Mugabe at the Food Conference

Maoist Robert Mugabe has been at the UN’s “food conference” this week in Rome at a time when many of his own people in Zimbabwe have nearly forgotten what food means. While his own country is starving, the menu at the food conference contains many delicacies I’ve never even heard of;

Vol au vent with sweetcorn and mozzarella
Pasta with cream of pumpkin and shrimps
Veal olives with cherry tomatoes and basil
Fruit salad with vanilla ice cream
Vin Orvieto Classico Poggio Calvelli 2005

While Mugabe dines, aid organizations charge that he’s forbid them from feeding Zimbabweans (Reuters);

The accusation came a day after CARE International said the government had ordered it to suspend its operations in Zimbabwe over allegations it was backing opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s presidential campaign. It denies the charge.

Other humanitarian groups have been told to stop their work for the same reasons, the government said on Wednesday. It did not respond to the charge that it was using food for political advantage in the election race.

“The decision to let people go hungry is yet another attempt to use food as a political tool to intimidate voters ahead of an election,” said Tiseke Kasambala, the rights group’s researcher for Zimbabwe.

“President Mugabe’s government has a long history of using food to control the election outcome.”

So who does Mugabe blame for food shortages? Why, the West of course (AP link);

He contended that while land reform was “warmly welcomed” by most of his people, it has “elicited wrath from our former colonial masters.”

“The United Kingdom has mobilized her friends and allies in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand to impose illegal economic sanctions against Zimbabwe,” he said.

Although Mugabe pins much of his nation’s plight on the sanctions, the measures are narrowly targeted at him and his allies. Humanitarian aid, with the Europeans the biggest donors, continues to flow, but is channeled through aid groups instead of the government.

“I find it very cynical that someone who has driven people in his country into hunger and the country into ruin dares to show up at such a conference,” German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, who is representing her country at the meeting, said on ZDF television Tuesday.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Mugabe’s “misrule” serves as “an example of what not to do in terms of managing agricultural and food policy.”

But, Mugabe is only embracing his Marxist roots, following a long line of his ideological antecedents like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Kim Jong Il and the Castros. A little over a decade ago, Mugabe was hailed as a liberator – he was even awarded knighthood from the Queen, an honor that might be withdrawn according to CNN;

British officials have not ruled out revoking the knighthood of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, a foreign office spokeswoman said Tuesday, following a report that the government was taking the first steps to strip him of the title.

Mugabe was handed his honorary knighthood by British PM John Major’s government in 1994.

“We’re listening to the views of those who wish to see Mugabe’s knighthood removed and we’re not ruling out taking action on this,” the spokeswoman said, who declined to be identified in line with policy.

Mugabe is still considered a revolutionary hero by man, including the Islamic Republic’s Ahmadinejad and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez – people with whom the ideological Left think we should be negotiating. But how do you negotiate with people who support a tyrant who won’t even let his people eat?

Category: Foreign Policy, Politics