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Voice of America
July 29 2007

By Peta Thornycroft

There has been no mealie meal in Zimbabwe’s second city Bulawayo for the past week.Not a single bag has been available in any of the city’s supermarkets and even blackmarket supplies have dried up.

“We are very worried and we are not yet ready to increase food distribution until September,” said an executive with a top non-government organisation in Harare, who asked not be named.

David Coltart, opposition member of parliament for the Bulawayo South constituency, says he is “alarmed” at the disappearance of mealie meal. “I have been trying to source mealie meal for the past two days and have gone to a wide variety of supermarkets around town. I have also approached wholesalers and it is simply unavailable.”I have been to my own constituency every day in the past week, and there is no evidence of any international or domestic NGOs distributing food for the needy.”We are at a point where people on the margins are starving.”

Traditionally relief agencies stop supplying food to people under threat of starvation from the onset of the maize harvest, usually May until September.

Another NGO worker said on Thursday: “We know the situation in the south is particularly bad, but believe me it is bad in lots of places and I am not sure we have the right numbers of people who will need food aid before the next harvest in 2008.”

The World Food Programme estimated that about 4.1 million Zimbabweans, or more than a third of the population, will need emergency food aid before the next harvest.

Until the seizures of white-owned farms which began in 2000, Zimbabwe has only needed donated food once since independence in 1980 during a catastrophic regional drought in 1991/92.

Independent On Line/SAPA
July 25 2007

Bulawayo - Hundreds of residents in Zimbabwe’s second city thronged
the cathedral on Wednesday for prayers in support of outspoken Roman
Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube who is being sued for alleged adultery.

“The purpose of the prayer was mobilising and giving moral, spiritual,
mental and physical support to Archbishop Ncube,” said Effie Ncube - no
relation to the cleric - who is chairperson of The Pius Ncube Solidarity
Coalition, a clutch of non-governmental organisations, church groups and
political parties.

“We also want to ensure he gets a fair hearing consistent with
international human rights and judicial standards as well as countering
state propaganda regarding the lawsuit,” he added after attending the prayer
service.

Last week state media published pictures they claimed depicted the
Bulawayo archbishop, a fearless critic of President Robert Mugabe, having
sex with a married woman in his bedroom.

They claimed the pictures were taken secretly with cameras set up by a
private investigator hired by the woman’s husband to secure evidence of the
alleged adultery. The husband is now suing Ncube for 20-billion Zimbabwe
dollars (about R1,1-million).

Mugabe last Thursday rebuked the cleric for “snatching other people’s
women.”

Effie Ncube said that Zimbabweans had “seen through the machinations
of the state and are standing behind the archbishop.”

“This state-driven scandal cannot be allowed to deprive Zimbabwe as a
nation of its strongest and most consistent voice,” he added.

“Archbishop Ncube has spoken fearlessly on behalf of us all, and
whatever the truth or falsity of these allegations, we will not allow this
great activist to be silenced.”

Among high-profile people at the lunch-time prayer meeting were
opposition Movement for Democratic Change lawmaker David Coltart.

Leader
Saturday July 21, 2007
The Guardian

It was presented as medicine, but the shock therapy being applied to Zimbabwe is poison. Three weeks ago President Robert Mugabe ordered that prices be cut by at least half. It was a panic response to galloping inflation, which had reached the point where the price of some goods was rising threefold each week. But Mugabe’s decree is crucifying retailers - filling stations are being forced to sell petrol for less than half what they have to pay for it. In the ensuing summer sale, widescreen TVs, clothes, coffee, meat - almost everything except staple foodstuffs - have disappeared from the shelves.

While some Zanu-PF loyalists made a killing, thousands of shopkeepers were arrested for profiteering. Restocking has become near-impossible. Oil, soap and salt have run out in rural areas. On Thursday buying petrol with foreign currency coupons was barred, removing one of the last ways of filling up the tank. With arbitrary prices already set for basics from milk to cement (anything from 20% to 50% of the cost of production), the next step, according to the opposition MP David Coltart, is to militarise the economy. Zanu-PF are doing to businesses what they did to the white farms, and the effect will be just as grim. The price cuts were ordered by a committee of army, intelligence and police officers chaired by Mr Mugabe and gangs of thugs are implementing them by force.