Starve the voters: the human cost of Mugabe's election

This has been going on under the radar for a while now and it’s time to bring out the story. Mugabe is clearly insane for using the people of Zimbabwe in this way. Action is needed or we could end up with an other Darfur or Rwanda…
This article now has a follow up, already published here: HO1711: Zimbabwe condemns ‘liar’ cleric

Four million people are starving in Zimbabwe, a quarter of the population, and thousands of Robert Mugabe’s political opponents are being turned away empty-handed from emergency food stations, The Independent can reveal.

Only five days before a crucial general election, the embattled president is deliberately starving opposition supporters in a desperate bid to prop up his discredited Zanu-PF Party. What little food is available is being ruthlessly used in a cynical food-for-votes policy to force people to vote for the pariah president.

One of Mr Mugabe’s starving citizens, Million Ndolovu, had spent weeks longing for the arrival of a food shipment. His family had nothing but tea for breakfast and lunch and a meagre dish of boiled maize in the evenings. The 50kg of maize that he was due to receive from the government ­ for which he had paid in advance ­ would feed them for a few more months. But when he arrived at the distribution point he found Simon Maluma, the district chairman of Zanu-PF, sitting on top of the pile of grain. “Maluma told us the food would only go to Zanu supporters,” recalled Mr Ndolovu, 62.

“Opposition supporters were told to move out of the queue instead of…

Posted by BurningMonk