Financial Gazette (Harare)
12 September 2002
But while the Zimbabwean government is busy facilitating the starvation of the majority of its people by evicting commercial farmers, Chissano's countrymen have begun to eat food grown by those same rejected farmers.
The publication Diario de Mocambique reports that consumers in Chimoio, the capital of Mozambique's Manica province, are finding food crops grown by the Zimbabwean farmers much cheaper than imported food.
They can buy 15 kilogrammes of potatoes grown by a Zimbabwean farming in the Barue district for about 70 000 meticais, for instance, instead of the 120 000 to 130 000 meticais they would normally pay for the same amount of potatoes if they were imported.
Another Zimbabwean farmer is said to be selling 300 litres of milk a day in Chimoio and Beira, while others have planted flowers for export and others plan to grow tobacco and vegetables.
Mozambique's Minister of Agriculture Helder Muteia says 20 farmers are working in the country and there is a "waiting list" of 50 others who have yet to fulfil conditions that will enable them to be allocated land.
Muteia expects Mozambique's first tobacco processing plant to result from Zimbabwean investment in the near future. This will free Mozambican tobacco producers from their current reliance on Malawi to process their crop.
The Mozambicans diplomatically maintain that their acceptance of Zimbabwean farmers is a routine attempt to secure foreign investment from investors who "respect our investment law . . . have their own financial resources and . . . have an approved project".
But clearly they are smart enough to take advantage of the short-sighted policies of a government which insists on disabling the section of the farming community which, when there is a drought that decimates the crops of peasants and small-scale growers, usually feeds Zimbabwe.
At least six million Zimbabweans could starve to death and the country's top foreign currency earner, the tobacco industry, is on the verge of collapse.
The Mozambicans, on the other hand, will laugh all the way to the bank and to their larders.
Hero worship
President Sam Nujoma of Namibia is one proponent of Mugabe's policies who could soon be laughing out the other side of his face.
His increasing hero-worshipping of the Zimbabwean President has some Namibian politicians and representatives of the international community worried.
Nujoma shares Mugabe's aversion of homosexuality and recently threatened to expropriate the land of "arrogant white farmers" in Zimbabwe-style land grabs.
Nujoma last week stunned the world by savaging British Prime Minister Tony Blair and boasting that Africa could do without Western aid - in a Mugabe-style tirade that lacked the Zimbabwean leader's finesse and eloquence.
He could soon have to account for his hasty dismissal of foreign aid though. European diplomats are said to be planning meetings with government representatives to clarify the president's remarks and consider their implications.
A European Union diplomat told The Namibian that Nujoma's tirade had adversely affected international perception of Namibia by associating it with Zimbabwe, which has become a pariah state.
The opposition Congress of Democrats has advised the Namibian cabinet and the ruling SWAPO to distance themselves from Nujoma's comments and to "direct him henceforth to read statements prepared for him instead of time and again speaking off the cuff".
"Every time he does it, (he) utters embarrassing and misguided pronouncements," Congress of Democrats secretary-general Ignatius Shixwameni said in a statement.
Shixwameni said Nujoma must not "sacrifice Namibia on the altar of his close friend and crony" Mugabe, adding: "Let us make more international friends and not enemies. Namibia and Africa are ill-prepared to fight a war against Europe and America."
Nujoma obviously needs a couple of cliches explained to him: know which side your bread is buttered and never bite the hand that feeds you.
Cuban curse?
If recent reports are to be believed, Cuba's generous provision of doctors to prop up Zimbabwe's crumbling public health delivery system could prove to be a curse rather than a blessing.
Cuban doctors deployed at Bulawayo's Mpilo Hospital are reported to have performed more than 100 hysterectomies on Bulawayo women in the space of only five months.
Hospital employees say such a high number of hysterectomies would normally be achieved in more than five years.
What is particularly alarming, if this report is true, is that most of the women operated on were not consulted before the potentially life-threatening surgery and that the doctors concerned are said to see nothing wrong with their actions.
If hospital and Ministry of Health officials are not already trying to get to the bottom of these allegations, they need to promptly investigate and act to address the matter instead of sweeping it under the rug, as usually happens in many such cases.
The human and reproductive rights of the women affected have been savagely violated and they deserve the satisfaction of seeing those responsible made to account for their actions.
The Ministry of Health is, through its own folly, now forced to rely on other countries to staff its hospitals and has the responsibility of ensuring that these foreign doctors are bound by the same ethical considerations as locally trained practitioners.
Failure to ensure that the many Cuban doctors working in Zimbabwe are on the same page as everyone else could be a serious threat to the lives of the patients relying on them.
Doomsday
The end of the world is nigh, according to a little-known doomsday cult based in Nantes, France, which calls itself the New Lighthouse sect.
While I'm not given to such flights of fancy myself, there are some among us who might be interested to know that October 24 is the date set by the New Lighthouse cult for doomsday.
Not surprisingly, with the bloodbaths of sects like Heaven's Gate and the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God still fresh in many people's minds, the police in Nantes are keeping a suicide watch on the New Lighthouse sect.
Cult members however deny plans of a mass suicide. Instead, they are daily watching the skies for voyagers from Venus, who they believe will airlift them from Earth before life as we know it comes to an end. And on this note, we must end this week's Notebook.
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