Should aid agencies remain in Zimbabwe if they are being used as pawns, asks Bill Corcoran in Johannesburg
Last week Zimbabwe's government asked international donors and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to step in and assist the hundreds of thousands of families it had made homeless since May 19th when it began its controversial "clean-up campaign".
On the surface, such a request could appear like an embarrassing U-turn by president Robert Mugabe's government after initially insisting it could rehouse the urban poor it was making destitute. Indeed, for the first three weeks of the campaign aid agencies were forcibly stopped from assisting those left to live in the open at the onset of winter, without food, their belongings piled up on the roadside beside them.
But to believe the Zanu PF-led regime has miraculously woken up to its self-made humanitarian disaster, and overwhelmed by guilt or compassion is asking for help, would be naive in the extreme. Zanu PF has masterminded the theft of three elections - two general and one presidential - over the past five years; retention of power at all costs is its sole modus operandi.
To ensure the party's political superiority it must keep the opposition support base weak. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has its support base in the poor urban areas, so diluting their numbers by moving the people back to rural areas makes it harder for them to organise.
The economic policies that have been implemented, since the land invasions began six years ago, by the southern African country's 81-year-old president have left the country on the verge of collapse. And, one of the main consequences of this economic meltdown has been the growing reliance on the food and financial aid provided by donors. According to a Zimbabwe-based UN official I spoke to, most international and local NGOs trying to alleviate the people's hardship have to go through the government's Provincial Social Services Committee. This allows the government to control a significant amount of the aid.
The ability to access international aid, and to control who gets it, has been high on the agenda of the many despots who have wreaked havoc across Africa for the past few decades. Aid has repeatedly been stolen and used to support armed conflict in Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The logic being used is simple: one's soldiers and supporters are more inclined to do your bidding on a full stomach than they are on an empty one. Inevitably, the tactic leads to the lengthening of the conflicts in question, which in turn increases the suffering for the civilian populations caught in the middle.
MDC MP for Harare North, Trudy Stevenson, told me that aid meant for distribution in her constituency is being withheld from the people suspected of voting for the MDC in the recent election. Even though food and other necessities are being donated, it's not being distributed to everyone, and people are going hungry despite the good intentions of NGOs.
Such a tactic is a blatant abuse of donors' resources, and it goes a long way to supporting Zanu PF in its quest to remain in power. While no one wants to see hundreds of thousands of people starve, in this situation, it may be more ethical to deny aid that's being used as a political weapon against those already most oppressed. Allowing food and shelter to be distributed selectively only prolongs the tyranny under which all Zimbabweans live. The situation for NGOs will get worse once the government's NGO Bill has been made law as it will provide the government with direct and excessive control over all NGOs.
The Bill will give the government absolute authority, subject NGOs to political discretion and will be eventually used to ban those who do not demonstrate their political loyalty.
Goal director John O'Shea has gone on the record to say the Irish Government should stop providing financial assistance to the Ugandan government because it was using the money to finance its war against the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group operating in the north of the country.
This month he called on the Irish Government to stop providing financial aid to the Ethiopian government because people protesting against what they believed was a rigged election were shot dead. Such calls for disengagement are commendable.
But by the same token should Goal, Concern and other international NGOs remain in Zimbabwe if they are being used as pawns and people are being allowed to starve despite their presence?
Fr William Guri, a priest based in Harare who was one of the first to respond to the plight of his homeless parishioners once it became clear NGOs were not being allowed to help, expressed grave concerns to me over whether the international community should continue to mop up the mess that was being made by Zanu PF's campaign.
He believed that, while well-intentioned, the aid was in fact propping up the ailing regime. In the short term he conceded that a lack of support could well lead to starvation and even death, but in the long term he hoped it would force ordinary Zimbabweans to cast off their cowed demeanour and stand up for themselves.
Popular uprisings have worked in the past, the most recent of which was in Ukraine where a rigged election was forced to be held again, but only when people are inspired by a strong leadership or they feel the situation has reached rock bottom. Unfortunately for Zimbabweans, the country lacks a strong opposition leadership.
One of the great defenders of Zimbabwe's oppressed people, the Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube, who has openly condemned president Mugabe at great personal risk, says the regime must be overthrown "even if the people of Zimbabwe do not chase them out, the international community should".
However, it is the African Union and South African president Thabo Mbeki in particular, who are in the best position to pressurise him into stopping the madness. While increasing pressure from the G8 might force African leaders to take a harder stance against one of their own, they have not responded to the international condemnation.
So it appears that change for Zimbabweans must be wrought from within, either by an opposition group or by disgruntled members of the ruling party. And those who have the courage to instigate such a change have a much better chance at success if the ruling regime has nothing left to offer its supporters.