Let Them Eat Nothing

If dictators were to have a motto it would go something like this: "Power before All Else." A dictator or would-be dictator seeks to increase his power by whatever means he can. Often these slaves to power slip into paranoia while attempting to keep the reins of control in their hands.

Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe is no exception. His ridiculous actions towards international aid groups is evidence enough. Story from the New York Times.

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Zimbabweans — orphans and old people, the sick and the down and out — have lost access to food and other basic humanitarian assistance as their government has clamped down on international aid groups it says are backing the political opposition, relief agencies say.

In recent days, CARE, one of the largest nonprofit groups working in the country, has been ordered by the Zimbabwean government to suspend all its operations, which help 500,000 of the country’s most vulnerable people. This month alone, CARE would have fed more than 110,000 people in schools, orphanages, old-age homes and in various programs, it said.

But the aid restrictions go far beyond any one group. Muktar Farah, deputy head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Zimbabwe, said Tuesday that millions of people had lost assistance because of what he called “the shrinking of humanitarian space.”

“NGOs have been told to scale down or stop operations throughout the country,” he said, referring to nongovernmental organizations.

Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, speaking on Tuesday at a United Nations food conference in Rome, accused nongovernmental organizations of interfering in politics and contended that the West had conspired “to cripple Zimbabwe’s economy” and bring about “illegal regime change.”

What a laughable charge. Mugabe has no one to blame but himself for the economic shambles that Zimbabwe is in. He seized land from white Zimbabwean farmers and gave them to his cronies, significantly weakening Zimbabwe's agriculture. His absurd price controls have paralyzed business and cost inflation to rise to levels above 150,000%. Go ahead and blame the West (or more specifically, the UK), but everyone knows Mugabe created the mess.

"Funds are being channeled through nongovernmental organizations to opposition political parties, which are a creation of the West,” he said. “These Western-funded NGOs also use food as a political weapon with which to campaign against government, especially in the rural areas.”

On Friday and Monday, representatives of aid groups were summoned by administrators in four districts and instructed to cease all work in the field until a bitterly contested presidential runoff was held on June 27 between Mr. Mugabe, in power for 28 years, and the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai.

Aid groups expect such summons to come from a growing list of districts.

In a summary of one such meeting, compiled by an aid group and provided to The New York Times, representatives of Mr. Mugabe’s office, the police and the army were present as the groups were warned not to say anything publicly about their withdrawal and not to conduct any operations at night.

Aid workers and human rights groups say the restrictions are meant to prevent them from witnessing attacks on opposition supporters, often in nighttime raids, amid the government’s increasingly violent and deadly crackdown on those it sees as a threat to its hold on power.

This reminds me of the Burmese junta's obstruction of aid to its people out of paranoid fears of regime change. Mugabe doesn't care about the people of Zimbabwe, he only cares about his regime. If people starve as a result of Mugabe cutting off access to aid groups, so be it. Anything that gets in the way of Mugabe needs to be controlled or shut down. Mugabe will make sure he "wins" the upcoming runoff election, and wants to conceal it from the rest of the world. These aid groups could be witnesses and he can't have that. As I said before, "Power before All Else."

I hope Thabo Mbeki (South African President) and all other apologists of Mugabe are proud of themselves. Anyone who feels compelled to give excuses for Mugabe shows (at the very least) indifference to the people of Zimbabwe.