Zimbabwe prison guards stealing prisoner food to stay alive

Martin Fletcher reports on the deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe, where the currency has become meaningless and the nation has begun starving to death.  Even law enforcement personnel can’t get enough food to survive, and prison guards have begun stealing food from prisoners to stay alive, and the prisoners have begun dying in droves:

Another passenger was a warden at Bulawayo’s infamous Khami prison. The previous month he had earned 200 million Zimbabwean dollars – less than US$1 at today’s rate. Of that sum he could withdraw only a fraction after queueing for four hours at the bank each morning. Every day and a bit, its value halved.

He said that he had five children to support and had not eaten bread for a year. He survived by stealing the prisoners’ sadza – a porridge that is now a luxury for most – or by trading favours for food brought in by families. “There’s no discipline … We depend on the prisoners to stay alive.”

Four inmates shared cells designed for one; 400 shared a single tap. There were no working lavatories and it was overrun with rodents. Some prisoners suffered from pellagra, an illness caused by vitamin deficiency, and several died each day. Their bodies were seldom claimed because of the funeral costs. Most were kept in a stinking mortuary for the statutory 12 days, then put in sacks and given paupers’ burials in the prison grounds.

Robert Mugabe may not survive this crisis, even if he succeeds in marginalizing Morgan Tsvangirai in the power-sharing negotiations.  Mugabe relies on his army and police to keep him in power, and at least the latter have become completely disenchanted with the regime.  Two police officers who demanded a ride from Fletcher told him that they’d refuse to fight against an uprising of the people aimed at unseating Mugabe, and given the extreme deprivations of the Zimbabweans, it’s hard to imagine who would defend the government.

Any semblance of order has completely disappeared from Zimbabwe.  It may only be weeks until massive numbers of people begin dying of starvation and disease, an atrocity in a nation blessed by abundant farmland.  Will the army and the police finally turn on the author of their national misery?

The only thing worse than a revolution at this point would be well-intentioned outside intervention to rescue Mugabe and his regime through humanitarian efforts.  Without a change in Harare, any such intervention would only serve to prolong the misery of Zimbabweans.  Mugabe has to go.