Mugabe's Water Terrorism
Via The Australian, more grim news from Zimbabwe:
Robert Mugabe is using water as a tool of repression in Bulawayo, the largest urban area in Zimbabwe controlled by a council of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, the President's critics say.
…The water crisis is a dangerous extra strain on Bulawayo, which is already reeling from the country's hyperinflation, critical shortages of basic food and electricity supplies, and the political repression witnessed in the rest of the country. Church and political leaders believe Mr Mugabe is determined to let Bulawayo wither without water. The Government has ignored repeated appeals for help.
"The problem is political," said the Reverend Kevin Thomson, a leading figure in Churches In Bulawayo, an alliance of the city's churches which has begun an emergency water supply operation in the townships. "They don't want to fix the problem. Just as they control the supply of food for political purposes, water has become another area for controlling people."
…"We wrote to the minister responsible for water for two months about the looming disaster," said an official of Churches In Bulawayo. "There was neither acknowledgement of, nor any reply to, our letters."
Instead, the minister, Munacho Mutezo, declared that the Government would not intervene in the water crisis until the city council allowed his ministry to take over water management.
Writing in the Financial Times a few years back, my friend and former colleague Fredrik Segerfeldt, author of Water for Sale: How Businesses and the Market Can Resolve the World's Water Crisis (Cato), argued that the privatization of water distribution in poor countries could save millions of lives.
Ron Bailey reviewed Segerfeldt here.
