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."
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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."
