“Zimbabwe Today” by Robb WJ Ellis (13-12-2008)

Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, former Information Minister in Zimbabwe would have us believe that cholera in Zimbabwe was deliberately spread by the UK.

Whilst George Chiramba, Mugabe’s spokesman, alleges that the outbreak was deliberately started by the US.

So I think it is quite easy to disregard these pathetic statements.

I will state it again for those reporters who insist in getting it wrong. Ndlovu is not the Minister of Information. He is not even an MP. He lost his seat in the March 2008 general election. He does not carry the mandate of the people, and cannot be a cabinet minister, not only because of his loss, but because their is no legitimate cabinet in Zimbabwe…

“While Zimbabwe‘s government was backtracking on President Robert Mugabe’s denials about his country’s cholera outbreak, one minister was accusing Britain of “planting” the cholera in Zimbabwe‘s soil to achieve “genocide.” Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu also accused what he called “gun-boat” Western media outlets of passing off photos of victims of conflict in other parts of Africa as Zimbabwean cholera victims.

“They take photos of people dying in the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) and Darfur (Sudan) and say these are cholera victims from Zimbabwe. CNN please stop those pictures,” he appealed.

Ndlovu was addressing a government press conferences on the causes of the devastating outbreak that has claimed 793 lives and infected over 16,000 people since August.“

So we are meant to believe Ndlovu that the pictures of the dying in Zimbabwe are really pictures from elsewhere in the world. And at the same time we are to believe that Mugabe was being ‘sarcastic’ when he made the claim that cholera was no longer a problem in Zimbabwe.

Pull the other one.

“Sarcastic” – expressing or expressive of ridicule that wounds… Even if Mugabe was being sarcastic, then his words were meant to cut and hurt the people. Hardly the attitude of a world leader.

But we know that Mugabe was not being sarcastic. He was actually trying to hoodwink the world – as is his penchant…

“Although health experts blame the situation on the breakdown of water and sewerage systems, Ndlovu had another theory. “The current cholera and anthrax were planted (during the colonial era) in various parts of Zimbabwe,” Ndlovu said. “It is a genocidal attack on the people of Zimbabwe by the British still trying to fight for the recolonization of Zimbabwe,” he said.

“Cholera and anthrax stay in the soil and gestate over many years. Long after the war, the undeclared biological warfare still rages on,” the minister told journalists, several of whom laughed openly at his theory.

His remarks about anthrax come after a British charity sounded the alarm a few days ago over a spate of anthrax infections in humans who had eaten meat from infected cattle carcasses.

Ndlovu alleged that “covert chemical war operatives” from Britain were currently in Zimbabwe to spread cholera and anthrax with a view to paving the way for a military invasion that would oust Mugabe and install the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in power.“

I s’pose that Ndlovu’s remarks make a change from listening to the statements issued by Zimbabwe’s own Comical Ali, Bright Matonga.

George Chiramba had things a little bit different, laying the blame on the US.

“There are growing fears that there is more to the cholera outbreak than meets the eye following revelations by the US State Department that it has been preparing for the outbreak for quite sometime. The outbreak began last August though the US hinted at years of preparation.

In a briefing with the US State Department on Thursday, attended by Ambassador to Zimbabwe James D McGee and Director of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance Ky Luu in Washington; United States Agency for International Develop-ment administrator Ms Henrietta Fore said the US had long prepared for the epidemic. œThe United States, working alongside the international community, has been preparing for a cholera outbreak for quite some time. Before the disease was widespread, Usaid began building contingencies into its ongoing emergency programmes, allowing us to quickly direct our assistance to specific targets for cholera outbreaks, Fore said, raising the fears that her country may have launched biological warfare on Zimbabwe.

US attempts to use cholera as an excuse to mobilise military action against Zimbabwe have fuelled suspicions of biological warfare. Despite assurances from the Ministry of Health that fatalities were going down, Ky predicted that the outbreak would intensify over the festive season.“

It is time to ignore these statements. Wherever they come from and whoever makes them.

Mugabe’s administration would have us believe that the outbreak is deliberate. Do they really think that a foreign power is about to unleash a deadly disease on an already impoverished population in an attempt to dislodge Mugabe? Get real!

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As the comments with this article would ask, how can Mugabe joke about the deaths of Zimbabweans? We all know that Mugabe does not joke! He said this in an attempt to con the masses – and the world – that his administration had gotten the better of this curable disease…

“Robert Mugabe™s government has attempted to row back on the President™s claim that the cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe is over, saying he was joking.

Mr Mugabe said his country™s doctors had halted the spread of cholera as the death toll rose to 783 and the United Nations made plans to deal with 60,000 cases. His remarks prompted international condemnation.

But today George Charamba, Mr Mugabe™s spokesman, told The Herald newspaper – a government mouthpiece – that the octogenarian president was using “sarcasm” when he made the statement.

Mr Mugabe told national television that “there is no cholera” and that the West™s basis for instigating regime change was undermined.“

Mugabe took this one step further and stated that there was now no reason for ‘war’ – the first person the use this word when looking at possible military intervention in Zimbabwe.

I wonder how he sleeps at night…

“Meanwhile one South African church leader likened Mr Mugabe to Hitler. Bishop Joe Seoka called for the 84-year-old to face charges for war crimes.

“Mugabe must be viewed as the 21st century Hitler because of the deaths and suffering of Zimbabweans under his rule,” he said.“

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I saw Mugabe on television with my own two eyes. And I heard what he said with my own two ears. He said that cholera was ‘no more’ and even went on to say that the ‘reason for war had gone’ – or words to that effect.

So reporting what Mugabe said is enough for the foreign news agencies in Zimbabwe to be threatened with being shut down in that country?

In that case, I say pull out of there. I say report from Zambia, Mozambique, South Africa and Botswana. If Mugabe and his regime will not let the news agencies report the truth, then the time has come to leave Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.

I am not meaning that the Zimbabwean crisis will go away – but I do believe that Mugabe’s pathetic statements at the funeral of Elliot Manyika prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he has lost the plot…

“The Zimbabwe government has threatened to close foreign news bureaus for Reuters, AP and AFP following the publication of stories that quoted President Robert Mugabe as saying cholera had now been contained in the country.

Writing in his column, the acerbic Nathaniel Manheru, believed to be Mugabe’s spokesman, George Charamba, says there is no need to have these organisations, including the BBC, represented in Zimbabwe when they did not respect their reporters on the ground. He says Zimbabwe does not need them. Charamba was Thursday incensed by reports that his boss had said there no longer was cholera in Zimbabwe. He said the remarks were “distorted” and “misrepresented” by the media. In the column, Manheru says the cholera claim stories did not originate from Harare where reporters from these agencies covered Mugabe’s speech at the Heroes Acre but were written from newsrooms in London, especially.“

Did we not see and hear Mugabe state that the cholera was gone? Did we not see and hear Mugabe state that there was no longer any reason for ‘war’?

Does Charamba take us for idiots?

SW Radio Africa had this to report: “Because of cholera, Mr Brown, Mr Sarkozy and Mr Bush want military intervention,” Mugabe said. “Now that there is no cholera there is no case for war.” Mugabe was speaking in Harare, at the state funeral for senior ruling party official Elliot Manyika, who died in a car crash over the weekend. MDC Secretary for Welfare, Kerry Kay expressed anger on Thursday that Mugabe announced the crisis is ‘under control’. “How do you control a cholera epidemic if there is no clean water and if raw sewage is running into wells?” Kay questioned, explaining that the crisis is no where near being controlled. “God only knows how people are surviving,” Kay said. “I am in awe of Zimbabweans because they somehow find a way to survive when there™s nothing to even eat.“

I must be confused. Charamba is suggesting that a direct quote of Mugabe – and we all saw him and we all heard him – was inaccurate and that those agencies then reporting the truth would be thrown out of the country?

“It is also a loud way of telling those in authority in Zimbabwe to please declassify them as bona fide news organisations, indeed a statement to say we can cover Zimbabwe from our head offices, without local staffers. The message has gone home and is well taken,” says Manheru in his latest offering in the Herald newspaper. Writing under the sub-heading ‘Africa of Downs and Dims’, Manheru threatens journalists working with international news organisations from state-controlled newsrooms as well.

Chebamba chinodyiwa nemuseredzero, he says, which literally means those being paid to get information or stories out will be dealt with. “There is huge, dirty money involved, part of it flowing into public newsrooms,” he writes. “The line between these journalistic misdeeds and espionage grows thinner and thinner by the day. I happen to know that the authorities are about to place a price on those concerned, and let no one cry. Chebamba chinodyiwa nemuseredzero.“

Please note that Charamba writes for The Herald under a pseudonym, and you may recall that last week I published a screen grab of that newspaper – and nowhere was there even a mention of cholera.

Methinks that the Mugabe regime is living in cloud coo-coo land…

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When a medical professional tells the world that he is more a mortuary assistant than a nurse, then we have to realise that the stories of cholera may have gotten through, but not in the numbers that the disease may suggest…

“Peter Dzumbunu, (not his real name), 29, is a male nurse working at a government referral hospital in Chitungwiza, a dormitory town about 35km south of the Zimbabwean capital, Harare. The collapse of health services has left him looking for other options, but not in Zimbabwe.

“I have been working as a nurse for the past seven years, and with each passing year I become more distraught by the state of our health delivery system. This year [2008] marks the height of the degeneration of public hospitals and clinics.

“For the first time in the history of this country, government hospitals virtually closed down as doctors and nurses went on strike for the umpteenth time, pressing for better working conditions.

“Yes, we have been striking frequently, but at no time did we hear of hospitals sending patients – some of them in critical condition – home to die on their own.

“What makes the closure of the hospitals even more pathetic is the fact that it coincided with a widespread outbreak of cholera. As a nurse, I was trained to be compassionate to patients.

“Honestly speaking, I now feel like a mortuary attendant because people die around me every day, even though in some of the cases, the deaths could have been avoided. The hospital has become a place where people come to prepare for death, rather than being saved.

“Hospitals are admitting patients, even with the full knowledge that there are no drugs, equipment or food with which to help the sick. What pains in this case is that the patients are left with huge medical bills to settle, despite the fact that they are hardly receiving any help.

“Worse still, patients’ relatives find it difficult to settle the bills because they cannot access enough money from their banks, due to unrealistic withdrawal limits.

“Imagine – it is now student nurses and doctors who are being deployed to the hospitals to deal with a few cases, mostly involving cholera, following the withdrawal of services by those that are qualified.

“The students are supposed to be learning their professions, but they are now being used like people who know the trade. What are they learning when there is no-one to lead them? What kind of help are they giving to the patients that have remained in hospital?

“I feel pity for the sick, because at times there are no detergents to wash their blankets with; this exposes them to lice and communicable diseases.

“Right now, there is hardly any protective clothing for nurses and doctors, meaning that those that attend to the sick, particularly the cholera patients, are at a high risk of being infected themselves.

“I have been battling to get a visa to go to the UK, where most of my former workmates have now settled. I will keep on trying but if I fail completely, I am thinking of going to either Botswana or South Africa to take up any kind of job that will pay me better than this profession.

“I don’t mind even becoming a farm worker, as long as I earn foreign currency. As it stands now, I can hardly make ends meet. My salary is worth only a week’s transport expenses. I have a family to look after, and my wife has been forced to sell vegetables to supplement my income.“

I think that says it all.

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Take care.

‘debvhu