Some 70 years ago, Stalin used famine as a weapon to eliminate Russia’s richer peasants whom he saw as a potential threat. Tens of millions died as a result. Zimbabwe’s President Mugabe has learned from the Russian tyrant. There, the authorities are using a famine to starve those who support the opposition. Food aid is being blocked in places that voted against President Mugabe during the March elections.
There are few countries in the world facing such a mountain of calamities as Zimbabwe. More than a third of Zimbabweans are HIV-positive. The ruling ZANU-PF party relies increasingly on brute force to maintain itself in power. It gerrymandered the springtime election and the main leaders of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change have now been arrested on patently trumped-up charges. A coercive and ill-thought out land redistribution program has exacerbated food shortages and that of foreign exchange earnings. The government continues its cripplingly expensive foreign military adventure in Congo. And now drought has compounded the problem. Half the population is threatened with famine. Zimbabwe faces not so much famine as potential extinction. It is in need of serious help.
Yet the help that is on offer, in the form of food aid, is being used by the regime to reinforce itself. There are reports that, in famine areas, people are being refused permission to buy food unless they can produce a ruling party membership card. Now, from aid agencies, come stories of children dying of malnutrition-related illnesses. There is every reason to fear that situation will worsen. The reduction in food stockpiles, the continuing decrease in rural productivity, small holders’ inability through poverty to purchase seed, and the inability of the once-thriving private sector to import food put ever more power into the hands of a government already willing to use its role as food distributor to attack its enemies and favor its friends.
Far away in Europe and the US, governments are now of a mind that the only way of improving the lot of ordinary Zimbabweans is through Mugabe’s removal. Their disgust with him has finally started to produce sanctions. Closer to home, countries like South Africa, fearful that unless there is political change there will be violence, want to work with Mugabe. President Thabo Mbeki has suggested that his Zimbabwean counterpart share power with the opposition. But neither approach is working. It is ordinary people who pay the price of sanctions which, ironically, thus become a means of strengthening the regime; it uses them to oppress those it fears while rewarding its friends. Meanwhile, South Africa’s suggestion is simply ignored.
If ever a regime needed changing, it is Zimbabwe’s. It is rotten from top to bottom. Its use of food as a weapon against its own people is repulsive. But Western stick and South African tolerance clearly are not going to work. Inside the country, Mugabe still holds the trump cards. A little Western carrot balanced by some South African stick might be more productive. As regional superpower, Pretoria has the means to make Zimbabwe sit up and listen. So far the will is not there. Perhaps the arrival of starving refugees on its border will make it look at the situation differently. That may not take long.
