Zimbabwe

If the Americans really want to make a huge difference and help millions of people, let them to go Zimbabwe or at least lean on the Southern African governments to make them intervene! The world is apparently not interested in the curtain of darkenss that has descended on this once rich African country.



Please help... by making others aware of this.



Here is the latest entry in Cathy Buckle's weekly diary:

On the verge of giving up Saturday 28th June 2003



Dear Family and Friends,

Many of us in Zimbabwe are on the verge of giving up. Our lives have become almost unbearable. We cannot afford the food we manage to find. We can only buy petrol on the black market and it costs more than our wages. Services and infrastructure are rapidly collapsing, 16 people died from suspected water borne diseases in a major town this week. Our small towns seem to have been completely taken over by political warlords who have the power to take over businesses, ban newspapers, arrange for people to be beaten if they are thought to support the political opposition and prevent the police from doing their jobs. And every day the mindless violence gets worse and worse. This week a farm manager and his wife in their seventies were attacked by a mob of young men who beat, slapped and tortured them for five hours. When their son came to try and help them his hands were tied with bark rope and wire and he was beaten on his back and legs with whips made from fan belts, chains and sticks. The photographs of their injuries are so horrific that I could hardly bear to look at the black and purple bruises on arms, legs, backs and buttocks. In a country where three quarters of the population are being fed by international food aid, the violence demonstrates yet again that it is not land or race which has caused Zimbabwe's hell, just evil politics. Six days out of seven most of us wonder what we are still doing in Zimbabwe and where this is going to end. We look at the situation in the DR Congo and Liberia and wonder if that is to be our fate. Every single day the question we all ask is do we stay or go. Most of us have nowhere to go even if we could afford to do so and so we struggle through the days and look for hope and encouragement from our friends, from people who are worse off than us and from the growing number of exiled Zimbabweans and others who are speaking out and trying to get world leaders to do something before we descend into civil war.

More here.