Brian Kennedy
7 June 2008
Washington DC — The American ambassador to Harare has lashed out at the Zimbabwean government, accusing it of using food as a political tool.
Speaking a day after Zimbabwean security forces detained United States diplomats in the countryside, James McGee said in a teleconference with reporters in Washington DC: "We are dealing with a desperate regime here that will do anything to stay in power."
He added that no humanitarian aid was reaching rural areas. Unless the situation changes, he said, "we are going to see some massive starvation here in Zimbabwe."
The Zimbabwean government ordered all international and local non-governmental agencies to suspend their aid operations on Thursday, accusing NGOs of campaigning for the opposition. According to McGee, this action makes the Zimbabwean government to sole distributor of food, in a country in which an estimated four million people rely on food aid.
McGee accused the government of checking political party identity cards when handing out food aid. Zimbabweans who have ID cards from the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF), are allowed to receive the food aid. Members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) are denied, unless they hand in their national identity card to officials - which would threaten their ability to vote in the June 27 presidential run-off.
Also on Friday, Sean McCormack, the U.S. State Department's spokesperson said at a briefing that the aid suspension is "just another despicable act in a litany of despicable acts committed by this government against its own people."
International NGOs echoed the U.S. government's condemnation of the aid suspension.
"A lot of people are completely reliant on food aid to keep them alive," said Charles Abani, Oxfam's director in Southern Africa. "They don't have anything else to eat."
Jamsmine Whitbread, the chief executive of Save the Children, warned that the Zimbabwean government's decision "will have appalling consequences for the country's most vulnerable children."
Discussing the detention of the U.S. diplomats, McGee said U.S. has an agreement with Zimbabwe government that allows diplomats to travel anywhere in the country, but they were nevertheless detained for five hours. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Zimbabwe's governments actions on Thursday "outrageous behavior" and "out of step with international norms."
Also this week, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was twice taken into police custody. Asked in the teleconference if he feared for Tsvangirai's life, McGee said, "Given the excesses of the government here we are not sure what they will do."
Read comments. Write your own.
Copyright © 2008 allAfrica.com. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
Once again, can you please explain the sanctions that have been made against the zimbabwean people? Travel restrictions on Zimbabwean ministers dont count. As for the stavation of the electorate, is it not the current government that have banned aid agencies and thus begun the starvation of its own people?
Awt_independent, when it comes to sanctions ,you will ask them to state what they are until you are blue in the face. They can't because there are none. If there were, then they they would have been forth coming a long time ago. All I can say to Onesoulzim is that no one has tied his hands behind his back, he is free to fix whatever problems he sees fit in Zimbabwe. Blaming others for their own incompetence and being such imbeciles isn't going to cut it.
I have seen with my own eyes ZANU-PF officials taking Norwegian food aid for themselves in Masvingo. I've also seen police confiscate bags of mealie meal at road blocks. If you think that food goes to the stomachs of hungry MDC supporters you are dreaming!
Whatever food aid that goes to Zimbabwe is meant for all Zimbabweans going hungry in the rural areas in particular and not just for MDC supporters alone. Obviously ZANU-PF officials and the police are corrupt and that does not surprise me. Fragrant corruption in the government, is fragrant corruption in the country. Who is going to stop whom? If MDC supporters are the ones the food is being sent for, then those people are being starved on purpose for sure. Many of you Onesoulzim, like and embrace the state your country is in, you empower Mugabe to continue the path of destruction without any reservations, so there will come a time of no return but luckily for some of you, you can always escape to the West.
Excessive nonsense from McGee, I have seen his works here for the past months and those from the British embassy. Zimbabwe is confronted with political campaigners for regime change who have systematically used economic sanctions and starvation of the electorate to blame the incumbent gvt, and today are outreaching the people with food crumbs as if they are our saviors. I am yet to get specifics of the cell our leader Tsvangirai got locked into, but if this reporter refers to a road block incident where Morgan voluntarily waited for 5+ hours to have one of his vehicles cleared then shame on the writer. To hell with cheap politicking by the US and Britain, we want to move forward with our challenges without any input from the defeated colonial resource maniacs.