U.S. ambassador frustrated in talks with Zimbabwe minister

Michael Hartnack

HARARE, Zimbabwe — A senior U.S. diplomat, who was barred from meeting victims of President Robert Mugabe’s mass eviction campaign, last week criticized government interference with aid efforts and warned that there would be outrage in U.S. Congress over the worsening humanitarian crisis.

Tony Hall, a Rome-based U.S. ambassador to the U.N. food agencies, announced that the United States would donate $51.8 million worth of food relief to Zimbabwe and the neighboring drought-stricken countries of Zambia, Malawi, Lesotho and Swaziland.

The 73,500-ton donation will be sufficient to feed 5 to 6 million people for one month, he told reporters at Harare airport.

“Despite our differences with the government, the United States will stand by the people of Zimbabwe because there is no place for politics when it comes to feeding hungry people,” Hall said at the end of a three-day visit. But he warned that the donation “only scratched the surface of an essentially political problem.”

Zimbabwe’s security forces prevented Hall and his entourage from making a scheduled visit to Hopley Farm, on the capital’s outskirts, to investigate claims that 700,000 urban poor were left homeless or without jobs as a result of the eight-week “Operation Murambatsvina” (drive out filth). Many were evicted into midwinter cold in May-July.

“I was told in a hushed tone that the government doesn’t want me to see this place because old people are dying,” Hall said. He said the official reason given was that the military ran the site and the delegation needed a special visitors permit from the information ministry.

Human rights lawyers last week dismissed claims of improved conditions at Hopley, saying it was “nothing but a new transit camp.”

Hall, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Program, said he was distressed by conditions in Hatcliff township outside Harare, which he visited early Friday.

“I had several people come up to me and ask me for blankets and food. They don’t have enough to keep themselves warm ... their children are hungry. One gentleman spoke of the night he was evicted — police arrived with no notice, driving him and others out with dogs. He was forced to sleep outside for a week during the coldest time of winter.”

Hall said Zimbabwean bureaucracy was keeping 10,000 tons of American relief organizations’ food aid “bottled up” in the South African port of Durban, over alleged lack of import licenses, while another organization had not been given permission to distribute 15,000 tons already here.

An aid convoy from the South African Council of Churches has also been held up for nearly a week as the Zimbabwe government insists on certificates to prove that it contains no genetically modified food.

The WFP predicts that up to 4 million of Zimbabwe’s 12 million people may suffer from food shortages. Before March elections, Mugabe predicted a 2.4 million ton maize harvest and told relief organizations not to choke Zimbabwe with unwanted aid. Officials now say they have secured 1.8 million tons from neighboring South Africa and do not need to make any formal appeal for help.

However, Hall said he was “very worried” about the coming months because “we are going into a period when we don’t think there is going to be enough food in this country.”

Hall believed a proposed visit to Zimbabwe by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan “would bring tremendous pressure to bear on this government.”

Mugabe, 81, and in power since 1980 independence, has said he is prepared to show Annan progress in rehousing those evicted by Operation Murambatsvina.

Hall, meanwhile, said he would speak with U.S. government officials. “Don’t forget I have a lot of friends in the U.S. Congress,” said Hall, who served for 24 years on Capitol Hill. “And they are going to be outraged.”

(Associated Press)