Skip Nav | Home | Mobile | Editorial Guidelines | Mission Statement | About Us | Contact | Help | Security | Support Us

World

Zimbabwe: Politics and Food Aid

brian | 14.06.2008 04:26 | Social Struggles | World

There is no evidence that the government of Zimbabwe is using food "as a political tool to intimidate voters ahead of an election" or that it is deliberately denying "hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Zimbabweans" food aid, as Human Rights Watch and The New York Times allege.


Zimbabwe: Politics and Food Aid

By Stephen Gowans

There is no evidence that the government of Zimbabwe is using food “as a political tool to intimidate voters ahead of an election” or that it is deliberately denying “hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Zimbabweans” food aid, as Human Rights Watch and The New York Times allege.

In fact, a careful reading of what both sources claim, points to a deliberate and knowing attempt to palter with the truth, reflecting and reinforcing a narrative that holds Africa, and particularly Zimbabwe, to be marked by suffering people, corrupt and monstrous governments, and endless chaos.

The New York Times began a June 4 article on Zimbabwe by announcing that “hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Zimbabweans — orphans and old people, the sick and the down and out – have lost access to food and other basic humanitarian assistance.”

It’s true that Zimbabweans have lost access to food delivered by Western NGOs, but not food aid altogether, and only for the duration of the presidential run-off election campaign. In the interim, the government has made arrangements to take on the job of distributing food aid to those in need. No government-engineered famine is imminent, notwithstanding what The New York Times says.

Harare has ordered NGOs to temporarily scale back or cease operations, accusing them of illegally channeling funding to the opposition MDC party and in March’s elections of “going around threatening villagers in rural areas that the donations they were handing them would be the last if they voted for Zanu-PF and President Mugabe.” [1] It is out of a desire to eclipse Western interference in the election that the Zimbabwe government has taken this step.

Are the government’s accusations credible?

For the last seven years, the US and its allies have cut off all development assistance to Zimbabwe, disabled all lines of credit, stopped the World Bank and International Monetary Fund from providing financial assistance, and have pressured private companies from doing business with the country. The result has been “a form of collective punishment designed to destabilize the country and shake the population’s faith” in the government. [2] Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Zimbabweans — orphans and old people, the sick and the down and out – have suffered. And to hide their hand in creating the misery, the US and Britain and their allies have blamed it all on Harare’s land reform policies, an inversion of the causal chain. It was not Harare’s land reform policies that created the disaster, but the West’s meting out collective punishment in response to the land reform policies that undermined Zimbabwe’s economy and created widespread suffering.

It is hardly outside the realm of high probability, then, that Western governments that continue to use sanctions “to weaken the economy of the country, to get the people of Zimbabwe so poor and hungry they can change their voting behavior,” [3] would also use food aid directly as a political weapon to shape the outcome of the upcoming election through their influence over NGOs operating in the country. After all, creating hunger in Zimbabwe is exactly what Western governments have been doing for the last seven years, indirectly, through the use of sanctions.

But Human Rights Watch and The New York Times say nothing about Western sanctions and instead accuse the Mugabe government of making Zimbabweans miserable, and further, of deliberately inducing hunger. Human Rights Watch researcher for Africa, Tiseke Kasambala, accuses Harare of taking a decision “to let people go hungry,” citing it as “yet another attempt to use food as a political tool to intimidate voters ahead of an election.” [4] Kasambala conjures the impression that (a) the government is deliberately inducing hunger and (b) that this will somehow help Mugabe’s chances of winning the presidential election run-off poll. But while the HRW researcher says the government is letting people go hungry, he also complains that it is picking up the slack, delivering food aid in place of the NGOs. The government, he says, should not be distributing food but should “let independent aid agencies feed people.” [5]

Harare, then, stands accused of two opposing crimes: of letting people go hungry, and of delivering food aid (in place of NGOs) and thereby saving people from hunger. Kasambala’s “you’re guilty no matter what you do” approach reveals that what’s really at issue isn’t whether people will go hungry (and they won’t, though Harare’s accusers play politics by carefully couching their comments to make it seem a government-engineered famine is imminent); the real issue is who controls the food aid. The problem from Kasambala’s and New York Times reporter Celia Dugger’s point of view, is that it isn’t Western-funded NGOs that will be doling out relief for the duration of the election campaign. Dugger acknowledges that the government has bought 600,000 tons of corn to distribute to the hungry, but warns Harare could (not will, but could) use food “as an inducement to win support.” [6] Of course, she offers not a whit of evidence that it is doing so or will do so. On the other side, there is good reason to believe that if Western governments are consistent, they’ll use their funding arrangements with NGOs to extend their policy of bribing the people to vote for their candidate – this time with threats of food aid deliveries stopping if the wrong candidate is elected.

Kasambala, representing a rights organization that is dominated by the US foreign policy establishment, and can therefore hardly be expected to be politically neutral where Zimbabwe is concerned, goes further by predicting Harare will withhold food aid as “a political tool to intimidate voters ahead of (the) election.” [7] In a milieu in which the “media have long since largely abandoned any attempt at impartiality in its reporting of Zimbabwe, the common assumption being that Mugabe is a murderous dictator at the head of a uniquely wicked regime,” [8] Kasambala’s dark prediction has a ring of plausibility to it, but if you examine his accusation critically, it falls apart.

How, one might ask, could a government induce hunger and expect to win support, when a hungry electorate would be far more likely to vote against, not for, whoever caused the hunger? Indeed, the aim of sanctions is to create enough misery to force the voters to cry uncle by voting Mugabe out of office. It would surely be a government of fools that would add to the misery already created by sanctions by deliberately engineering more misery. This would serve the aims of the regime changers in the West, not Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party. According to Kasambala’s logic, if John McCain wants to win support, he should announce that, if elected, he will restore the draft and hike taxes sharply across-the-board.

Western media and organizations allied with US and British imperial goals are trying to create the impression that the government of Robert Mugabe is deliberately inducing hunger and using food aid to shape the outcome of the presidential run-off election, that is, when they’re not accusing him of planning to rig the election. One wonders why Mugabe would tamper with the election results if he is using food as a political weapon, and vice-a-versa. Apparently, the aim of the demonization campaign is to hurl as many accusations at Mugabe as possible, in hopes that some or all of them will stick, even if they’re mutually contradictory.

It is Western countries that have created hunger through a program of sanctions that has sabotaged the Zimbabwean economy and led to widespread misery and need for food aid. Mugabe’s government has temporarily suspended the operations of NGOs, not to seize control of the delivery of food aid for political gain, but to block Western governments from operating remotely through NGOs to channel funding to the campaign of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and to use food as a political weapon. If you read the Western press uncritically and absorb Human Rights Watch’s analyses without a healthy dose of skepticism, it doesn’t seem that way, but as Malcolm X once said, “If you’re not careful the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” [9]

1. Herald (Zimbabwe) May 29, 2008; June 4, 2008.
2. CPGB-ML Statement, “Hands off Zimbabwe,” May 12, 2008.
3. Peter Mavunga, Herald (Zimbabwe) May 3, 2008.
4. Guardian (UK), June 4, 2008.
5. Ibid.
6. New York Times, June 4, 2008.
7. Guardian (UK), June 4, 2008.
8. Seamus Milne, Guardian (UK), April 17, 2008.
9. New African, June 2008.
 http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/06/04/zimbabwe-politics-and-food-aid/

brian

Comments

Hide the following 2 comments

Zimbabwean organisations, not just western NGO, are targetted

15.06.2008 00:44


This is the most recent Human Rights Watch report. Although HRW may be US dominated the organisations in Zimbabwe getting shut down by Zau PF oppression include Zimbabwean Trade Unions and church organisations.

 http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2008/06/13/zimbab19131.htm

"In the past few days, police have arbitrarily arrested and detained several civil society activists and forced a number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to suspend their operations.

On June 11, police ordered several NGOs in Gweru to shut down on the authority of a letter from Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Nicholas Goche banning food aid operations. NGOs that were ordered to shut down include: Gweru Agenda and Gwanda Agenda (both are affiliated with Bulawayo Agenda, an organization that works to promote public rights to fair and accurate information and freedom of expression); the National Constitutional Assembly offices in Masvingo, Gweru, and Matebeleland South; Musasa Project in Gweru; the Gweru office of Médecins Sans Frontières; and the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions in Gweru.

In Harare, several NGOs have closed out of fear of a government clampdown, including ZIMRIGHTS, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, Counseling Services Unit, and Zimbabwe Civic Education Trust. The National Association of NGOs has also ceased all field operations.

On June 9, armed police, central intelligence organization officers, and soldiers entered without a warrant the Ecumenical Centre in Harare, a building that houses various church-based civic groups including the Student Christian Movement of Zimbabwe (SCMZ), the Ecumenical Support Network, Zimbabwe National Pastors Conference, Christian Alliance, Save Zimbabwe Campaign and PADARE Men’s Forum on Gender. During the raid, police arrested 10 people including the SCMZ general secretary, Prosper Munatsi, and took away files, computers, digital cameras, and a mini bus. Those arrested were later charged with possessing subversive material and detained. They were released on June 13 without going to court after the attorney general’s office refused to prosecute them, citing lack of evidence. However, the police refused to release the files, computers, digital cameras, and mini bus confiscated in the raid, saying the material would be released only after the runoff election.

On June 8, police in Binga, Matebeleland North province, arrested and detained employees and members of the Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe (MMPZ) when they attempted to hold a workshop in the area. Police accused Abel Chikomo, Abel Kaingidza, Maureen Kademaunga, and 10 others of holding a public meeting without police clearance under the Public Order and Security Act (POSA). However, according to MMPZ coordinator Andy Moyse, the meeting was a professional meeting that did not require notification or clearance from police under POSA. The 13 were released on June 11 without charge.

“The government’s harassment, intimidation, and arrests of civil society groups harms not only the groups, but also all the people who depend on them for food and other help,” said Gagnon. “This pre-runoff climate of repression and fear is disastrous for all Zimbabweans.”

Attacks on civil society and the opposition are the latest developments in a sustained campaign of terror by the ZANU-PF government against those who voted for the opposition MDC in the March 29 elections. Human Rights Watch has documented extensive use of torture and the deaths of at least 36 people in politically motivated violence in its report “‘Bullets for Each of You’: State-Sponsored Violence since Zimbabwe’s March 29 Elections.” "

Himan RIghts


HRW and HR imperialism

15.06.2008 02:05

HRW is the same HRW that hsa attacked Chavez and Venezuela:

'Has Human Rights Watch Joined Venezuela’s Opposition?
June 18th 2004, by Gregory Wilpert – Venezuelanalysis.com
It looks like the cat is out of the bag: Human Rights Watch has formally joined Venezuela’s opposition. Well, not quite; it is not a formally consummated deal yet, since their latest report does appeal to President Chavez by saying, “the criticisms offered [in the report] [should] not be mischaracterized as a partisan attack.”

Then why has just about everyone who supports the Chavez government taken the latest Human Rights Watch (HRW) report on Venezuela, about the country’s “Judicial Independence under Siege,” as precisely the opposite of what HRW says it is, as a “partisan attack”? Is it because they do not want to deal with the real issues, as HRW’s America’s Director José Miguel Vivanco suggests, or is it because the report actually is a partisan attack – one that is being launched just in time to turn national and international public opinion against the Chavez government as it faces an unprecedented recall referendum a mere two months from now?

etc
 http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/551

So substitute Zimbabwe for Venezuela, and Mugabe for Chavez, and what do you have! Human Rights imperialism

brian


Publish

Publish your news

Do you need help with publishing?

/regional publish include --> /regional search include -->

World Topics

Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista

Kollektives

Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World

Other UK IMCs
Bristol/South West
London
Northern Indymedia
Scotland

Server Appeal Radio Page Video Page Indymedia Cinema Offline Newsheet

secure Encrypted Page

You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.

If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

IMCs


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech