Forthcoming law outlaws food importation, people are angry with Mugabe (17-07-07)

>
On Friday last week President Mugabe announced the ban of all importation of foodstuffs and goods coming into Zimbabwe without giving the reason why and how people would survive in a country that has no food reserves, fuel, electricity and health facilities.

A statutory instrument, The Control of Goods (Import and Export)(Agriculture) Regulations, 2007, barring the buying and selling of some goods in foreign countries for resale in and out of Zimbabwe comes into effect on August 1.

Such ‘controlled’ goods include cooking oil, fruits, beans, meat, milk products, poultry products, maize meal and sugar all which have disappeared from supermarket shelves after a price freeze ordered by government.

“The people of Zimbabwe are trapped by their own government. I have not heard of any country where people are stopped from buying goods that are not available in their country. This obviously will make the situation with regards to hunger worse. It is a ploy by government to force people to produce the goods that are not in supply by starving them. Very few people will be able to produce, worsening the populace’s suffering,” said economist Luke Zunga, a board member of the Zimbabwe Civil Society Organisations Forum.

Buses plying the Johannesburg-Zimbabwe route and informal cross border transport operators, referred to as Omalayitsha in South Africa, said the law would compromise their profitability as well as eventually kill their businesses which they said was their only means of survival, respectively. South Africa-based Zimbabweans largely rely on the services of these transporters to send food to their starving relatives back home.

“The new law will result in few if any people sending their goods to Zimbabwe using our services. This will see our businesses folding up. I have been in this industry for more than a decade and if there was a time I feared my business will take a knock, it is now,” said a Malayitsha who only referred to himself as Tshuma, in the teeming Park Station Taxi Rank in Johannesburg.

Termini where Zimbabwean bound buses operate were as usual, a hive of activity with travellers loading foodstuffs as well as luxury products for resale and consumption back home.

A considerable number said they were not aware of the new regulations regarding the transporting of goods to Zimbabwe while some said they heard such from the rumour mill.

“From what I heard, the law is vague. I understand we now require permits to resale in our country the products that we buy here. It is common knowledge that it takes ages for government to issue permits to regulate any form of informal trade. That spells trouble to our means of livelihood. By buying goods for resale in Zimbabwe I am able to make profit to send my children to school. As it is this might be my last visit to South Africa on business,” said a distraught Sihle Ndazi, a cross border trader and a mother of three.

Zimbabwe has over the years fallen short in producing what the new decree terms as ‘specified’ goods in recent years as a result of a combination of droughts, lack of machinery and expertise among new commercial farmers as well as lack of investment in the agricultural sector.

The unavailability of such goods worsened recently when government ordered a 50 percent slash of goods, effectively driving producers out of business and buyers sweeping supermarket shelves clean- CAJ News.