Zimbabwe Descends Deeper
And Deeper Into Abyss
By Cathy Buckle
 cbuckle@zol.co.zw
10-12-2

Dear Family and Friends,

The rains have arrived in Zimbabwe and after 5 months of clear skies and dry days, the arrival of rain should be cause for celebration. With more than half our population starving you would think that there would be a great flurry of activity out on the farms and that the government would be working 24 hours a day to get professional farmers planting seeds in the ground. Exactly the opposite is happening in Zimbabwe this year as the government's so-called Land Task Force have been touring the country and evicting every commercial farmer they can find. It doesn't seem to matter where the farm is, what is being produced or how desperately the country needs the food being grown on a particular farm, the government wants these professional food providers out.
Farmers producing export crops like flowers which earn foreign currency for Zimbabwe, are being evicted. In a landlocked country like ours where all our fuel is imported and paid for with foreign currency, removing the earners of US dollars is pure insanity. Other farmers producing staple food like sugar have also come under attack and 39 sugar cane farmers were evicted from their properties and homes this week. It seems that there is no foresight whatsoever in Zimbabwe's land grab and it makes no sense at all that while we are starving, queuing for hours and days and going without staple items, the government are evicting the farmers and their workers and condemning us to both immediate hunger and long term shortages. The repercussions of the events of 2002 will undoubtedly be felt in Zimbabwean stomachs for the next five years at the very least.
One of Zimbabwe's top cattle farmers, Sam Cawood, who is 74 years old, was arrested by police in Beitbridge this week. Having been ordered by the government to vacate his farm in a matter of days, Sam was forced to send his entire breeding herd of Brahman cross Hereford Cows for slaughter. The cows had begun calving and tiny calves, two and three weeks old, could not go for slaughter, could not be abandoned and certainly could not go in the trucks with their mothers as they would have been trampled to death. Sam, forbidden by police from returning to his farm, instructed his workers to do the only humane thing and slaughter the calves rather than leave them to die of starvation. For this reason Sam was arrested and told he was being charged under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. Sam shared his prison cell with 6 other people, 4 adults and two young boys. The boys, aged 12 and 14, had been thrown into prison after stealing a pair of shoes. They had been there for 5 days already and in that time had not seen a lawyer and had not had any food at all. When Sam Cawood's wife bought him a toasted sandwich in prison, the elderly farmer could not eat while others were not, he broke the sandwich in half and gave it to the young boys. Sam was released from prison the next day without charge - the two young boys are still there, unknown, un-noticed and un-fed.
Sam Cawood and two little boys are not the only people who are in Zimbabwe's prisons this week. For many months Zimbabwe's government school teachers have been appealing for an increase in their salaries. Our country's educators presently earn less than the governments land officials who are going around driving pegs into the ground and carving up other people's farms. The teachers pleas have repeatedly gone unheard and so this week they went on strike. A number of top officials of the teachers union were arrested including Raymond Majongwe who was seriously assaulted whilst in custody. His lawyers said that Raymond was unable to sit or stand, had suspected broken ribs and possible internal bleeding. Across the country teachers and civic leaders have been appalled at this treatment but as always there is no one to turn to for assistance. Blacks and whites, farmers and teachers, adults and children, professionals and peasants are all alike. We have no legal, human or constitutional rights, there is no one within Zimbabwe that can help us and apparently no one outside the country prepared to intervene either. We are alone and floundering.

Until next week,

with love, cathy