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(TALKZIMBABWE) Makumbe: Anti-Mugabe agenda gone awry

Makumbe: Anti-Mugabe agenda gone awry
Philip Murombedzi
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:38:00 +0000

RECENT comments by Dr John Makumbe in response to President Mugabe's speech at the Food And Agricultural Organisation's (FAO) World Food summit in Rome are embarassing to say the least. For a learned man, the ignorance exposed was astounding. President Mugabe criticised Western countries at the summit for their ruinous agricultural practices at the world trading stage.

Dr Makumbe said that President Mugabe “has gallivanted around the world attending U.N. conferences and of course enjoying the food there when a lot of his people here are scratching the bottom of the barrel”.

He added: “It is a sanctions-busting maneuver. It's a shopping trip, taking advantage of the U.N. to actually get into Europe.”

This is ignorance at the highest level for a man of his supposed stature. This man is an embarassment. His attempts at politicising everything smack of ignorance, to say the least.

He should be reminded that the world trading system is skewed in favour of the West. This is a position accepted, not just by Zimbabwe, but by the rest of the developing world.

President Mugabe is not the only leader who expressed these sentiments. Makumbe should read about negotiations at the World Trade Organisation relating to agriculture and how these negotiations have failed over the wester subsidy issue.

Makumbe should be reminded that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was the only leader from the G8 industrialised countries to be among the 60 heads of state and governments who attend the summit.

The United States, which is the world's biggest food aid donor, sent the acting head of the US Agency for International Development, while Britain sent two junior ministers.

Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. secretary-general, laid out the sobering statistic as he kicked off the three-day summit.

"Today, more than 1 billion people are hungry," he told the assembled leaders. Six million children die of hunger every year, 17000 every day, he said.

"We must craft a single global vision ... to produce real results for people in real need," Ban told at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) headquarters in Rome.

Pope Benedict XVI also addressed ministers, calling for an end to the "greed" of financial speculation on food prices.

Jacques Diouf, the head of the UN food agency, has urged governments to invest $44 billion a year to end chronic hunger suffered by 1.02 billion people and achieve “food security.” World hunger has continued to rise even with food prices falling from their peaks of last year, which coincided with FAO’s previous summit where donors pledged $11 billion in aid.

Jacques Diouf says he is not satisfied with the final declaration of the UN world food summit in Rome. Mr Diouf criticised the declaration - which vowed "urgent action" to boost food security - for not including exact targets to reduce hunger.

The summit opened with the leaders adopting a declaration in which they renewed their commitment to eradicate hunger. They promised to do so by promoting investment, reversing the decline in funding for agriculture and tackling the effect of global warming on food security.

But the final declaration includes only a general promise to pour more money into agricultural aid, with no target or time frame for action.

The summit also rejected a call by the UN to commit £26bn per year to develop agriculture in developing countries. The UN warned that if more land is not used for food production, 370 million people could face famine by 2050.

"There can be no food security without climate security…by 2050 our planet may be the home of 9.1 billion people... by 2050 we know we will need to grow 70 percent more food, yet weather is becoming more extreme and more unpredictable…this week's food security summit and next month's climate change meeting in Copenhagen must craft a single global vision" Ban told at the summit.

The United Nations seeks pledge from the public as well, having launched an online appeal for individual donations to fight hunger. The World Food Program's (WFT) "Billion for a Billion" campaign aims to reach 1 billion individuals.

"If a billion Internet users donate a dollar or a euro a week, we can transform the lives of a billion hungry people across the world," said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the WFP.

President Mugabe attracted the media attention.

"We face very hostile interventions by these states which have imposed unilateral sanctions on us," he said.

"This has had a negative impact on our farmers, who, according to our neocolonialist enemies, must fail so as to damn the land reforms we have undertaken."

Academics like Dr Makumbe obviously should know such issues. Unfortunately, they are blinded by the western anti-Mugabe lobby which clouds their judgment,

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*Philip Murombedzi is the editor of the Zimbabwe Guardian. He can be reached via: philipmurombedzi@yahoo.com

Labels: FAO, JACQUES DIOUF, JOHN MAKUMBE, MUGABE

posted by MrK @ 12:17 PM