Zimbabweans starve as its leaders and most of the world looks on with indifference.

The rural folk in Zimbabwe are now relying on wild fruits which are quickly running out. Quite a number of them have died from hunger and starvation. If only Mugabe had not banned the NGOs (Non Governmental Organisations) who were donating food to the poor the number of deaths would not be that much. The townsfolk have not been spared from this hunger and starvation mainly because of the low bank withdrawal limits set by the Reserve Bank Governor which make it immpossible for them to buy the highly priced food items as and when they need them. The other reason why the ordinary townsfolk are suffering from hunger is because the Reserve Bank Governor authorised businesses to sell their goods in US dollars and Rands yet 95% of employees in the nation are paid in Zimbabwean dollars. Where does he expect the ordinary people to get the foreign currency from?

The Zimbabwean leaders, Tsvangirai, Mutambara amd Mugabe, instead of looking for maize-meal donations from other nations in order to feed the hungry, instead of ordering the Reserve Bank Governor to stop implementing policies that increase the suffering of the people, they are just looking on with indifference. The fact that they still haven't agreed on cabinet power-sharing should not be an excuse for them to just sit on their laurels and not do anything for the suffering people. If this is the calibre of leaders that are going to lead us in this nation then we are all doomed. We need leaders who have a heart for the people they lead, leaders who know that they are there to serve the people they lead and what better time to serve them than in their most hour of need which is now when they are suffering from hunger.
Zimbabwe is not an island, it is surrounded by countries the world over that even in this depression have surplus supplies of food and could have easily donated those supplies to Zimbabwe if they wanted to but all they do is feign sympathy for the plight of the Zimbabweans, if they had genuine sympathy they would have done something to help by now. Yes Zimbabwe is not an island but most countries are treating us like an inaccessible island by their indifference. It is in times of crisis that you get to know who the real humanitarians are and we Zimbabweans have just discovered that very few countries care about us and how can we blame them when our very own leaders don't seem to care about us at all.

This indifference towards starving Zimbabweans reminds me of what Elie Wiesel who won the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom as well as in 2007 the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's Lifetime Achievement Award,said on the 12th of April, 1999 about the perils of indifference. He was talking about the indifference he experienced when as a Hungarian teenager he and his father, mother and sisters, were deported by the Nazis to Auschwitz extermination camp in occupied Poland where they and many others were treated inhumanely as slaves while the whole world looked on with indifference. His situation is completely different from our situation here in Zimbabwe but what he said about the perils of indifference also rings true for our situation in Zimbabwe. I have qouted parts of his speech on the perils of indifference that apply to the indifference we are experiencing here in Zimbabwe as we suffer from hunger and have also added my own thoughts to it.

So much hunger, starvation and poverty, so much indifference. What is indifference? Etymologically, the word means "no difference." A strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur between light and darkness, dusk and dawn, crime and punishment, cruelty and compassion, good and evil. What are its courses and inescapable consequences? Is it a philosophy? Is there a philosophy of indifference conceivable? Can one possibly view indifference as a virtue? Is it necessary at times to practice it simply to keep one's sanity, live normally, enjoy a fine meal and a glass of wine, as the world around us experiences harrowing upheavals?
Of course, indifference can be tempting -- more than that, seductive. It is so much easier to look away from victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another person's pain and despair. Yet, for the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbor are of no consequence. And, therefore, their lives are meaningless. Their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest. Indifference reduces the other to an abstraction.

In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony, one does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it. Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry people, the homeless refugees -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity we betray our own. Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment. And this is one of the most important lessons of this outgoing century's wide-ranging experiments in good and evil.

In Zimbabwe, society is composed of three simple categories: the leaders bickering over cabinet power-sharing and indifferent to the plight of those dying from hunger and cholera, the wealthy who have more than enough and are buying food with their US dollars & Rands and are so indifferent & selfish that they don't give to the poor , and the poor languishing in poverty, hunger and cholera . During the darkest of times, these poor obviously feel abandoned and forgotten by society, they all do.
If only their miserable consolation was that they believed that their plight was a closely guarded secret; that the leaders of the free world did not know what was going on in Zimbabwe; that they had no knowledge of the economic war going on in the country with them being the targets where the bullets of that war are aimed at.
If the leaders of the free world knew, they thought, surely those leaders would have moved heaven and earth to intervene. They would have spoken out with great outrage and conviction and not only speak out but acted swiftly to save them from the hunger and extreme poverty. What makes most of them die is because they give up the will to live because they would have lost all hope. They loose hope because they know, they learnt and discovered through the media that the leaders of the free world and all nations know about our plight but are doing nothing about it.

What about the children? Oh, all nations do see them on television, they read about them in the papers, and they do so with a broken heart. Their fate is always the most tragic, inevitably. When adults wage war, children perish. All you nations who see their faces, their eyes. Do you hear their pleas? Do you feel their pain, their agony? Every minute one of them dies of starvation, hunger, famine, thirst, cholera or lack of treatment and medication. Some of those children could be saved -- so many of them could be saved by you if you decide not to be indifferent.

Rooted in our Christian tradition, some of us felt that to be abandoned by humanity then was not the ultimate. We felt that to be abandoned by God was worse than to be punished by Him. Better an unjust God than an indifferent one. For us to be ignored by God was a harsher punishment than to be a victim of His anger. Man can live far from God -- not outside God. God is wherever we are. Even in suffering? Even in suffering. PLEASE GOD HEAR OUR PLEA AND MOVE THE WORLD TO STOP BEING INDIFFERENT TO OUR PLIGHT AND SAVE US.