AFRICANEWS

Zimbabwe

The anthrax scare that never was

Politics

The anthrax drama unfolding in the United States has given ammunition to politicians, war veterans, and others involved in Zimbabwe's land struggle, who say that a recent outbreak of anthrax in the country is the result of biological warfare being waged by white farmers.

Zimbabwe's white commercial farmers are a besieged lot. An outbreak of anthrax in central Zimbabwe in October - passed as minimal by the country's veterinary services - has earned them the title "terrorists." Anthrax, a fatal livestock and human disease, emerged in Zhombe, a community of less than 100,000 people, infecting 15 people who had reportedly ate meat from a beast that had died from natural causes, according to a government owned daily. Their condition was later brought under control.

Minister of Agriculture Joseph Made quickly attributed the anthrax outbreak to white farmers, whom he accused of sabotaging the country's controversial land redistribution programme. For over 18 months, Zimbabwe's approximately 1,400 white commercial farmers have been besieged. Most of the country's 5,000 farms have been invaded by landless blacks, mainly supporters of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), led by veterans of the liberation war which brought independence from Britain in 1980.

The government, led by the ageing President Robert Mugabe, seems intent on seizing land from white farmers without compensation and has accused them of being "British imperialists and racists" who have refused to embrace the doctrine of reconciliation, adopted by the government in 1980. Following the outbreak of anthrax, the country's department of veterinary services quickly dispatched a team into Zhombe to monitor the situation and vaccinate cattle against the disease.

"These white farmers are just trying to sabotage black farmers by unleashing a bug to destroy their cattle," Made told the government-owned Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC). "But we are better placed against such outbreaks and nothing will make us backtrack on land resettlement."

Government tempers were to flare a few days after the outbreak when the ZBC reported that anthrax had claimed its first victim in Zhombe, a five-year-old boy. It seized the opportunity to liken the situation to that of the United States, which is battling a mailbag anthrax scourge suspected to be emanating from its conflict with Afghanistan.

Following the suicide hijacking of passenger planes on September 11, the U.S. attacked Afghanistan to force the Muslim country to hand over notorious terrorist Osama bin Laden, the major suspect behind the hijackings. The U.S. suspects that anthrax, which has affected over 15 postal workers, is a result of biological warfare being waged by bin Laden to retaliate against the U.S.' bombing of his strongholds in Afghanistan.

With such an opportunity having presented itself to the Zimbabwe government, the anthrax scare was no longer minimal. The government took the opportunity to accuse white farmers of practising the bin Laden style of terrorism. "They (farmers) have now turned to biological warfare because they do not want to give us back the land of our forefathers," said Jonathan Moyo, Minister of Information and Publicity and government spokesperson.

While Moyo was accusing white farmers of biological warfare, a Commonwealth ministerial team was in the country to assess the progress the government had made in ending lawlessness and the invasion of white-owned commercial farms amid reports of accelerated land invasions. The team's assessment is part of the Abuja Agreement - struck in September between the government and Britain - in which the British government also agreed to set aside a fund to compensate white farmers for their land.

Through their Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), white farmers denied that they used anthrax to wage biological warfare. However, their pleas of innocence met with deaf ears, as the government was unable to listen.

"Anthrax is not an issue here," said Mac Crawford, CFU's southern regional president. "The government is only trying to shift attention from the fact that farm invasions have continued even after the Abuja Agreement."

The Zimbabwe government may have been justified in accusing white farmers of waging biological warfare, since anthrax was used as a weapon to kill thousands of blacks in the 1970s during the liberation struggle by the Ian Smith regime.

Richard Ngwenya, a former military expert now practising traditional medicine, could not mince his words in an interview with Africanews. "These whites know what they did in the laboratories in 1978," he said. "They know how to turn anything non fatal to be dangerous."

Ngwenya said anthrax originally was not a fatal disease to human beings, but elements in the Ian Smith government in collaboration with the apartheid South African government managed to engineer it. Ngwenya said that the Smith regime sprinkled the germ on clothes that it later gave to Africans to wear, thereby killing thousands of people.

But Ngwenya is controversial as a herbalist because he has refused to accept the link between HIV and AIDS, tending rather to say that AIDS is a result of poverty. To solve the problem of AIDS, therefore, poverty has to be eradicated.

The government also took the opportunity to parade people who claimed that they lost their loved ones to anthrax during the liberation struggle. Their stories were aired in documentaries on national television, which, although gruesome, few believed because of the timing.

All this was done, according to analysts, to show how inhuman and cruel white people are. In September, the ZANU-PF government attributed a Foot and Mouth outbreak in southern Zimbabwe to white farmers, saying they were trying to make the country lose much-needed foreign currency.

"Mugabe is just after unnecessary attention," said social commentator, Arnold Payne. "He will do anything to justify his land grab policy."

Welbourne Madzima, a veterinarian, also tried to explain the differences between the U.S. situation and Zimbabwe, saying the outbreak was attributed to climatic changes rather than terrorism. He said any major climatic change in the country leads to an outbreak of the disease.

Even the deputy minister of health and child welfare, David Parirenyatwa, failed to gain any audience. He acknowledged to Africanews that the anthrax strain in the country was a skin type, which was easy to treat, and that it was not a new phenomenon. "You can only get anthrax by eating meat from an infected beast," he said. "It is not similar to that used by Smith's government."

However, it is doubtful that the Zimbabwe government will change its political tactics. Analysts say with Mugabe facing his first major challenger to the throne - former trade unionist Morgan Tsvangirai - in the 2002 presidential elections, he is likely to cling to the land redistribution programme that has gained him support mainly in the rural areas.

| CONTENTS | AFRICANEWS HOMEPAGE |

AFRICANEWS - Koinonia Media Centre, P.O. Box 21255, Nairobi, Kenya
tel: +254.2.576175 (voice) Fax:- +254.2.577892 (fax-modem)
AFRICANEWS on line is by Koinonia Media Centre