Once Again, It's a Time for Giving
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1 Christmas Charity Appeal 2010 Once again, it’s a time for giving THE DAILY TELEGRAPH White pensioners and poor black families alike are FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2010 the victims of Zimbabwe’s economic catastrophe ANE is a charity with a This is a collection of clear purpose. “We aim to articles published in Z give hope where there is no hope,” says former MP The Daily Telegraph Tom Benyon, who in 2002 set from November 2010 to up Zimbabwe A National Emergency in response to January 2011 to what he hoped would be a highlight the work of short-lived crisis. He was moved to help by ZANE. meeting Cathy Olds, a Published by kind permission. Zimbabwean who fled to Britain with her children after her husband, a farmer, was murdered. On visiting Zimbabwe, he saw the effects Comment of rampant inflation, which wiped out assets and savings and left large parts of the Our generous population destitute. Eight years on, more people S A than ever in Zimbabwe are A readers H E trapped in what appears to be D hat Cavalier poet of E a hopeless situation. The N gathering rosebuds, N decision last year to adopt the A Robert Herrick, was no T US dollar as the currency has Pensioners whose savings were wiped out are living in poverty fool. He once turned his helped to stabilise the artifice to the problem of country, but it has created still giving alms when you don’t home, financed by the sale of out simply and cheaply if more abject poverty. Savings know what you have to spare. her mother’s home. treated early. became worthless overnight. “Little or much, / My alms is “She was tearful and her Operating in Zimbabwe is such; / But if my deal / Of oil Since then, prices have hands shook as she showed difficult and dangerous. and meal / Shall fuller grow, / escalated five-fold. me her savings book,” Benyon Money could easily go astray, More I’ll bestow,” he wrote in Pensioners have been says. “Hundreds of thousands but not a single penny raised disarming simplicity. He particularly badly affected; of Zimbabwe dollars she once by ZANE since 2002 has been knew quite well, though, that among them, British former had were now enough to buy a lost to corruption. Its brave it was the poor widow that civil servants and soldiers who small packet of bacon. workers operate “under the gave to Elijah the last of her chose to settle in the country. Without ZANE, she would be radar”, as Benyon puts it, food who found her “oil and The pensions they believed dead.” dispensing money directly to meal” endlessly replenished. would keep them in old age Whites in Zimbabwe are not those who need it most. In these uncertain times, can no longer support them. the only ones to be suffering Where family members can be Telegraph readers seem to Many have had their homes in a country where found to provide assistance, share Herrick’s optimism that and farms taken from them. unemployment has reached ZANE will track them down; charitable donations are the With great dignity but little to 90 per cent. Medical care is the charity only gives to those last things that need to be cut. eat, they are barely surviving. free to children under five, but in most desperate need. Even Last year, you gave £1.2 Thousands of people are in a there are few doctors and so, waiting lists for help are million to this newspaper’s similar position to Sylvia, who clinics, and often no long, and growing longer Christmas charity appeal. This went to live in Zimbabwe 10 education is available. ZANE every day. year’s appeal is for ZANE years ago in order to look has extended its assistance to (Zimbabwe A National after her aged mother, taking those who live in the country’s Emergency), Cancer Research her life savings with her. After slums, where one in three UK and Dogs for the Disabled. her mother died in 2002, she people under 40 suffers from Little or much, we’re sure the stayed on and, diagnosed with Aids, and many children’s generosity will be there this a debilitating spinal lives are ruined by club foot – year, too. condition, moved to a nursing a problem that can be sorted Charity Reg No 1112949 2 Charity Appeal We must not forget Zimbabwe THE DAILY TELEGRAPH ZANE is a charity dedicated to alleviating suffering. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2010 Graham Boynton explains why the country he loves needs its help so badly recently dug out from my than a century, Rhodesians civil war after which power duty, combined with their attic a photograph taken were setting about modifying would be transferred to the resourcefulness and diligence, in Rhodesia at the end of the social and political man whose name would were major contributors to the 1960s. It was landscape to accommodate become synonymous with the success of the colony and I primarily a snap of my the indigenous people despotic African rule. Despite therefore the well-being of teenage self with a girlfriend properly. Mugabe’s promises to Ian both its white and black at the Hillside dams, a The moderates on both sides Smith at the time he took citizens. The shabbiness and popular picnic spot in the were not quick enough. power that he would look disorder today in the principal second city of Bulawayo. What Unfortunately, the decision- after the country he had cities and the virtual absence was interesting about the making processes ended up in inherited from the of a properly functioning civil photograph was not the the hands of whites like Ian conscientious and innovative service are significant grinning teenage couple but Smith, an arch-conservative colonials, in fact he has pointers to the shambles that that fact that at this particular with limited political skills, dismantled and destroyed the is Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. spot were families and groups and blacks like Robert infrastructure with a cavalier Now, as Zimbabwe enters its of all races – white, African Mugabe, a ruthless enforcer disregard for his own people's second decade as a socially and Indian – enjoying a even from his early days. (The welfare. and economically failed state, Sunday in the sunshine. There idea that Mugabe “turned the price is being paid by the is a carefree multi-racialism bad” at some stage during his ordinary people. Mugabe’s about the scene. despotic reign is unsupported elite have barely noticed the Pre-Mugabe Rhodesia has by fact – he was always calamitous decline, although mostly been portrayed as a prepared to employ a ❝ they have been somewhat period of evil, race-driven scorched earth policy on his This beautiful inconvenienced by the fact colonialism where the white political enemies). that their shopping trips to minority firmly planted their Both men were creatures of country’s lurching Bond Street and rue du boots on the throats of the their time. Smith was elected Faubourg Saint-Honore have black majority, oppressing in 1963 only three years after journey to been disrupted by sanctions and exploiting them until they white Belgian refugees had imposed on them by the EU. were driven into a guerrilla fled into Rhodesia from dictatorship has However, that inner circle of war that was to rage for more anarchy and bloodshed in the politicians, cronies and than a decade. The decolonised Congo. They had been a calamity relatives continue to live the photograph suggests that the arrived with tales of whites high life while the majority of truth about Rhodesia was a being murdered in the streets Zimbabweans struggle to feed great deal more complicated, and that sent reverberations themselves. Only last week, and race relations and the through Rhodesia’s white the wife of one of Mugabe’s progress towards minority at just the time that ministers was overheard enfranchisement were far the West was demanding As Mugabe and his cronies telling a companion that so more nuanced, than the immediate handover of have gone about looting the much money was pouring into traditional viewpoint from political power. Mugabe, country, they have also her family’s bank account this side of the fence. meanwhile, was transforming allowed to fall into disrepair, “that we have to buy a new While we Rhodesian whites himself from a clever either wilfully or through property every year”. certainly enjoyed a happy-go- Christian schoolboy to an blissful ignorance, the The plain facts of lucky, privileged youth we uncompromising Marxist- mechanisms that supported Zimbabwe’s fall tell the story. were also aware that the Leninist, a perfect anti- colonial Rhodesia’s In 2000 that total output of future had to be shared with Western front line activist for phenomenal growth. Most the country’s agricultural the black majority. We were the Cold War ideologues in notable of these mechanisms industry was 4.3 million proudly unlike South Africa Moscow and Peking. was an unideological civil tonnes of products worth, at where racial separation was We – the grinning white service, which provided the today’s prices, US$ 4.3 billion. written into the constitution teenagers in that fading glue that held the various By last year this had declined and through the 1950s and photograph and the black functioning institutions to 1.3 billion tonnes worth $1 1960s was seeping into its families sitting around together. billion, a fall of 70 per cent. population’s bloodstream. We enjoying picnics on the same Whatever the private More than half of the 4,000 were largely from British immaculately-tended lawns – political views of these largely white-owned farms taken by stock and, having hacked and were innocently enjoying the white civil servants – and the Mugabe regime are now hewn an impressively efficient last days of relative peace.