August 2008 is nightmarish to most Zimbabweans as it was then that a water-borne disease outbreak, that has to date wiped out close to 1,000 lives began. Never in the history of this once prosperous Southern African country did such a manageable epidemic as cholera spread at such magnitude. Due to the economic collapse that has seen urban sanitation facilities disintegrating, health delivery services decaying with major hospitals closing, doctors and nurses downing tools so do critics point to the manifestation of the pandemic spread. But government blamed for the ailing economy because of gross mismanagement is still in a state of denial instead, apportioning fault of the cholera outbreak on sanctions by Western countries, in general, and of late on biological warfare, in particular.
When the US State Department made a briefing attended by Ambassador to Zimbabwe James McGee and Director of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance Ky Luu on Thursday, December 11, in Washington, United States Agency for International Development administrator Ms Henrietta Fore announced that the US “working alongside the international community, has been preparing for a cholera outbreak for quite some time” before the outbreak of the disease putting in measures “to specific targets for cholera outbreaks.” For one reason or another that preparedness has been construed by the Mugabe regime to mean launching biological warfare on Zimbabwe.
In response through the state media on Friday, December 12, Zimbabwe’s Minister of Information and Publicity, Dr Sikhanyiso Ndlovu said the epidemic is a worked out attack on the country.
“The cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe is a serious biological chemical war force and a genocidal onslaught on the people of Zimbabwe by the British.”
“Cholera is a calculated racist terrorist attack on Zimbabwe by the unrepentant former colonial power which has enlisted support from its American allies so that they invade the country,” Ndlovu alleged then.
Though many questioned the logic behind the allegations but quickly dismissed them as the usual government propaganda, the same Information minister was at it again quoted in the government controlled daily, The Herald, reiterating the same sentiments. In an article in which the government “applauds’ United Nations Secretary- General Ban Ki Moon for “supporting Zimbabwe against the West’s bid” to invade the country Ndlovu said, “the Secretary-General must be praised for maintaining the sanctity of the UN Charter which provides that there shall be non-interference in UN member sovereign states’ internal affairs. "He has recognised the fact that the Zimbabwe situation was worsened by economic sanctions, cholera and anthrax planted in the country by the British.”
But despite government continuous blame of the epidemic on “British genocide”, most urban parts in Zimbabwe--particularly those in the high density areas have been and are still going with unrepaired bursting sewage pipes, uncollected garbage, untreated water from taps, lack of basic drugs in hospitals and clinics to attend to cholera patients for a long time.
Even the head of state has the tenacity to maintain that the disease is under control when new cases are being reported. Mugabe said this last week at the funeral of his party’s National Political Commissar, Elliot Manyika.
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s neighbours in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) Wednesday announced the region’s new initiative to address the crisis in Zimbabwe and as a matter of urgency, the cholera epidemic.
President Kgalema Motlanthe of South Africa, whose country currently chairs the SADC, said humanitarian aid would be directed through a new structure called the Zimbabwe Humanitarian and Development Assistance Framework (ZHDAF). ZHDAF is expected to be non-partisan and is comprised of government, Non-governmental Organisations, religious leaders and agricultural unions.
