Cathy Buckle's Weekly Letter From Zimbabwe !

MISSED THE TARGET !

Dear Family and Friends,

A new schedule of minimum wages for some categories of employment was releasedby a government department last week. One of the lowest in the schedule is ayard or garden worker whose minimum wage has been set at 3.2 billion dollars amonth. To outsiders this may sound like a massive amount of money but in realityit is a death sentence. As I write this letter a 1 kg packet of plain hard biscuits is 9.2 billion dollars, a 2 kg packet of potatoes is 3.6 billion dollars, a 400 gram tin of baked beans is 1.8 billion dollars. By the time your ead this letter all of these prices will have increased; it is likely they will have doubled within a week. On a full month's pay a yard or garden worker cannot even feed himself for a few days; worse still, he cannot provide any food for his family, he cannot buy any clothes or shoes and cannot pay his children's school fees. God help him if he gets sick. Perhaps the saddest fact of all isthat this government stipulated minimum wage is currently worth just ten US cents a day.

After almost a decade of political turmoil and economic collapse, the vast majority of Zimbabweans are unable to cope on their own and are surviving on charity of some type or other. It may be from families in the Diaspora sending hard currency home every month, relations abroad paying school fees and medical needs or friends, churches and other well wishers sending parcels of food,toiletries, medicines and other essentials. On a much larger scale help has come from the international aid organisations who this winter were set to feed 4million Zimbabweans - over a third of the population.

This week all aid organizations operating in Zimbabwe were ordered to immediately stop all their field operations and to re-apply for new licences. It seems none are spared from the ruling issued by the Social Welfare Minister. All are affected from school children surviving on one charitable meal a day to rural households receiving grain and food relief to people with HIV/Aids receiving life sustaining anti-retroviral drugs.

The timing of the ban on charitable assistance could not have come at a worse moment for Zimbabweans. It is winter, market gardening is minimal and vegetable growth very slow. Supermarket shelves remain largely empty. All basic goods continue to be unavailable including maize meal, flour, rice, sugar, cereals,beans, oil and many more.

This week, while Mr Mugabe, his wife and their delegation were in Rome attending a UN Food Security conference, dire news was released about Zimbabwe's daily bread which should be growing this winter. The state sponsored Herald newspaper reported that only 8 963 hectares of wheat have been planted this winter amounting to just 13% of the government target of 70 000 hectares. Agriculture Minister Rugare Gumbo was quoted as saying: "We have missed the target, with challenges being shortages of fertilisers and fuel as well as frequent breakdowns of tillage facilities."

Zimbabwe was often in the international news this week for diplomatic incidents at road blocks, for food insecurity, for ongoing political violence, for widespread arrests of MDC officials, activists and MP's and for the prevention of MDC election campaign rallies. For the ordinary and very long suffering people of Zimbabwe, we are counting down the days to round 2 of the Presidential election. It cannot come soon enough and the reasons for which candidate to choose become more obvious each day.

Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.

Copyright cathy buckle 7th June 2008.www.cathybuckle.com My books: "African Tears" and "Beyond Tears" are availablein South Africa from: books@clarkesbooks.co.za and in the UK from: orders@africabookcentre.com