Leaders of Africa, face up to your duty

This powerful piece was sent to us recently by an angry South African citizen. We blog it here in full.

The personal tragedies caused by the Zimbabwean crisis are an absolute disgrace. Mugabe, the Zanu-PF government and their supporters should be ashamed of the untold suffering they are causing to destitute black Zimbabweans. They should not be allowed to continue to ruin people’s lives and to ruin a once prosperous country in this way.

I am a South African and am appalled by the escalating human tsumani – the flood of ragged, desperate, hungry people pouring into this country. It is heart breaking. Every day those who are known to care about their plight get calls for help, but the numbers are so great it is impossible to assist everyone, and every small effort is just a drop in a vast sea of pain and chaos.

This week a friend who is stretched financially herself received a call to say that a young Zimbabwean woman with a baby was wandering the streets of our town. She had no food, clothing nor shelter and was destitute. After abortive phone calls to shelters and places of safety we finally managed to get through to an organisation which was able to accommodated her at a safe venue. However, this organisation too faces massive difficulties and their budgets are stretched to the limit.

The courageous young Zimbabwean woman, whom I’ve not yet had the privilege of meeting, speaks minimal English. Her child is two years old but is so seriously stunted by kwashiorkor that she still carries it on her back. It still needs nappies – which she does not have, and which the venue is unable to provide. She has no doubt walked hundreds of dusty, thirsty kilometres hoping to find somewhere where she and her child can learn to live and hope again.

A couple of years back, a Johannesburg newspaper reported the story of a woman with a blind child who walked hundreds of kilometres from her home in Zimbabwe to Johannesburg try to find her husband. The stories of courage in the face of hideous adversity are legion. Zimbabweans are not cowardly. They are decent people who want to live peaceful, secure and productive lives but they are being denied their rights by a brutal, power-hungry, corrupt regime which is terrified of losing power and having to face the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

Last night the website Zim Online reported that 10 percent of all school children in Harare’s working class suburbs are suffering from chronic malnutrition or stunted growth. The department of health council report admitted that cases of kwashiorkor had last year increased by 43.7 percent from the 2005 figures.

The article continued: “The United Nations Children and Education Fund (UNICEF) last year said there had been a serious deterioration in care for Zimbabwean children resulting in many deaths for children under the age of five. Zimbabwe is also the epicentre of an HIV/AIDS pandemic that is mowing down at least 3 000 people every week, leaving hundreds of orphans without parental care.”

South Africa has no refugee camps to accommodate this human tsunami. These stick-thin, starving, destitute people of all ages crawl under the razor-wire border fences carrying nothing but their own heartbreak. No food, no clothing and often no papers because they can’t afford them or because they were lost when the Mugabe military machine destroyed their homes.

Depending on the season they may be swept away by the floodwaters of the Limpopo River, or attacked by crocodiles. On the other side, the dangers are not over. There are human crocodiles called “Amaguma guma”, who steal the few worthless dollars they’ve saved, and lions roam game reserves bordering the Limpopo, where refugee deaths have been reported. A more recent threat involves vigilante South African farmers who apprehend them effortlessly because they are too exhausted to flee, and then hand them over to the authorities for repatriation.

As if this is not enough, the refugees also have to run the gauntlet of South African army personnel who are known to rape – and on occasion gang rape - women before stealing their paltry savings.

A report in the Cape Times of 8 August quotes a refugee as follows: “The amaguma guma captured six of my colleagues - two men and four women.” He said he has no idea what happened to them. In the latest Zimbabwean newspaper, it was reported that six Zimbabweans were shot dead last month while they were trying to cross the border into neighbouring South Africa. The paper says their bodies were found in an area between Panda Mine and Dete from where people commonly cross into the country.

Exactly when is Africa going to stand up to its responsibilities?

Exactly when is the Southern African Development Community (SADC) going to say that this is no longer acceptable? Exactly when are these brave, broken people going to get the help they deserve? Exactly when is the suffering of mothers and children going to stop? Exactly when will this continent bring the Zimbabwean catastrophe to a halt? The leaders of this continent should be ashamed. When they meet the human beings they have failed – either in this life or in the hereafter, how will they explain their inaction? How will they – who have beds to sleep in, all the money they need and children growing up in privileged conditions - account for their own miserable cowardice?

Angry South African citizen

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, South Africa, Africa, refugees, poverty, SADC, Southern African Development Community

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