Harare | Monday
ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe’s regime declared on Sunday that it would bar non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from distributing food aid in the national famine that aid agencies say has already begun.
The ban threatens to wreck a major international relief operation being mobilised by international donors.
Already nearly a million people are in “dire need” of food, the United Nations has estimated.
Information minister Jonathan Moyo said that only the government would be allowed to participate in the issue of food given by donors, because non-governmental organisations would use food aid to campaign against President Robert Mugabe in presidential elections due at the end of March.
“Suggestions by these groups to distribute food through NGOs are totally unacceptable,” Moyo was quoted as saying in the state-controlled Sunday Mail.
“We will not allow any strangers to roam around our country interfering in the political affairs of our country.”
Agricultural monitoring agencies say stocks of maize, the national staple, will start to run out next month. The situation has been exacerbated by the country’s imploding economy and runaway inflation which has meant that ordinary people can no longer afford to buy food, or seeds and fertilisers to plant crops for the imminent summer rains.
An assessment by the World Food Programme last month said that 705 000 people in the country’s tribal areas were in “dire need” now. Another 250 000 people in urban areas were in the same crisis, as were 30 000 farm workers and members their families displaced from commercial farms after being driven off by Mugabe’s lawless militias.
Diplomatic sources say there is also anxiety among donor governments that the government is determined to use food aid to bolster votes in the presidential election. – Sapa-AFP
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