http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/21/zimbabwe.unitednations


Millions of Zimbabweans are threatened with starvation after the widespread failure of the latest harvest brought on by the government's disastrous mishandling of land redistribution, and food shortages in the shops caused by hyperinflation.

The United Nations says hundreds of thousands of people require food aid immediately because they have harvested little or nothing in recent weeks. It has warned that up to 5 million will need assistance in the coming months. A third of the population is chronically malnourished.

But attempts to assist them are blocked by a ban on foreign aid agencies working in rural areas after President Robert Mugabe said they were fronts for "regime change" by Britain and the US.

Aid workers say the first signs of looming famine are evident, with significant population movements and children arriving at hospitals suffering from kwashiorkor (a form of malnutrition). Many families are reduced to one meal a day, with some living on fruit berries.

The UN says that it has seen a significant rise in the number of entire families fleeing to South Africa.

Food availability has also been hit by hyperinflation, which economists say runs above 10m%. The central bank is issuing a $100bn note today, the highest denomination to date but worth less than 10p.

The crisis is adding to the pressure on Mugabe to cede power to his opponents and save his country from further disaster.

But he defiantly continues to blame the shortages on an anti-government conspiracy, accusing companies of deliberately withholding fertiliser and other agricultural necessities. He has threatened to jail those he says are responsible.

At the weekend, the government said it was preparing to seize foreign-owned firms it accuses of supporting sanctions against Zimbabwe's leaders.

A medical worker in Matabeleland, where the maize crop failure was almost total, said that there were widespread food shortages and what did arrive was mostly given to members of Mugabe's Zanu-PF party.

"The situation is extremely severe in Matabeleland. Hunger is extreme. There are the odd maize deliveries but it only goes to people with Zanu cards. Even where there is food people can't afford it," she said.

"In St Luke's hospital in Lupane there are 16 children aged five to 12 with kwashiorkor. That's significant because in children of that age it's usually not related to HIV. It's almost certainly because of malnutrition and it's only the tip of the iceberg. These are the ones who made it to hospital. Most wouldn't."

"You see other signs that people are not getting enough to eat. There's an avalanche of people leaving."

In the Masvingo area in the east, witnesses say newly settled farmers are abandoning their land after the crop failures and making for towns. A Zimbabwean official in the area said large numbers of people were now resorting to desperate measures to survive including selling off precious livestock that often represented the bulk of a family's wealth.

"It is difficult to stop people leaving the land," he said. "People are selling livestock. They get five kilos of maize for two goats. For a cow it's 300 kilos of maize."

"People are no longer interested in politics. They are talking about how to survive, how to get money or food."

A report last month by the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation and World Food Programme estimated that the recent maize harvest was down 28% on last year, which itself fell 44% on 2006.

The former white-owned farms are producing just 10% of the food they did a decade ago and long-established communal farmers, who used to grow the bulk of Zimbabwe's maize supply, are now growing about 25% of former production.

The report blames the crop failure on a combination of poor weather, a collapse in productivity on the redistributed white-owned farms and other government policies that have helped created shortages of seeds and fertiliser, and led to the collapse of infrastructure such as power and irrigation. It says unrealistic price controls have undermined the market.

The FAO/WFP report says that 2 million people will need assistance in the coming weeks as what remains of their food stocks runs out.

That number will rise to to 5.1 million early next year.

A WFP spokesman, Richard Lee, said that the principal obstacle to delivering food was the ban on foreign aid organisations that handle distribution on the ground. "The issue is the continuing ban on NGO activity. We were rounding up 300,000 of the most vulnerable people but because of the restrictions on NGOs we are only able to reach about 135,000 people. NGOs are absolutely crucial to our ability to deliver," he said.

The UN is pressing the government to lift the ban, although some foreign aid agencies feel it is not pushing hard enough.

Lee said that the WFP was hearing anecdotal evidence "that the situation is worrying in many areas".

"We're hearing these sorts of stories about reduction in meals earlier than usual. It is worrying that it is happening so close to the harvest. It's not Ethiopia in the mid-80s but clearly it is very worrying," he said.

Agriculturalists warn that the situation is not likely to improve with the next harvest. Zimbabwe requires 27,000 tonnes of maize seed for a season's planting. This year's yield looks likely to fall as low as 2,500 tonnes, leaving farmers with little to plant.

I am quite curious though as to how far this will go, so if everyone in Zimbabwe runs out of the country or die, leaving only Mugabe and his party cronies are they still going to want to rule the country? Who is Mugabe going to rule then? Are the animals going to become the new citizens? With this continued pet stance how far must things go?

people,people, zimbabwe are sorting themselves out,in case you dont know tsvangirai and mugabe as agreed to power sharing and putting their battered economy back on the road to recovery,enoguh with zimbabwe and lets expend all this energy into criticising our own nigerian leaders,zimbabwe says thank you nigerians for all your help and support but we can handle it from here,go and solve your own problems,

Another country with people who deserve what they continue to get. I am not sure how POWER sharing is remedy for the crisis in Zimbabwe but I can see some already believe it is the elixir.

I hope if Yar adua refuses to leave his seat in Nigeria, we also agree to soothe his ego by allowing a power sharing deal between him and the next person.  2500 tonnes actuallized but 27000 needed. PowerSharing is the answer. We should infact, allow all leaders around africa to know this so they understand that they can continue in office if they throw a tantrum and this will solve all the people's problems.


Africa deserves what she continues to get.

Zimbabwe crisis talks to start Tuesday in S.Africa

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's ruling party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change will begin negotiations on Tuesday on a power-sharing deal that could end the political crisis,the opposition and diplomatic sources said.

President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai signed a deal on Monday that committed the ruling ZANU-PF and two factions of the MDC to two weeks of negotiations with South African mediators.

[img]http://africa.reuters.com/newsimages/2008/07/22/tn_2008-07-[/img]

"There was convergence among all the parties that the dialogue had to start as soon as the MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) was done, hence the resumption of that process today," an MDC official said on condition of anonymity.

A diplomatic source close to the talks said they would start on Tuesday in South Africa's capital, Pretoria. The source said neither Mugabe nor Tsvangirai would attend the opening round.

The government and the opposition had been deadlocked over talks since Mugabe was re-elected on June 27 in a second-round poll boycotted by Tsvangirai because of violence against his supporters. Mugabe blames the opposition for the bloodshed.

The main goal of the Pretoria talks will be the creation of a government of national unity, though the two sides differ on who should lead it and how long it should stay in power.

Pressure on the two sides to share power came from the African Union and the Southern African Development Community, concerned by the political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe that has flooded neighbouring states with millions of refugees.

The European Union on Tuesday increased pressure on Mugabe, saying it had agreed additional sanctions on Zimbabwe.

An EU official said at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels that 37 people and four companies would be added to the EU's Zimbabwe sanctions list.

MEDIATION PROCESS

The breakthrough between Zimbabwe's rivals appeared to follow South African President Thabo Mbeki's agreement late last week to expand the mediation process to include the African Union, the United Nations and other SADC officials.

Mbeki has been mediating in the crisis for more than a year and had been increasingly criticised, especially by Tsvangirai's MDC, which accused him of taking too soft a line with Mugabe.

Tsvangirai had previously refused to enter formal talks unless government militias stopped violence he says has killed 120 of his supporters. He also wanted Mugabe to recognise his victory in the first round of the presidential poll on March 29.

The talks are expected to be tense and possibly acrimonious. The MDC has accused Mugabe and ZANU-PF of violating human rights and rigging elections.

Tsvangirai has been arrested at least half a dozen times by security forces in the past two years, and he was beaten along with dozens of supporters in an aborted anti-government protest last year.

"This is just the first step on a journey whose duration and success is dependent on the sincerity and good faith of all parties involved," Tsvangirai said in a statement on Tuesday.

Mugabe, 84, has dismissed the MDC as a puppet of the West and vowed never to let it take power. The president, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, has also insisted that the opposition accept his landslide victory last month.

Zimbabwe's economic collapse under Mugabe's rule has plunged the once prosperous country into inflation of at least 2 million percent, crippling food and fuel shortages and 80 percent unemployment.