at Mugabe is a keen player of the blame game, and that he blames others even for the mistakes that he himself makes. His favourite scapegoat is obviously Britain. It therefore becomes quite dangerous to support this topic. You run the risk of agreeing with and thinking like Mugabe, and nothing in the world can ever be worse than that.
But let us briefly consider some of the positive activities that Britain has undertaken to assist Zimbabwe in spite of Mugabe’s consistent insults directed at the UK. In the past seven odd years, Britain has done the following:
1. DFID, in 2007-8 will provide £38 million in aid for Zimbabwe. Most of this funding will target the poorest and most vulnerable Zimbabweans, with the highest priority being to tackle HIV/Aids and food insecurity;
2. Britain has channelled funding through UN agencies and local NGOs, with no direct funding to the government of Zimbabwe, for obvious reasons;
3. The British government has supported good national policies on HIV/Aids and on orphans and vulnerable children through the UN system;
4. It supports the Zimbabwean civil society to monitor human rights abuses and promote transparency and accountability in governance;
5. Britain promotes gender equality to help make Zimbabwe a fairer society;
6. Specifically on HIV/Aids, Britain has provided £35 million since 2003, and in the next three years some £47 million will be made available.
7. This has enabled Zimbabwe:
a. To be the first southern African country to reduce the prevalence of HIV from 24% to between 18 and 20% in 2005;
b. Zimbabwean women use more female condoms than any other country;
c. Over 500 000 Zimbabweans know their HIV status; and that includes yours truly, but no prize for guessing what my status is;
d. Increasing numbers of children have been vaccinated since 2003;
e. In a short time, Zimbabwe could be declared polio-free by the WHO, thanks to Britain and other donor agencies;
f. At 60%, contraceptive use is high in Zimbabwe, and this helps parents to plan their families.
8. DFID support will ensure that an additional 30 000 people receive anti-retroviral drugs to reduce the high mortality rate as well as the rate at which children are being orphaned;
9. With the world’s highest proportion of HIV/Aids orphaned children (25%), Zimbabwe will benefit from the £22 million provided by DFID through a multi-donor programme;
10. In terms of food security, Britain has sought to mitigate some of the adverse effects of erratic weather, economic decline, and the HIV/Aids epidemic. The objective is to reduce food aid by improving food production by the poorest people. This is being supported through the Protracted Relief Programme (PRP), which has some of the following features:
a. It has benefited 330 000 households (or 1.6 million people);
b. Some 800 new water points have been installed, benefiting over 160 000 people;
c. The provision of fertilizer and seed has improved crop yields by 40%;
d. New low cost farming methods have increased crop yields by an impressive 50%;
11. With reference to humanitarian support:
a. Britain will, through DFID, give some £8 million to provide food to more than 4.1 million hungry Zimbabweans;
b. In 2006, DFID approved £5 million for a three-year programme to help internally displaced people through the International Organisation of Migration (IOM);
c. DFID is working with local NGOs to address growing urban poverty. An estimated 700 000 urban poor in Harare, Bulawayo, Mutare, Gweru and Masvingo will benefit from this joint initiative;
d. Britain is doing a lot to enable Zimbabwe to achieve, at least, some of its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.
12. It is a fact of reality that most of Zimbabwe’s MDGs are unlikely to be achieved unless the political and social situation improves dramatically. This necessarily calls for regime change, and Britain has always been the leading proponent of regime change in Zimbabwe. In this regard, therefore, Britain cannot be said to have failed Zimbabwe.