Anti-Mugabe
Groups Bring Cause to WSSD
By Toye Olori
Zimbabwean opposition officials and representatives of white
farmers under the umbrella of Justice in Agriculture (JAG)
have arrived in Johannesburg to try to drum up international
support for their effort to “restore democracy”
to Zimbabwe.
JAG spokesman Jenni Williams told TerraViva that the farmers'
group is here to highlight the injustices being perpetrated
against Zimbabweans in the name of land reforms.
The International Crisis Group, has charged the ZANU-PF government
of President Robert Mugabe of carrying out a policy of selective
starvation against its political enemies and has called on
the United States to back up, through assertive diplomacy,
recent challenges to the legitimacy of the Mugabe government.
''The region and the international community must intensify
efforts to produce an inclusive interim government, leading
to internationally supervised elections. This will require
a range of pressures and incentives, with the close involvement
of neighbouring states,'' says John Prendergast ICG Africa
Programme co-director.
''The denial of food to opposition strongholds has replaced
overt violence as the government's principal tool of repression
in Zimbabwe. Mortality and morbidity rates will continue to
accelerate if this policy is not reversed,'' Prendergast said.
He stated that the most vulnerable sub-group is Zimbabwe's
black farm workers, who have been displaced by ZANU-PF land-grabs.
According to him, the international media have concentrated
on the plight of hundreds of white farmers forced off the
land, when more than 1.5 million black farm workers and family
members are at risk of acute hunger.
''The distribution of food aid has already been politicised,
but ZANU-PF is also politicising commercial food distribution.
It monopolises food imports, steering food to or away from
areas based on political calculations, allowing party officials
to profit from the re-sale of food at exorbitant prices, and
in some locations requires ZANU-PF membership as a condition
of purchasing,'' he said.
Aid agencies blame food shortages on the land seizure policy,
but the country's Information Minister Jonathan Moyo says
drought, rather than the land seizure programme, is responsible
for the famine.
''We uphold certain political values such as sovereignty,
independence and pan-African solidarity. These are things
we have to pursue at the summit in Johannesburg,'' one South
African newspaper quotes Moyo as saying.
There has been a growing isolation of Mugabe's government
by the international community with the United States calling
the land redistribution insane.
While most African leaders are silent on the situation, President
Joaquim Chissano of Mozambque has come out in support of the
reform saying: ''Land reform is aimed at achieving a balanced
distribution of land among all Zimbabwean people and responded
to one of the main objectives foreseen in the efforts that
led to the independence of Zimbabwe''. |
