"I am happy to say that we have arrested cholera," said Robert Mugabe in a televised address to the nation on Thursday, December 11, and added that now there is no need for the invasion of Zimbabwe by the international community led by the United States, Britain, and France.
Mugabe's regime claims that the cholera outbreak does not exist in Zimbabwe any more. They say the entire story about the cholera epidemic has been fabricated in the West to mobilize the support for the invasion of this Southern African country.
A cholera epidemic broke out in Zimbabwe a few weeks ago, claiming so far over 700 lives, with more than 16,000 cases reported. The aid agencies estimate that over 60,000 people could be affected by the disease in the coming weeks.
In the 1990s, Zimbabwe's GDP was second highest in sub-Saharan Africa. The country was the breadbasket of the continent. Due to economic mismanagement by Mugabe's regime, the country is in complete disarray today. In July 2008, Zimbabwe's annual inflation rate was over 231 million percent. The majority of the population is unemployed and starving, while the health system is unable to fight an easily curable disease such as cholera.
Cholera spreads through poor sanitation and contaminated water and food, causing diarrhea, vomiting, and dehydration which can be deadly. The disease can easily and inexpensively be dealt with, but not in Zimbabwe. Due to the economic collapse and the government's indifference toward its citizens, Zimbabwe lacks clean water and raw sewage runs down the streets. In order to survive, people drink the contaminated water thus contracting the disease.
With many hospitals closed due to the lack of staff, equipment, water, electricity, and drugs, people are often left to themselves to simply die. The lucky ones who live near the borders with South Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, and Zambia are finding refuge in those countries and their health centers.
Article comments
1 - Zedd
Savo,
I seriously think that Mugabe is a major drunk or drug addict. No human could remain sane while doing (and saying) the things that he does. For some reason substance abuse is never a consideration when discussing dictators.
I believe the Blago (Illinois governor) is also a drunk OR crackhead OR some other type of fiend.
It's easy to tag them as "sociopathic megalomaniac" but I think that sometimes the answer is much simpler. JUNKY. It's the only way that anyone could be so nervy and get up to face the world the next day.
2 - Glenn Contrarian
Zedd -
I have to disagree. Hitler was not a drunk. He may have been dependent on some drugs, but not to any great extent.
POWER is the most powerful intoxicant and the greatest aphrodisiac. It's not for nothing that we have the old saying about absolute power....
3 - Zedd
Glenn,
I realize that you pride yourself on being a contrarian, however it has to be said that you don't know if he was an addict or not.
I never said anything about power not corrupting.
Mugabe's ramblings are just that, ramblings. They are displaced and bizarre. There is no climate that has fostered his actions. He is either nuts or drunk. While white supremacy does permeate in every kilometer of the globe, his ramblings have no relation to that challenge. He has no ideology, not even Mugabeism. He is just talking crazy. I think he's a drunk. Much like most abusive spouses the confidence for his unjustifiable reign comes from the booze.
4 - Cannonshop
Actually, Zedd, I've wondered for a few years if someone shouldn't be checking the lead levels in whatever Mugabe's been drinking, since he's gone from being relatively moderate and a half-decent administrator into a total lunatic moron starting in the mid-nineties, compleat with the kind of paranoid lashing out you get with certain forms of Alzheimers...or heavy metals poisoning. Relatively speaking, he's gone from Claudius to Caligula rather quickly (as time goes for kings and dictators), his country was once racially tolerant and prosperous, it's gone rather pointedly away from those things and down the drain in (relatively speaking) nothing flat.
5 - Ruvy
Nice to see Zedd paying attention to these articles - finally!
Now, where was that article about Brooklyn again?
6 - Glenn Contrarian
C-shop -
You might be right. I think you may have hit the nail on the head. But as Zedd pointed out, it may be drugs, too.
7 - Dr Dreadful
If there were any doubt left that Mugabe and his cadre are totally tonto, they are now accusing inoffensive Botswana of plotting a coup in Zimbabwe.
8 - Zedd
If this situation wasn't so devastating and so evil, this bunch's demise would be as juicy as any good "train wreck". It will be delightful to see them go down, one meltdown at a time. Unfortunately Mugabe is too old, when the time comes, he won't have enough time to suffer adequately for the carnage that he has caused.
9 - cooper
Realizing that Mugabe is crazy is a good start, especially as some there are now claiming the West introduced the Cholera, but I wonder at the lack of attention being paid to the fact the United Nations let the Zimbabwe regime of Robert Mugabe take a cut of all aid money it raised until early November, money which was converted at a government-imposed rate at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. The inflation rate there having soared to 231,000,000% in October - I think it was higher in November - in a country where a large part of the population makes less than 5 dollars a day, surely there is some culpability on the part of others.
The increasing poverty, due to the inflation, is part of the reason so many of the increasingly poverty stricken are dying from this disease.