- Dear Family and Friends,
-
- Thank you all for the Christmas cards, emails and
messages
offering words of support, encouragement and hope this last week. I
apologise
for not responding to an awful lot of them but each one was read and
treasured,
thank you.
-
- All week we have been absolutely bombarded by State owned
radio and television reports telling us that this has been the best
Christmas
for 100 years because Zimbabweans have been given back their land and are
expecting "bumper harvests." I went away for a few days, traveled
a couple of hundred kilometres and saw for myself the state of the crops
on Zimbabwean farms and am still in a state of deep shock. On the entire
220 kilometres of my journey there were less than a dozen fields on the
roadside growing a saleable crop. Of these not one was maize, Zimbabwe's
staple food.
-
- There were many dozens of little patches, some perhaps
as big as one acre, where newly resettled farmers have claimed a vast field
and managed to plant only a minute fraction of it with food. Zimbabwe's
newly resettled farmers have not planted enough food for themselves, let
alone a surplus with which to support 13 million Zimbabweans.
-
- Perhaps what struck me most is that we have gone
backwards
in time. From tractors and pivot irrigation tending crops for sale to
support
the nation, the view now is of oxen pulling hand ploughs in little squares
to feed perhaps one man and his wife for three or four months. Having been
all my life in Africa and a farmer for a decade, I find it criminal in
the extreme that our prime growing season is going to waste like this and
that our Agriculture Minister is sitting in Harare saying that we are in
for a bumper harvest.
-
- More criminal is that our Minister of Environment is
doing and saying nothing about the vast environmental degradation that
lies there along the road sides for us all to see. On countless fields
along the road dozens of indigenous trees have been hacked down to be
replaced
by one or two primitive grass huts. In the middle of timber plantations
hundreds of prime trees, grown for poles and furniture, have been felled
to make room for one ramshackle hut. On almost every field our 'new
farmers'
have planted maize along the river banks, gullies are visible, chemicals
are leaching into our water systems, siltation has started, contours have
been ploughed through.
-
- We have gone from being a vastly productive country to
one of primitive subsistence and all the highly-educated Ministers who
govern us with their Masters degrees and Doctorates are saying nothing,
doing nothing. They have watched in political silence as commercial farmers
have been stopped from growing food by "war veterans", they have
taken Zimbabwe back into the dark ages. For over a year I have been saying
that starvation is approaching, this week I saw the reality of it.
-
- This has been the best Christmas in 100 years for a very
few Zimbabweans. 4 people were murdered in political violence this week.
Trymore Midzi, 24 years old was brutally assaulted in Bindura by men
wielding
machetes. He died in hospital. Titus Nheya, 56 years old was stabbed to
death in Karoi. Milton Chambati, 45 years old, attacked by a mob of fifty
was stabbed in the back and then beheaded in Magunge. Laban Chiweta, 24
years old was beaten to death by armed riot police near Bindura. My love
and condolences go to their wives and lovers, their children, friends and
families.
-
- On the morning of Christmas Eve a barefoot and barely
clothed young woman, perhaps 20, appeared outside my door. She was suckling
an infant at her distended breast and had a toddler at her feet. She was
starving, her eyes were filled with tears and her pleas for help were
garbled
but desperate. She carried her life, her home and her children's security
in a small, blanket enclosed bundle. This is the face of Zimbabwe in
2001.
-
- When I returned home, the hate mail again filled my
screen.
"Go back to Britain" it said, "there is no place for you
here." The writer said that the starvation is the fault of of white
farmers who are not delivering their produce to create artificial
shortages.
He did not seem to be aware of the cold hard fact - there is no produce
to sell 21 months after politicians decided to use race and land to secure
their re-election.
-
- The educated men and women who govern Zimbabwe, the civil
servants and the police who have turned a blind eye for almost two years
must now find ways of feeding us all. The time for hate and accusations,
for greed and jealousy is long gone, now we must all work together before
it is our mothers and daughters carrying their lives in small bundles
begging
for help.
-
- Until next week, with love,
- cathy
|
