Mugabe ignores bread and butter issues during Heroes day speech

By Tichaona Sibanda
14 August 2006

Robert Mugabe on Monday led thousands of his Zanu (PF) supporters to honour the country’s fallen heroes and not surprisingly took the opportunity to tell the nation how the country’s economy was turning around.

In an address to the nation from Heroes Acre in Harare Mugabe dwelt at length on the way the economy was being ‘turned around’ as a result of new policy guidelines set in place by Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono.

MDC’s Harare provincial chairman Morgan Femai said as usual ‘Zimbabweans had to endure lie after lie’ from the embattled leader of the Zanu (PF) regime during his Heroes day speech.

‘The man is a liar. He kept repeating lies that his government had arrested economic saboteurs, that they had arrested cattle rustlers and that the land redistribution exercise was almost complete meaning the country will have plenty of food from the farmers. These are all lies and everyone now knows the man is a liar,’ said Femai.

Femai added that Mugabe did not even mention how his government will deal with the constant power blackouts, water cuts and how they are going to deal with imminent bread shortages.

On Saturday an international organisation that monitors food supply trends warned that the country faces severe bread shortages this year predicting the wheat harvest will fall below 35 percent of the national requirements.

In its latest report for July the United States-based Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET), said Zimbabwe will harvest about 135 000 metric tonnes of wheat, higher than last year's 120 000 metric tonnes. But the harvest will still fall short as it will only be enough to cover about 34 percent of the country's national requirements.

‘Wheat production for 2006 is expected to be about 135 000 metric tonnes, which is 13 percent higher than the 2005 production level of about 120 000 MT. The 2006 production still falls far short of national requirements estimated to be around 400 000 MT,’ read part of the report.

The food monitoring agency also warned that rising costs of food will also impact negatively on the food security situation of most households in the country.