Zimbabwe auf dem Weg der Besserung!

5m face starvation in Zimbabwe
Silently, in rundown wards, starving children lie dying — malnutrition diseases are overwhelming hospitals
Death is stalking Zimbabwe’s children, as a potentially catastrophic famine gathers momentum. Aid agencies say that half the population, about five million people, face starvation, two-thirds of children are out of school and water shortages have led to deadly cholera outbreaks.

Zimbabwe Health Care Deteriorates With Human Rights
Zimbabwe is—and is in—a problematic state. Once the breadbasket of Africa, the country’s population is suffering the consequences of government policies that have seriously affected its people’s health and quality of life.
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Zimbabwe starves as despair grows
This year's harvest in Zimbabwe has been the worst in the country's modern history.

Robert Mugabe may hang on to rule over corpse of his country
Robert Mugabe may be able to hold power in Zimbabwe for "a very long time" unless his neighbours intervene, according to a senior Western diplomat.
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"Most of the police already don't get paid. He needs 15,000 to 20,0000 to keep him in power and there's enough meat on the carcass to do that."
The only prospects for change were "either some kind of internal event, either military or political" – neither of which appeared likely - or "effective external intervention", said the diplomat.
"Mugabe wants what he regards as his prerogatives. He sees this place as a wholly owned subsidiary of Mugabe Inc. He wants to continue controlling this place. The thing is he can."

Starving Zimbabweans raid food lorries
Ten 30-tonne vehicles carrying private imports of the staple maize meal at the Zimbabwean side of the Beit Bridge border post were besieged by hundreds of Zimbabweans desperate for something to eat. Witnesses said that the crowd ripped the stolen bags open to stuff the uncooked cereal into their mouths.
"I have never seen anything like this in my life," said a rancher from southern Zimbabwe. "I couldn't imagine in my wildest dreams I would ever see Zimbabweans so hungry.
"Piles of bags of maize meal were on both sides of the road and people from all over the district came streaming in and I saw some breaking open the bags and eating it raw.
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The madness that is Zimbabwe
In the madness of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, where most people are hungry or on the point of starvation, police stopped one of the largest food producers planting his maize crop nearly two weeks ago.
By this week they had still not allowed him to resume planting the food that millions of starving Zimbabweans so desperately need.

US doctors shocked at state of Zim health system…
Remnants of the staff were doing their best to keep the buildings clean. Most wards were empty, the reception areas deserted. Window panes were broken; anthills of earth grew through a cracked floor, and sparrows flew along the corridors, darting into offices and a nurses station.

"I have never seen anything like this," Trubenbach said.
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Cholera Deaths Masked In Official Figures
THE Zanu PF politburo was on Wednesday presented with a shocking report on cholera deaths, suggesting that hundreds of people could have died across the country due to the outbreak of the water-borne disease.
Politburo sources said the party’s secretary for health Sydney Sekeramayi told the senior officials that the disease was widespread and had claimed more lives than had so far been publicly revealed.
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Harare diary: New abductions
Then the topic turned to the recent abductions; and whether or not the rumours about the renewed violence are true; and if it has actually started again.
One of my colleagues confirmed it was true - people in the rural areas are disappearing in the night, she told us.
She had travelled to her family rural area over the weekend and said everyone was talking about it. She said it is becoming a real worry for the rural folk once more and if we were to have new elections, then how much worse could things get.

The see-no-evil foreign policy
Why post-apartheid South Africa, once a shining beacon of human rights, is cosying up to nasty regimes around the world

Zim faces cholera catastrophe
Zimbabwe's capital could be in the throes of a full-blown cholera epidemic within days. As political leaders fight a cat-and-mouse political game, Harare's townships resemble war zones as scores perish from cholera.

Medical authorities fear the disease could engulf the capital within days.

The government is trying to hide the truth, but it is believed that more than 250 people have died so far.
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World Health Organization reports 6,072 cases of cholera in Zimbabwe; 294 deaths

By Associated Press
12:19 PM EST, November 21, 2008
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) _ The World Health Organization said Friday that 294 people have died from a cholera outbreak exacerbated by the country's collapsing health care system.

WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said that a total 6,072 cases had been reported between the start of August and Nov. 18, with an upsurge in cases in the past two weeks.

A lack of clean water and poorly maintained sewage systems have allowed the waterborne intestinal disease to thrive. Zimbabwe's deepening political and economic crisis has crippled the country's health system.

The U.N health body warned that with the start of the rainy season, the outbreak was likely to continue as the water and sanitation situation is worsening. Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, has warned that 1.4 million people are at risk.

Doctors in Zimbabwe earlier demonstrated against the country's collapsing health care system and blamed the government for the disease's spread. The cholera outbreak has caused a crisis in hospitals in Zimbabwe's capital, Harare, and also has reached over the border into neighboring South Africa.

A WHO statement issued in Geneva, Switzerland, said it was working with the government and other international aid groups to try to control the epidemic.

Mugabe's land of starvation...
Mhangura - Katy Phiri, who is in her 70s, picks up single mealie kernels spilled from trucks that ferry the harvest to market.

She says she hasn't eaten for three days.

Rebecca Chipika, nine, prods a stick into a termite mound to draw out insects. She sweeps them into a bag for her family's evening meal.

These scenes from a food catastrophe are unfolding in Doma, a rural district where journalists rarely venture.

It's a stronghold of President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party and his enforcers are everywhere.

At a school for villagers enrolment is down to four pupils from 20.

The teachers still willing to work in this once-thriving farming and mining district 257km northeast of Harare say parents pay them in maize, cooking oil, goats or chickens.
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Zim dying while leaders squabble
The South African Government has condemned as "unacceptable" the fact that people's lives are being put at risk while Zimbabwean political parties fight over positions in cabinet, and has announced immediate steps to try and curb the cholera outbreak that has crossed the border and is now putting Limpopo's health services under strain.
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3,000 dead from cholera in Zimbabwe
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A senior official in the health ministry told The Independent yesterday that more than 3,000 people have died from the water-borne disease in the past two weeks, 10 times the widely-reported death toll of just over 300. "But even this higher figure is still an understatement because very few bother to register the deaths of their relatives these days," said the official, who requested anonymity.
He said the health ministry, which once presided over a medical system that was the envy of Africa, had been banned from issuing accurate statistics about the deaths, and that certificates for the fraction of deaths that had been registered were being closely guarded by the home affairs ministry.
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The disease: Deadly, but preventable
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Preventing cholera relies on proper sewage treatment, sanitation and water purification.

Zim cholera 'to get worse'
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"It's very regrettable that people are dying of cholera," Muguti said, and again blamed Western sanctions on President Robert Mugabe for creating the outbreak.
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South Africa 'at risk of cholera'
A leading South African scientist has warned that gross underinvestment in water management has left it at risk of a cholera outbreak.
Five people have died from cholera in South Africa, after crossing from Zimbabwe, where a recent outbreak has killed more than 300 people.
Anthony Turton told the BBC that unless South Africa increased its spending on water, it was heading for disaster.
He was recently sacked from a state body over his report on water safety.
Mr Turton was suspended by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) last week after being prevented from presenting a paper in which he concludes that South Africa is "heading for a significant crisis in the water sector".
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Man sollte allerdings meinen, dass auch diese irgendwann mal keine Geduld mehr mit Mugabe haben...

"Simbabwe gehört mir" - Mugabe will nicht weichen
Sein Land leidet unter Cholera und Chaos, der internationale Druck auf ihn wird immer größer - doch Robert Mugabe gibt sich kämpferisch: Auf einem Kongress seiner Partei sagte Simbabwes Staatschef, das Land gehöre ihm. Seinen Rücktritt schloss er aus.
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War or Peace? Authoritarian Polarisation Versus Political Pluralism
By: HENNING MELBER
SINCE the formation of the Rally for Democracy and Progress (RDP) the political culture in Namibia has changed dramatically.
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Instead of seeking a common understanding with the competing internal political forces, the alliance between the erstwhile liberation movements in Southern Africa seems to be the unifying identity. It allows those in power to consider themselves as “the end of history”. Jacob Zuma, president of the South African ANC, visited Namibia on 8 December, to meet with President Hifikepunye Pohamba and the former President Sam Nujoma. A Joint Communiqué released after the visit stated: “It was noted that there is a recurring reactionary debate around the need to reduce the dominance of former liberation movements on the African continent. In this regard the emergence of counter revolutionary forces to reverse the social, political and economical gains that have been made under the leadership of our liberation movements was discussed.”

In his ‘Letter from the President’, published by the weekly electronic circular ‘ANC Today’, Jacob Zuma after his return summarised and repeated part of the deliberations in the following way: “Ruling parties often go through certain challenges after the first decade, when the interests of different strands within the broad liberation movement begin to diverge. People begin to explore other avenues, especially when they feel they are losing control and influence within the movement. The interests of people outside the movement, locally or internationally would also come into play. (…) Political analysts and all who claim to know Africans better than they know themselves tell us that it is good for Africa and democracy if the majority of former liberation movements was reduced. How do we as former liberation movements ensure that we do not steer away from our mandate of serving the poor and all our people, in the current climate of counter-revolution?”
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Demokratisierung ist „gescheitert“
Menschenrechtsgesellschaft zeichnet düsteres Bild – Werteverlust durch politische Klimaänderung
Die Situation der Menschenrechte in Namibia hat sich deutlich verschlechtert. Zu diesem Fazit kommt die namibische Menschenrechtsgesellschaft NGfM, die jetzt ihren aktuellen Bericht vorlegte. Vor allem die Veränderung des politischen Klimas hat dazu beigetragen, heißt es.
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Human rights deteriorated in 2008: NSHR
By: BRIGITTE WEIDLICH
THE overall human rights and human security situation in Namibia has deteriorated remarkably over the past year, with all seven domains of human security gravely threatened, the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) said in its latest report yesterday.
The seven domains are economic, food, health, environmental, personal and political as well as community security. 
“While the cultural, economic, environmental and social rights security situation has continued to worsen constantly, the civil and political rights security situation has severely deteriorated and has assumed very dangerous proportions,” NSHR Executive Director Phil ya Nangoloh told media during a report preview.
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