Zimbabwe's Diaspora
BATE, ROGER
Zimbabwe's Diaspora How do you solve a problem called Mugabe? BY ROGER BATE Harare, Zimbabwe THE DIASPORA of Zimbabweans into neighboring states is substantially worsening the AIDS problem in...
...Since 2000, he has politicized the distribution of food, banned independent media, thrown nearly every white farmer off the land, and established a Hitler youth movement known as the Green Bombers...
...over the past five years...
...While this has probably cost the country 25 percent of its foreign exchange earnings, an even greater danger to the region is the ill health of the black diaspora...
...Robert Mugabe, the only president Zimbabwe has ever known, is the last "hero" of the African struggle for independence still clinging to power...
...Years ago white, tobacco-growing farmers were the first to leave Zimbabwe...
...With inflation rampant, bank notes are printed on only one side and carry an expiry date...
...African leaders have been reluctant to address this politically induced humanitarian disaster, but their own populations are now further threatened with disease...
...The only good thing about this is that they won't carry the virus elsewhere...
...This is exactly the age group that carries the highest HIV burden, and they take the virus with them wherever they go...
...It's not too late— the refugees I spoke with would like to return home, but given the beatings and torture, they never will while Mugabe is president...
...Since they are not recognized as legitimate asylum-seekers, they live illegally doing such dangerous jobs as they can get...
...And with Western pressure, a message could be driven home: that all of Mbeki's talk of an African Renaissance of democracy is worthless if South Africa tolerates the dictatorship on its northern doorstep...
...The influx has caused terrible strains, leading to conflict, rape, and the possibility of increasing the HIV rate from an already staggering 38 percent...
...To act, regional leaders need support from the international community, which is trying to combat the AIDS pandemic...
...Yet even so, few non-Zimbabweans, especially political leaders, will openly criticize Mugabe...
...A possible explanation for this extraordinary number is the high incidence of unprotected sex (usually rape) in Mugabe's youth camps...
...The economy has halved in value Roger Bate, a health economist, is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a director of Africa Fighting Malaria...
...peril awaits the majority, with many women lured into prostitution...
...No neighboring state acknowledges the despotism of the Mugabe regime, so none accepts these migrants as political refugees...
...Business as usual is no longer an option...
...Unemployment is over 80 percent...
...The AIDS situation in other nearby countries is unclear, but given the time lag for HIV to take its fatal toll, the Zimbabwean influx will make the problem worse...
...A few are lucky enough to reach safe havens, places like Bishop paul Verryn's church in downtown Johannesburg, where I met some of the 35 refugees who live there and sell wares to parishioners and passersby...
...The president established these camps ostensibly to reorient the education sector, but according to all the Zimbabweans I spoke with during a week in the country this fall, including a couple who had escaped from the camps, their real purpose is to indoctrinate young men and women against the opposition party and white people...
...But most of the estimated 2 to 3 million Zimbabweans in South Africa lead an existence that is nasty and brutish, though not short enough to prevent transmission of HIV...
...With Western help, an exit strategy for Mugabe could be devised...
...instead the opposition has been intimidated into virtual silence...
...Now the young, skilled, and black are leaving too...
...in 2002 it was 33 and dropping...
...Food production in 2004 was less than half that of 2000...
...As a result, President Fes-tus Mogae of Botswana has been the most outspoken southern African critic of the Mugabe regime...
...The official HIV/AIDS rate in 2002 was about 27 percent (the third highest in the world), but the real rate is probably much higher...
...it is forecast to be 15 percent of normal this year...
...Mugabe came to power in 1980, and ever since has ruled with an iron fist...
...The fledgling opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, probably would have won the 2002 election had it been fair...
...Younger HIV-positive Zimbabweans, who are generally healthy though malnourished, leave if they possibly can...
...An African solution is needed...
...Much media coverage has focused on the 4,500 white farmers and their families who have fled Mugabe's reign of terror...
...This vacuum leaves it to the international community to act on the Zimbabwean catastrophe, as it has acted in Darfur...
...The worst cases of AIDS are tragic...
...And while president Mugabe says everything is fine, the World With inflation rampant, bank notes are printed on only one side and carry an expiry date...
...BY ROGER BATE Harare, Zimbabwe THE DIASPORA of Zimbabweans into neighboring states is substantially worsening the AIDS problem in southern Africa...
...According to Amnesty International, Zimbabwean refugees are constantly abused in transit and where they end up...
...Unemployment is over 80 percent...
...Many are too sick to travel and seek treatment abroad...
...Other countries are not so well placed...
...Adored by most Africans for the past, he is despised by many of his countrymen for the present...
...Only South African president Thabo Mbeki has the clout to provide it...
...According to figures from nongovernmental organizations working in the region, Botswana, with just over a million people, now probably hosts more than 200,000 illegal Zimbabwean immigrants...
...Food production in 2004 was less than half that of 2000...
...Mark Dixon from Mpilo Hospital in Bulawayo says that 70 percent of the patients he treats for any reason carry the HIV virus...
...the sufferers have no drugs and no future...
...it is forecast to be 15 percent of normal this year...
...To make matters worse, some of the Zimbabwean strains of HIV are probably resistant to drugs that were used in trials in Zimbabwe...
...Unless political stability is restored in Zimbabwe and the refugees go home, all efforts to control the AIDS epidemic in the region may be worthless...
...Even so, South Africa, with its 42 million people, is perhaps big enough and rich enough to accommodate these Zimbabwean neighbors...
...Twenty years ago, life expectancy in Zimbabwe was 58...
...Food program reports that over 5 million people out of a population of maybe 11 million are short of food— and it is impossible to know how many Zimbabweans have left the country and how many remain...
Vol. 10 • January 2005 • No. 17
