03 June 2008

Zimbabwe Suspends CARE Operations, Leaving 110,000 Without Food

Action as President Mugabe attends U.N. food summit called “cruel irony”

Food shortages and high inflation have made Zimbabwe, once a food exporter, dependent on international assistance.

By Stephen Kaufman
Staff Writer

Washington -- The Zimbabwean government’s decision to suspend the operations of the nongovernmental organization (NGO) CARE effectively deprives 110,000 of its citizens of food aid, and comes as President Robert Mugabe participates in the U.N. World Food Security conference in Rome.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters June 3 that the decision is “a tragedy.” CARE is one of the largest NGOs working in the country and provides assistance, including distributing food to Zimbabwe’s most vulnerable people, including orphans, the sick and the elderly.

The Zimbabwean government has accused CARE of supporting the political opposition ahead of the June 27 presidential runoff vote between President Mugabe and challenger Morgan Tsvangirai.

A CARE official denied the accusations June 3, saying the organization’s assistance is “nonpolitical and nonreligious,” and speculated the government could be angry at “our insistence on assisting people across the political divide.”

State’s McCormack said “the practical effect … of banning CARE and not allowing them to do their work is that 110,000 people or so will not get fed.”

The spokesman accused Zimbabwe’s government of showing “a hardened indifference … to the plight of its people.”  International observers estimate that 4 million people, or one-third of the country’s population, need food aid.

A halt to aid activities as President Mugabe discusses food security is a “cruel irony,” the United States says.

“That is a far cry from Zimbabwe's proud history as a net exporter of food,” McCormack said.  “It used to be one of the bread baskets of southern Africa.”

He added that it is “a cruel irony” that international aid was suspended “while President Mugabe is in Rome feigning interest in the issue of food security.”

Deputy spokesman Tom Casey said earlier on June 3 that “about the only useful purpose” Mugabe’s attendance at the U.N. conference can serve is as “an example of what not to do in terms of managing agricultural and food policy.”

Casey said almost every observer who has seen Zimbabwe’s transformation from a food exporter to a net importer attributes the decline “to the ruinous policies, not only agricultural policies but other economic policies. that President Mugabe’s regime has followed and carried out.”

“I think he has a lot to answer for to his own people,” Casey said.

In his remarks accusing CARE June 2, Zimbabwe Social Welfare Minister Nicholas Goche told ZimOnline that “several other nongovernmental organizations … will be asked to cease their operations while we investigate them.” He accused NGOs in Zimbabwe of being “involved in plans to undermine our candidate.”

The country’s justice minister also told television audiences the week of May 27 that CARE and Plan International were to blame for Mugabe’s poor showing in some areas of the country in the March elections.

However, ZimOnline quoted a spokesman for the National Association of NGOs who rejected the charges and instead accused Mugabe’s government of “moving to stop assistance reaching even those who had been receiving aid before the [March] election.”