Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Africa.

FILE UNDER: Words/A Moment of Clarity.


Not enough.

"Zimbabweans are facing a deepening humanitarian crisis and what appears to be a renewed security crackdown, just weeks before President Robert Mugabe plans to set up a new government.

...Zimbabwe's economic crisis has worsened in the past six months as the government remains deadlocked over how to share power with the opposition. Zimbabweans struggle to buy anything with their currency, which has been almost entirely devalued. This week, the government released a new 50-billion-dollar note -- valued at little more than one U.S. dollar.

A cholera epidemic has claimed more than 2,000 lives and infected almost 40,000 since October, the World Health Organization said Tuesday. Zimbabwe's government has warned that the epidemic could get worse in the rainy season, which peaks in January or February and ends in late March.

State services have collapsed. Most district hospitals and clinics, especially in rural areas, have been closed since the beginning of January, because they have no drugs, materials or means to pay their staff. Mothers struggle to deliver their babies. HIV/AIDS patients eat medicinal herbs dug from the ground.

"The whole country is turning into some kind of giant mortuary," said Douglas Gwatidza, head of the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights.

Health workers are charging their patients in foreign currency, then sharing the profit among themselves. "The government cannot pay us, so we have to find ways of paying ourselves," said one nurse, Ethel Ngundu.

It isn't just health-care workers who have turned their business into a private practice. Police officers demand extra to follow up on complaints. Some public-school teachers have refused to go to work unless parents pay them directly, in foreign currency.

Perhaps most worrying for the government is the underpaid army, upon which Mr. Mugabe depends to remain in power. Soldiers in recent months have demanded to be paid in foreign currency, which the government can't afford..."

  • WALL STREET JOURNAL: Crisis Worsens in Zimbabwe As Mugabe Tightens Grip
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