cheap recruits for an army? Fertilizer for next year’s crop?
llamas: and the alternative that does not leave Mugabe free to continue what he is doing is… ?
The Old Zimbabwe – Rhodesia is dead. The White Settlers who were largely responsible for the economic and political stability have been driven out. Without these there is little chance of a reconstruction economically or politically.
One Should remember it was Thatchers government which refused to recognise Rhodesia’s compromise settlement, which would give all blacks the vote and allowed to stand any political parties which did not use terrorism and intimidation as a method of canvassing votes.
It was also successive British Government, which refused to recognise Rhodesia, and imposed economic sanctions. Despite this Rhodesia continued to prosper economically, but could not buy any military equipment with, which to fight the bush war against Mugabe.
Zimbabwe does not require an invasion, simply stop sending foreign aid to it. The Government will collapse under the weight of its own contradictions and be forced to face reality. Stop Sanctioning the Regime!
snide – I’m glad you asked!
Project requirements include one selfless millionaire with no political axe to grind.
With his money, we buy 100,000 tons of US-surplus corn, bagged in 100-pounders. Then we wet-lease a C54 and take the doors off.
Then we start to fly a box pattern over Zimbabwe, and every time we see a village, we kick out as many sacks of corn as they look like they need. Paint on the sacks in big letters – ‘Start as many fires as you need sacks dropped, the next time you hear us coming. If anyone shoots at us, or tries to stop us, if we survive the bullets, we’ll simply leave and never come back. So long as no-one molests us, the sacks will keep falling.’
Repeat as necessary.
After a month, start dropping sacks with the following message:
‘We’ll keep dropping sacks-on-demand, but now that you’re eating regularly, you’ve got some chores to do. If you get your house in order and install yourselves a secular, non-tribal democracy in six months or less, the sacks will keep falling. If you don’t, they won’t. Have a nice day’.
When that’s done, the sacks start saying ‘Sacks will cease to fall from the sky on (a date certain). That gives you (name time period) to get your food supply in order. Shouldn’t be hard, Zimbabawe used to be a net food exporter. Hint – try capitalism and free-market approaches. Have a nice day.’
Hopefully, the result is that the people, especially the rural populace, will rise up and toss the murderous bugger out on his ear, and they figure out how to run a country. It’s a faint hope, because Africa Often Wins. But at least the people will have been fed for a couple of years, and had the opportunity to consider that there might be a better way than to be the serfs of this Marxist buffoon.
And, if they p**s away such a golden opportunity, or let themselves be enslaved again when there’s no reason to be – we did our best and we did no man harm.
Will you join me in the door?
llater,
llamas
Interesting idea!
Package the corn with .45s, and you’ve got a plan.
I have a better idea: Buy the plane and the 100,000 pounds of grain, but instead of the box pattern, locate Mugabe and drop it all on his head, crushing or smothering him to death. No-one would be able to condemn the assassination because they’d be too busy laughing at the irony of it.
llamas,
Africa is big. It is not only Zimbabwe that has problems. You’ll need a lot of planes. And after you complete your first two year run they’ll start starving again, and the clamour will rise for more.
Nice try, however.
“Interesting idea!”
Ah, yes, the ultimate curse – see ‘Yes, Minister’ for details.
Whatever is done to feed the poor unfortunate millions – again – must be
– distributed. The typical approach, as practised by innumerable Western NGO’s, is to try and set up some sort of organized, centralized distribution, as though they were trying to truck lettuce from California to Boston. They have never grasped that it is precisely that sort of plan which allows every thieving jackanapes along the way to steal his cut, and leaves the people in need – still in need.
– anonymous and incorruptible. Completely disconnected from the infrastructure inside the country. They are, after all, the crapulous incompetents and brigands who got the country into this mess in the first place. Those few honest and altruistic types among the myriad thieves and looters – well, too bad, we’ll have to get along without them.
– apolitical.
Ted Turner just gave the UN $100 million. Given what we know about the UN, I doubt that so much as a penny on the dollar will actually make it as useable aid to the starving millions. With that money, he could have put an entire nation on its feet and running, so long as he’d done it as described. But I guess there’s not enough glory in doing good unrecognized.
llater,
llamas
Seems to me that Mugabe is saying “as soon as we get rid of about 2,500,000 people there will be plenty of food to go around.
My solution is simple. Go in there with a bunch of heavily armed thugs(loyal, of course). Take over the country’s political process, killing whoever disagrees. No elections or any such nonsense; the populace simply can’t handle it yet. Install myself(or whoever’s footing the bill) as Emperor and Lord Tyrant. The UN? Fuck ’em.
With the power of the gun, impose law and order, get enough food to tide things over first, then implement economic policies pioneered by the Asian tigers. Emphasize public education first, build the economy back up again by carefully harnessing the power of the free market(with some judicious control over certain sectors). Consult Lee Kuan Yew on the fastest track to self sufficiency and economic success.
After twenty years(or even less), the diktat political control can be abandoned. By then, the economy should be moving along, respect for the rule of law universal, and the people with some idea of where they want to be. Retire in comfort and the adulation of an entire nation.
Absolute power is pretty neat. ^_^
TWG
I think the plane-hiring folks above underestimate the scale of the problem. Zimbabwe has about 1/6 of the population of the UK. You won’t feed them all with one plane and the resources of a single millionaire, no matter how willing. Also, they have shoulder-launched SAMs.
It only took me a few minutes googling to find this. You shold sack your military intelligence provider.
Question: Why do anything at all? I do like Kim du Toit’s case for NOT doing anything.
“Question: Why do anything at all? I do like Kim du Toit’s case for NOT doing anything.”
Not much is beeing done, not much CAN be done. Whatever Kim du Tiot’s case is, his solution will be implemented.
Mass defiance among the population can deny the rulers and their lackeys the sense of power and security even if the defiance is only symbolic. The Zvakwana movement (Shona for “enough”) is cleverly putting that principle to work by launching contagious nonviolent resistance memes.
News report: http://www.sokwanele.com/justice/articles/policehuntzvakwana_8april2004.htm
Website: http://www.zakwana.org
Once momentum builds sufficiently, outside support of revolution (as Michael Ledeen has been preaching for Iran) becomes an efficient way to nudge matters past the tipping point.
Website (corrected): http://www.zvakwana.org
TWG, isn’t that just what Mugabe did? Or did I miss some irony?
As for “nobody could be worse than Mugabe”, they could be, and probably will be. See several other parts of Africa for examples how. In fact until he’s replaced by something probably worse, Mugabe can get an awful lot worse all by himself. Unfortunately for the Zimbabwean people he threatens no powerful country’s strategic interests, and talks the kind of anti-colonialist game that goes down well with other African leaders looking for someone to blame.
I suspect he’d manage to borrow the anti-aircraft weapons to deal with llamas’ approach. No aid- dependent country wants that sort of thing catching and cutting out its waBenzi.
In february I suggested: Kill Robert Mugabe(Link)
If you want to revive the British Empire and have the thankless chores of keeping the natives in line do so with your own money, not mine.
I believe the suffering is not evenly distributed. Those tribes or villages most in disagreement with The Great Man are being starved for much the same reasons as Stalin’s.
Guy Herbert: Mugabe didn’t have the right economic plan, and he apparently subscribed to the Marxist system(being a Marxist in his youth). What you want is a dictator who also supports capitalism.
You can’t have any working democracy in Africa along with capitalism at the moment, because there simply isn’t any framework for that particular system. What you’ll probably get is something like Russia, but even worse.
TWG
I’m not suggesting a democratic alternative. Democracy has a nasty habit of turning into dictatorship anyway. I don’t really have a solution.
I just venture to suggest that if you start out as a dictator, sooner or later the exigencies of staying a dictator in Africa may turn you into the proprietor a crony-run, plundering police state, regardless of the good intentions with which you start out.
Yoweri Museveni in Uganda started out saying lots of the right things about developing a middle-class and civil society, and I believe he meant them. But now he has an insurgency on his hands and is tempted into adventuring abroad along with Zimbabwean forces, you don’t hear that sort of thing so much. When it is a choice of using any means to keep power or ending up nastily dead because someone else will, rulers degenerate quickly. Transforming a society is a neat trick, but it is hard to think of any individual who’s done so and lived. Transforming a pre-existing state has been done, but not often. Building one from scratch, on naked power? Nothing wrong with ambition.
Transforming a society is a neat trick, but it is hard to think of any individual who’s done so and lived.
What do you define as ‘transforming’? If you mean bringing a Third World society from almost nothing to the modern world, there’re quite a few examples.
Well, I guess we were lucky in Asia, having the British system to build on in Malaysia and Singapore, but in any case, we started off worse than the African colonies. Lee Kuan Yew might have gotten the leadership by an election, but his style would never be mistaken as being easy on his enemies. Dissidents were jailed without so much as a trial.
Chiang in Taiwan started out as a strongman, but his successors freed up the political reigns later on.
Insurgents in the imaginary African realm would have been dealt with ruthlessly and swiftly, probably by legal means if possible, jailed, or at the point of a gun. The populace would have to be reassured time and again that their futures best lay with the present petty despot and the security that comes with his rule. Foreign companies doing business will also be more attracted to a pro-business state that does not tolerate rebellion. They won’t give a damn about political freedoms, only whether if they can earn money.
Keep tight reins over the police and military. Maintain low taxes, minimal welfare. Pro-business policies. Public education in the beginning. The low taxes alone would serve to keep government limited. Police state might be a problem, but as long as the living standards are improving, it doesn’t matter because it can be loosened later(ever heard of the corporate police state? Yup, that’s what I meant). Cronyism can be reduced by emphasizing results, not talk. If a minion doesn’t perform, he’s out. Believe it or not, a government can be run like a business, where the bottom line is the GDP and the reserve(profit).
TWG
“Ted Turner just gave the UN $100 million. Given what we know about the UN, I doubt that so much as a penny on the dollar will actually make it as useable aid ”
“You won’t feed them all with one plane and the resources of a single millionaire, no matter how willing”
you can’t feed the population with the ressources of a single millionaire, but you can sure hire a heck of a lot of hitmen for the job. hell you probably could have the thing sponsored by channel 4,
“I am a dictator get me out of here” style.
you should also consider the potential sales of related merchandises, DVDs and goods, hell i almost have a business plan here.
Hmmm… The Dictator-Reality TV in Africa!
LOL
TWG
Sending in food aid would recreate Somolia. No reason to make that mistake again. I’d advise anyone who wants to send in NGOs to read “The Road to Hell” or “The Lords of Poverty”. Its a rare charity that I feel comfortable dontating to.
There IS no solution in Africa which hasn’t been tried before, and failed miserably. And the problem is bigger than any nation, or group of nations, can or wants to resolve — because the problems of Africa are self-perpetuating.
There is only one solution: walk away, and ignore the screaming and wailing. When the Starving Millions appear on TV, change the channel or take a dog for a walk.
I’m sick of people insisting that Africans should not be treated like children — yet when someone suggests that Africans may want to start acting like adults (ie. taking responsibility for their own circumstances), all of a sudden we’re bombarded with pictures of the Wretched Pore.
You can’t have it both ways. Yes, the situation is awful, terrible. I’ve been there, and seen it firsthand, and it’s worse even than you see on TV. The sheer scale of suffering makes you just throw your hands up — it’s like trying to stop the ocean tides with your bare hands.
And it’s self-perpetuating.
We’re all obsessed with Finding A Cure, or Fixing The Problem. We never want to admit that there are some problems which are just too big to be fixed.
Africa is the Big Problem. The only solution is benign dictatorship, and even that is short term, because one thing you learn very soon about Africa is that there is no long term except chaos, starvation, warfare, slavery, genocide and corruption.
It has nothing to do with race, incidentally: without oil, we’d be facing pretty much the same situation in the Middle East.
Like I said: walk away, let Africa sink. After a while, you will realize that we have better things to do with our lives.
Charity is an empty, bottomless pit, and nothing works. As Llamas said: Africa wins again.
Everyone who’s ever spent any time there understands completely. All the rest is just dreaming.
Yep. Where is Nyerere when you need him???
I have been considering a career change…
Oh, look, folks, I wasn’t seriously suggesting we could fix all of Zimbabwe’s problems with just one C54. Maybe we’d need several.
It was the IDEA, dammit, the IDEA!
Look, Ted Turner just p**sed away $100 million of his own money into the UN. Want me to take a minute a figure how much high-protein meal I could buy for that? There’s plenty of millionaires who could make a significant contribution or carry the entire cost of such a plan. Especially in the US, where the system encourages such people.
As to how many airplanes – well, I suggest that we co-opt those fleets of transports which always seem to be available to truck vast fleets of NGO’s and their Suburbans and Land-Cruisers from crisis to crisis. There’s C54’s and similar parked to the horizon in Arizona and Nevada – let’s go get some!
I fully understand Kim du Toit’s approach and his reasons for it. I suspect I’m just a couple of steps behind him in my understanding of Southern Africa, and still willing to hope that people can be saved from starving and lifted to a better life. Maybe I need to spend some more time there, it’s been a while . . .
llater,
llamas