Cathy Buckle's Weekly Letter from Zimbabwe !

Dear Family and Friends,

On the roadsides between towns and cities the grass is nearly two metres tall and it is ripe: green at the base, yellow and golden above. As you travel along the roads the swaying and flowing of the grass is a calming, peaceful, almost mesmerising sight. The kilometres pass and the view doesn't change and it suddenly strikes you that something is wrong. This shouldn't be the view of Zimbabwe's farms in March and you wonder where everyone and everything is. For scores of kilometres passing prime roadside farms there are no workers in the fields, no great stands of ripening maize, no smoke coming from the flues of tobacco barns, no sign of life or production at all. There are no cattle or sheep getting fat on the grass -tons of free food for animals is standing on the roadsides and in the once fenced fields and paddocks just going to waste. When you ask Zimbabweans how often they eat meat, many will say once a fortnight, or once a week if they can afford it. Meat has become a luxury and yet there are no animals to eat the grass - how utterly absurd.

This week no sooner had President Mugabe left the country on an official visit to Namibia then the gloves came off back at home. The Governor of the Reserve bank went walkabout - not to banks and financial institutions, as is surely his mandate, but to farms - and with the ZBC TV cameras in tow. This was not the usual government type tour where the armchairs have been dragged out under the tent and there is microphone, flowers and a vast number of men in suits and women in fancy dresses and larney headgear. The Governor didn't have a flower in his buttonhole the way the politicians usually do but he was wearing a track suit and strode out to see the crops on a couple of farms. The entourage seemed to be mostly soldiers and cameramen and they often had to run to keep up.

After six years of ludicrous statements by the previous Minister of Agriculture when promises of a bountiful harvest were the annual litany, the Reserve Bank Governor broke ranks dramatically. "There are some people who have become professional land occupiers," he said, "vandalizing equipment and moving from one farm to another." Dr Gono said that the crop of maize presently in the ground would be likely to only produce 600 000 tonnes of maize. This is a dire and diabolical admission that should cause widespread alarm and consternation. Assuming a population of 12 million people in Zimbabwe, allowing half a kg of maize per person per day, there is only enough maize in the ground for 100 days. Dr Gono admitted that Zimbabwe was already importing maize and said: "For us to import food in a country that has had a land reform programme is a shame." Precious foreign currency needed to buy medicines and chemicals, spare parts and fuel was going to have to be diverted to buy food in a land blessed with sun, fertile soil and summer rainfall.

While Dr Gono was trekking around farmland, President Mugabe was speaking in Namibia. He was presenting a different face of Zimbabwe and at a big public function he said: "I can safely declare that the land and resettlement plan of our government was completed successfully."

Confusion reigns because as one leader talks of a success, another talks of shame, food imports and land vandals. A hundred days, the Reserve Bank Governor said, food for twelve million people for just three and a half months.

Until next week, thanks for reading, love cathy

Copyright cathybuckle 3rd March 2007.http://africantears.netfirms.comMy books: "African Tears" and "Beyond Tears" are available fromorders@africabookcentre.com