Cathy Buckle's Weekly Letter From Zimbabwe !

On the Roadsides!

Saturday 10th May 2008

Dear Family and Friends,

It's hard to believe that six weeks ago the MDC won a parliamentary majority and their leader Morgan Tsvangirai got more presidential votes than Mr Mugabe. It's even harder to believe that the parliamentary and presidential losers have managed to completely obfuscate the entire process and remain in positions of power and authority as if nothing had happened - as if we'd never had an election at all.

How can this be happening, is the question we are all asking. Its like being stuck in an impossible horror story. The will of the people has not been heard. The aspirations of a broken nation have been ignored. The voices of the majority have been obscured in fear and betrayal. We all thought that by now the breath of life would have begun blowing through the country bringing desperately needed food, fuel, medicine and stability. Perhaps even some of our family and friends, in exile for eight years, may have begun thinking about coming home. So far the inevitable conclusion has not taken hold and every day has become a blur of utter exhaustion and real trauma for ordinary people. Trauma of finding food and having enough money to buy it and extreme trauma associated with the orgy of violence, intimidation and retribution which has engulfed our countryside.

While Zimbabwe remains paralyzed in time, every day lost this May 2008 is condemning us to yet more hunger. We are now in the main wheat planting season and yet farmers everywhere are in crisis. With inflation at 160 thousand percent, no fuel for ploughing or transporting inputs and virtually no electricity for irrigation, there seems little hope that we can grow anywhere near enough wheat for the coming year. The situation is being exacerbated as farm workers have now been caught up in the brutal political punishment campaign.

This week the agricultural workers union said 40 thousand farm workers and their families had been cast out, beaten up and were destitute. The Union's Secretary General, Gertrude Hambira, said: "Our members and their families have been left homeless. They have been attacked by a group of militia wearing army uniforms. They have been accused of voting for the opposition. Most of them are on the roadsides. We are trying to find ways of taking food to them."

Every day the international talk is of a global food crisis and yet Zimbabwe seems hell bent on adding to it. Blessed with fertile soils and a temperate climate and once proud to be called the breadbasket of Africa, to our shame Zimbabwe is wasting another wheat growing season. It seems that bashing heads and breaking legs is far more important than growing food this winter because losers simply won't accept defeat.

With so much negative news, there is still hope because, even though convinced he won, Morgan Tsvangirai has agreed to take part in a re-run Presidential election. Hopefully this means the President-in-waiting will now come home and see for himself the hell his supporters are enduring.

Until next time, thanks for reading,
love cathy.