South African food aid still awaits Zimbabwe permission

By Tererai Karimakwenda
23 August 2005

In a shocking revelation, the South Africa Council of Churches says the blankets they donated to help victims of operation Murambatsvina are in a bonded warehouse in Zimbabwe, and officials are demanding that they pay a surcharge in order to release them. But the SACC refuse to pay a surcharge on donated goods. Meanwhile, the 2 trucks with food that are part of this shipment are still in Johannesburg waiting for a rubber stamp on the duty free certificates.

Pastor Ron Steele of the Rhema Church in South Africa has been working closely with the aid mission. He told us officials from Christian Care, their partners in distributing the food and blankets, are being sent from one office to another with no results.

The Zimbabwe government simply has to provide a rubber stamp on a piece of paper. Pastor Steele said they might now be on hold until Friday. It has been almost a month since the consignment of food and blankets was put together to help victims of operation Murambatsvina, and to date, the food is on 2 trucks near the border and the blankets are reported to be in storage in a bonded warehouse in Harare. The problem is said to lie entirely with the Zimbabwean authorities who are holding up the process.

From the beginning, the delay has been seen as a continued form of punishment for the displaced people whose homes were destroyed because they voted for the opposition. This is ironic because the ruling party claims to have won the disputed election. Many believe an honest victory would have brought rewards for the electorate, instead of the so-called cleanup operation that followed immediately, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to demolish their own homes.

While the displaced families go hungry and sleep in the cold, thirty-seven tonnes of white maize, sugar beans, cooking oil and blankets have spent almost a month in limbo, waiting for an unnamed authority to sign papers.