U.N. envoy says Zimbabwe's crisis is deepening

U.N. envoy says Zimbabwe's crisis is deepening
By MacDonald Dzirutwe
Wed Dec 7, 4:41 AM ET

Reuters - U.N. humanitarian envoy Jan Egeland left Zimbabwe on Wednesday after a four-day tour and said its humanitarian crisis was deepening, with millions in need of aid.

"The humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe is very serious. The need for international aid is big and growing," Egeland, the U.N. humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, told journalists late on Tuesday after talks with President Robert Mugabe and government officials.

"Millions of people are struggling with their back against the wall to fend off hunger, to fend off AIDS and a lot of other things," he said after visiting people living in shacks since they were evicted during government demolitions of shantytowns.

On Tuesday Mugabe rejected a U.N. offer to provide temporary shelter for victims of the slum clearance program but did accept an offer of food aid.

The U.N. says Zimbabwe needs emergency aid including tents to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of homeless but the government says it only needs help to provide permanent homes.

Egeland said there was progress on aid, especially for people suffering with HIV/AIDS.

"The people of Zimbabwe are suffering under several big problems. I am hopeful that we will have a more positive partnership in 2006 than we have had in the past," said Egeland.

EVICTIONS SHOULD STOP

Egeland said the government crackdown could have been avoided and urged authorities to halt further evictions after reports in the past month that families already living in the open were being forced to move again by authorities.

"I am again appealing for the eviction campaign to stop, there is not enough shelter ready to house those who have been evicted," said Egeland.

The evictions, which Mugabe argues were meant to root out illegal trade in scant basic commodities, left 700,000 people homeless or without a livelihood and affected 2.4 million others, U.N. estimates show.

A U.N. report criticized Harare and said the demolitions were carried out "with indifference to human suffering."

Egeland, who visited settlements where families have lived in makeshift plastic tents since their houses were destroyed in Harare and Bulawayo, said he and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan stood by that report.

The demolitions added to the woes of many Zimbabweans facing shortages of food, fuel and foreign currency, high unemployment and one of the highest rates of inflation in the world.

Mugabe denies responsibility for the crisis and says domestic and international opponents have sabotaged the economy in retaliation for his program of seizing white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to blacks.

Mugabe also accuses the United States and Zimbabwe's former colonial power Britain of trying to use the United Nations to settle political disputes.

Egeland said the U.N. would be feeding in excess of three million people by next February in Zimbabwe, where the country's agriculture output has fallen by more than half in the last five years.

Plight of Zimbabwe Jews reaches a new low

Pessimistic: Peter Sternberg. (Guy Raivitz)

from www.haaretz.com

Plight of Zimbabwe Jews reaches a new low

By Charlotte Halle

Some receive a monthly pension that is less than the price of a loaf of bread, others rarely attend events because they cannot obtain the gasoline needed to get there and there was barely a minyan of ten men for prayer services on the second day of Rosh Hashanah this year.

The picture that Peter Sternberg paints of the Jewish community that he heads, as president of the Zimbabwe Jewish Board of Deputies, is more than a little bleak.

"When you look in the cold light of day at what we're putting up with, it is unbearable," Sternberg told Anglo File this week during a visit to Israel.

Zimbabwe's Jews, a thriving community of 7,500 at its peak in the mid-1960s, now number less than 300. Like the rest of the country's population, they are struggling to get by in a devastated economy. Inflation is nearly 400 percent, there is an acute fuel shortage and supermarkets often lack even staples.

In the last few years there has been a steep rise in the number of Jews and other Zimbabweans who have left the former British colony. President Robert Mugabe has come under harsh criticism for his human rights record and his policies are blamed for bringing the country to the brink of economic and social collapse.

The remaining members of the Jewish community, many of whom still reside in large homes that reflect their former economic status, have been reduced to a standard of living that few could have imagined even a decade ago.

Sternberg reports on the difficulties of burying an elderly member of the community recently because there was no petrol for the hearse to transport the coffin to the cemetery.

Those who had hoped to retire on their pensions "haven't got a hope of surviving with the increase in prices because a monthly pension won't buy a loaf of bread," Sternberg says, quoting this week's exchange rate of one US dollar to 66,000 Zimbabwe dollars (black market rates are of course higher).

"It's amazing how people do manage to survive though, cobbling together money from here and there," Sternberg adds. `Here and there,' he explains, usually means investments, relatives abroad and part-time work - some members of the community continue to work well into their seventies. Only a handful receive welfare funds, whether from the local community or Jewish organizations abroad.

The institutions of the community, which are now concentrated in the capital city, Harare, and the second-largest city of Bulawayo, continue to limp along with heavily depleted numbers, says Sternberg. The two synagogues in the capital, the Harare Hebrew congregation and the Sephardi Hebrew congregation, began joining together two years ago for Shabbat services led by laymen.

The only rabbi who lives in Zimbabwe is an Israeli who leads the only other congregation the country, in Bulawayo. It holds its weekday services in the country's only Jewish old-age home, Savyon Lodge, which is currently at full capacity with 32 residents. Sternberg reports that a kosher butcher comes up from Johannesburg a few times a year to bring meat to the home and to the handful of households in the country that keep kosher.

Harare's Jewish primary school, he says, caters for some 200 children, including the offspring of some of the country's elite, but only about six Jewish pupils attend. "They keep it going for the sake of that half dozen," says Sternberg, adding that although there is only one Jewish teacher (an Israeli who teaches Hebrew), Jewish studies are taught. At the nearby Jewish nursery, just one Jewish child joined this year's intake; next year there will be none. The community's once thriving Zionist youth movements of Habonim and Bnei Akiva are now defunct.

The country's two Jewish women's organizations, WIZO and the Union of Jewish Women - of which Sternberg's wife Hermoine is national president - still function, but with heavily depleted numbers.

"Because of the number of people leaving, people are asked to take on more and more positions all the time," says Sternberg, noting that a couple of years ago he returned from vacation to find he had been made national treasurer of the community's umbrella organization, the Jewish Board of Deputies. Subsequently, when the national president left the country, Sternberg took on that position too.

Sternberg describes the profile of the Jewish community as mainly ex-businessmen, and to a large extent retired. For the last 25 years, the community's youth have travelled abroad for university studies - traditionally in South Africa, Britain or the United States - and have not returned.

"Offhand, I can't think of a single one who has come back, except for a brief period," says Sternberg, who has two children in the U.K. and one in the U.S. He adds that the community does have a few younger members who work in business and are earning enough to make it viable for them to stay.

He stresses that the problems facing the community are not exacerbated by anti-Semitism, but rather reflect the situation faced by the rest of Zimbabwe's population. "What hits them, hits us," he says.

Sternberg grew up in Gatooma (now know as Kadoma) in the Zimbabwean midlands, a town which once had a Jewish community of 70 people and where his father held the position of mayor. Sternberg and his wife relocated to Harare seven years ago, when the town's white population became negligible, a fate which is on its way to being repeated in the capital. As for the future of Zimbabwe's Jewish community, Sternberg cannot muster any optimism: So, is he thinking of leaving?

"Everyone has something like that in mind and most people will admit to giving it a thought," is all he will say. "Most of our friends have left over the last two or three years. It's a very frustrating place to be. Virtually everyone suffers from extreme stress. Nobody knows what tomorrow will bring, but not everyone [in the Jewish community] can leave. There is not always somewhere to go to. When you leave the country, you can't take anything with you because Zim currency is not cashable anywhere and it's been like that for 25 years. So you leave with no money - legally at least - which means you start off wherever you are with nothing. Not wanting to be a burden on your children has kept a lot of people in the county. Sure, there are plenty who regret not leaving earlier, but a lot of people felt there was a future in the country. It's not only the Jewish community, but everybody feels is this ever going to come to an end and when? It's a bleak future. That is definitely the case. There is no light at the end of the tunnel."