t possible now that food may be forthcoming to help feed the masses approaching near starvation levels in most regions and in some urban areas where conditions have been aggravated by untimely destruction of “illegal” living quarters. Many more, therefore, can be expected to survive if the sticky hands of politicians and their hangers-on can be kept away and the proper and equitable sharing of any aid to the needy be permitted to be made.
If the regime in power today with its diehard leader, long past his “shelf life”, is to be replaced by a true and proper democratic process, much help is going to be needed from those with influence in the western world. Southern Africa in colonial times was much aided by the efforts of Jewish families who had emigrated to that somewhat remote part of the world to seek a living as a result of persecution of their people elsewhere in the globe. Not many would contest their biblical description as “God’s chosen people”.
The latent talents they possess in many fields and their energy has helped Zimbabwe reach the relatively high state of development reached in 1980. Not many Jews are left in Zimbabwe today but many are still in a position of influence and affluence south of the Limpopo River. It should not be forgotten that Robert Mugabe’s chosen physician was a Jew.
The influence of Jewish people throughout the western world is well known and there are some of us who believe this may well have been used in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein when his regime in Iraq posed a most serious threat to Israel’s existence.
It would be nice to see this power and influence directed against the Mugabe regime. Jewish people have never been racist at heart and many who came up with the Pioneer Columns to Rhodesia in the century before last may have fond memories of the happy and peaceful peoples with whom they are no longer in contact.
It would be nice to see in North America and other countries where Jews have settled successfully the forming of something like a “Jewish friends of Zimbabwe” society by those with Zimbabwe or Southern African connections. Only, it is felt, by support of such an organised body, with the wealth and influence they possess, can sufficient pressure be put to bear on western politicians to do something really effective to restore democracy to the suffering Zimbabwean people.
JIM PASQUALE, London
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