Starving to death in Zimbabwe

As Kofi Annan's envoy Anna Tibaijuka, executive director of the U.N. program on sustainable housing, arrives in Zimbabwe, there are reports of some fresh thinking by the Zimbabwean government. It has changed the name of its campaign of destroying people's homes from Operation Clean Up the Filth to Operation Let Us Be Settled and Prosper. It has announced that the military have been ordered 'to lead a task force to begin reconstruction. "Building brigades" would start work immediately to build houses, shops and markets to replace those destroyed by the police...'

This may not have been altogether convincing to everyone. Here is an account of two recent protests in Bulawayo. And here is another note of menace to Zimbabwe. But, worst of all is this, the hidden famine now afflicting parts of the country (via Mick):

Zimbabwe is in the grip of a hidden famine and as a United Nations envoy begins a tour of the country today, The Independent can reveal a deadly nexus of Aids, starvation and depopulation of the cities that is sending tens of thousands to a silent death in rural areas.

One month into President Robert Mugabe's brutal campaign of demolition and displacement, which has cost at least 400,000 people their homes and livelihoods, the scale of the humanitarian disaster is emerging. The victims of this forced expulsion - which has been compared to the devastating policies of Pol Pot in Cambodia - are arriving in the already famine-stricken countryside, where, jobless and homeless, they are waiting to die. Unofficial estimates obtained by The Independent suggest the death rate is already outstripping the birth rate nationwide by 4,000 a week.

The UN has responded by dispatching a special envoy, Anna Tibaijuka, who arrived in Zimbabwe last night, to assess the position. The Tanzanian official, head of the UN habitat programme, is expected to be taken on a carefully organised visit to urban areas where evidence of the pogrom has been hastily cleared. The St Anne's Catholic mission in Brunapeg will not be on her government-controlled tour. The remote outpost, south of Bulawayo, has found itself on the front line of this new battle for survival. A grinding two-hour drive along a rocky dirt track from the main road linking Bulawayo to the Plum Tree border crossing into Botswana, the mission provides the only prospect of medical help for a hundred miles in all directions.

Each day scores of starving and sick people come trekking out of the bush in search of a doctor. Many barefoot and exhausted after walking for up to 12 hours through the night, they form a queue outside the spartan concrete compound and wait.

Pedro Porrino, a Spanish physician who has been working at the mission for three years, says that what is unfolding is an unprecedented crisis. "For the first time I am seeing people who are literally starving to death," he says. "There are people coming to the mission asking to be admitted just so they can eat... Out in the bush families are living on one meal a day."
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According to one senior consultant surgeon in Bulawayo, who preferred not to be named, the scale of the Aids epidemic has so far masked the extent of the famine. "Put simply, people are dying of Aids before they can starve to death," he said.

Please read the rest. On the position taken by the African Union, see these two posts by Tim Burke.