OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Monday 5.30pm.
ZIMBABWE could need food aid within months unless its government pushes through urgently needed economic reforms, Britain’s junior foreign minister, Peter Hain, warned on Monday.
He told a Foreign Office press briefing that it was vital President Robert Mugabe began working with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund on a reform programme.
However, he said, it was unclear whether Mugabe, whose ruling party won a narrow election victory against a defiantly resurgent opposition last month, was ready to take the necesary steps.
“The smoke signals have not been clear,” Hain admitted. He added: “There is a real risk now, in fact a probability, of starvation in a country that should comfortably be able to feed itself.”
He said the Zimbabwe economy had seen a collapse in investor confidence and a 10 percent fall in its output last year. A similar decline was forecast for the year ahead.
Britain has been one of the strongest critics of its former colony to the point that Mugabe has publicly told London to mind its own business.
Meanwhile British diplomatic sources said Mugabe had faced “unprecedented criticisms,” including calls to resign, at a meeting of the governing Zanu-PF central committee following his defeat in a constitutional referendum earlier this year.
The president responded at that time by unleashing a wave of land seizures and illegal occupations of white-owned farms by so-called war veterans.
There are now signs of similar criticisms emerging at provincial level and elsewhere after last month’s elections, the sources added.
Zanu-PF only narrowly defeated the Movement for Democratic Change, despite a massive campaign of intimidation by government supporters.
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