ZANU PF Preparation for "Food For Votes" campaign begins
- From: "Zvakanaka" <lalapansi@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2007 07:39:45 +0200
Mugabe outlaws food imports
Pretoria News
July 21, 2007 Edition 1
MICHAEL SCHMIDT
President Robert Mugabe has made it a crime for his citizens to import
foodstuffs purchased in neighbouring countries such as South Africa from
August 1. This comes as 4 million Zimbabweans are in desperate need of food
aid and the shelves of the country's shops stand empty.
Yet his wife Grace Mugabe is known to go on shopping sprees in South Africa
and in Europe, and spending hundreds of thousands of cash on household
goods - including food and drink.
The "Control of Goods (Import and Export)" agriculture regulations outlawing
the transshipment to the starving nation of a wide range of live and
processed food and animal products - plus animal feed, fertiliser,
industrial equipment, timber and timber products, and tyres - was gazetted
by Mugabe on July 6 and come into effect in just over a week's time.
On the same day, according to a printed warning on Z$1 000 notes (now worth
about R27.50), these notes will expire - further evidence of Zimbabwe's
meltdown that has seen South Africa deporting close to 4 000 Zimbabweans
weekly.
Mugabe is said to have issued the regulation in order to prevent imported
food being resold. Yet critics say many expatriate Zimbabweans merely send
food to their families, who depend on it to feed themselves and their
families.
Elinor Sisulu, advocacy manager at the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, a
Harare-based NGO, said she feared the motive was to starve Zimbabweans into
submission.
"Perhaps they (the government) think this will stimulate food production,
but with the enforced price cuts it is not viable anymore to grow food for
resale.
"A parallel is Cambodia under Pol Pot. The only consequence will be the
intensification of hunger . This is quite terrifying."
Increasingly food was becoming politicised and hunger could be seen as a
pre-election weapon in Mugabe's hands, she said.
In 2003, Grace Mugabe forked out R99 604 in a five-day spending spree in
South Africa, including a R51 860 dinner set imported from Britain,
purchased at Sandton City. Her splurge - exposed in VAT refund documents and
till-slips lodged by her entourage at the then-Johannesburg International
Airport - included R2 613 spent on fashion items.
It is not known if Grace still shops in South Africa, but in a fortnight's
time, purchases such as the R16 159 she spent in 2003 at Buchels Hardware in
Pretoria and the R3 443 at Pick 'n Pay - including orange juice, snacks and
toilet rolls - could well become contraband.
And in 2004 reports revealed that in 2002, Gideon Gono, then Zimbabwe's
reserve bank governor, ordered a leather briefcase stuffed with US$100 000
in cash, raised by the bank on the black market, on behalf of Grace. A bank
employee said she used the money to finance a trip to London a month later
that included a buying frenzy at Harrods.
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