This is a time of year for attempting to tidy up one's email files. I have a tendency to hang on to everything I read so this can be a daunting task. It will never be finished before the year 2009 is out so I have decided to stop deleting and record the following, found in a 2006 file. I have lifted it from the Solidarity Peace Trust, presided over by the revered, reverend Pius Ncube and another cleric. The supreme irony of the words they have quoted from Zimbabweans nearly four, long years ago remains, entirely undiminished as we approach 2010.
Before I go on with this, it occurs to me that ZANU (PF) should rename itself Taguta. Its leaders and followers have surely eaten enough. By now they are, to put it crudely, full to bursting.
Here are the words:
“We applaud the Zimbabwe Defence Forces for taking up the challenge by strapping their guns on their backs and rolling up their sleeves to till the land under Operation Maguta. Under this programme, no doubt a huge food gap will be closed, effectively saving foreign exchange to go towards other priority sectors of the economy.”
GIDEON GONO, Reserve Bank Governor
February 2006
“Not even a single person has benefited from the irrigation this year”.
PLOT HOLDER 1, Matabeleland South
March 2006
“We made money by growing vegetables but all that was ploughed down by the [army] tractor. So now I have not one cent….
PLOT HOLDER 2, Matabeleland South
March 2006
“Destruction of market gardening has destroyed the economic independence of these irrigation communities: where people were self sufficient, they will now be poor and have to look to government to provide everything.”
Ex AREX officer, 27 March 2006
As of now they give us 500 cobs [100 kg] of maize[of our entire harvest] and say that’s enough, we have to wait until the next harvest. Maybe then they won’t give us any…. We had bought our own seeds and fertilisers from Bulawayo and we hired a lorry to carry it for us, and we planted it, before the army arrived.”
PLOT HOLDER 3, Matabeleland South
March 2006
"Nothing in this Act shall prevent any person: who is the producer of a controlled product from using any such controlled product for consumption by himself, his household, his employees or his livestock".
GRAIN MARKETING BOARD ACT (35) (1) (c)
I feel sure that these quotes should be copied and copied again until they find the conscience of Gideon Gono or any other powerful person who feasts and grows fat on Zimbabwe's rapidly dwindling numbers of local farmers and food suppliers.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
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