Government blames UK, US for cholera
December 12, 2008
By Our Correspondent
HARARE- President Robert Mugabe’s government has claimed the cholera outbreak was caused by the British government in a biological warfare against Zimbabwe.
The claim came after the US State Department said it had been preparing for the cholera outbreak for sometime. Zimbabwe has battled a cholera outbreak since August.
Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, the outgoing minister of information and publicity, told the state-controlled Herald newspaper that the epidemic was a calculated attack on Zimbabwe.
“The cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe is a serious biological chemical war force, a genocidal onslaught on the people of Zimbabwe by the British,” he said.
“Cholera is a calculated racist, terrorist attack on Zimbabwe by the unrepentant former colonial power which has enlisted support from its American and Western allies so that they invade the country.”
According to UN figures, cholera has claimed almost 800 lives and affected 16,000 people in Zimbabwe. Ironically, Britain and the US have supplied millions of dollars to combat the epidemic.
While Ndlovu had earlier suggested cholera had resulted from biological warfare, he also said it had been caused by sanctions.
“Because of sanctions we have not been able to import enough water purification chemicals and water restitution pipes,” Ndlovu said.
“Government through the RBZ has provided the Zimbabwe National Water Authority with foreign currency to import chemicals. We thank the World Health Organisation and all health workers for the support in our fight against cholera.”
On Thursday, United States Agency for International Develop (USAID) administrator Henrietta Fore said the US had long prepared for the epidemic.
‘‘The United States, working alongside the international community, has been preparing for a cholera outbreak for quite some time,” Fore said.
“Before the disease was widespread, USAID began building contingencies into its ongoing emergency programmes, allowing us to quickly direct our assistance to specific targets for cholera outbreaks.”
The Herald said Fore’s statement raised fears the US may have launched biological warfare on Zimbabwe.
The newspaper said US alleged attempts to use cholera as an excuse to mobilise military action against Zimbabwe had fuelled suspicions of biological warfare.
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Norman,
That is an easy question to answer. Observers in Zimbabwe knew that a cholera outbreak was very likely, because the breakdown of sanitation and of health care were plain for all to see. Under those conditions cholera is a totally predictable outcome. So, informed and intelligent people could predict the outbreak. To infer from that that these US health organizations are secret instruments of deliberate genocide is utterly ludicrous.
Suppose that outside observers predicted road accidents, on the grounds that the traffic lights were not functioning and here was no reliable traffic regulation. Your question is like saying: “How did these people know that there would be road accidents? Isn’t this suspicious? Perhaps they caused the accidents themselves!!!
Sikhanyiso Ndlovu is shamelessly ignorant. He should read pre-school books to learn how cholera is transmitted.
What a week full of pathetic madness by the ZANU PF fools. First we had the lead maniac tell the whole world that there is no more cholera in Zimbabwe. Then we had his secretary (wife) tell the whole world that he had been misqouted and he had just been sarcastic. Finally another clown who masquarades as a PHD graduate claims that cholera was manufactured in UK and is being used as a biological weapon. Here are some advice for these lunatics;
1. For someone like Mugabe who lives in a dreamland where there is a government and he is an elected leader, there is plenty of food, fuel, electricity and clean water. Why does he bother to make a comment about Zimbabwe a country he has no idea about? Why can’t he confine his comments to the imaginery dreamland he lives in?
2. Mr Charamba if you are a real Zimbabwean do you know that it is a taboo to be sarcastic during a funeral and especially when talking about the death of about 1000 Zimbabweans? Please tell your boss to be sarcastic about issues such as his age, his wife and his ‘kids’.
3. Sikhanyiso please try to remember some basic facts about infections that you were taught while training as a radiographer in South Africa. Cholera is not a biological weapon but was manufactured at lake Chivero by a ZANU PF organ called ZINWA. Please take a up water from Chivero (full of cholera) to London and Washington and see if you can successfully cause a cholera outbreak there. For the record no sane individual would use a feco-oral spread organism such as cholera as a biological weapon when there are such effective airbone diseases as anthrax. Maybe ZANU stooges like you would try such a stupid option.
Even as Robert Mugabe employs crude propaganda to deflect public opinion on his handling of the cholera epidemic and his not so funny joke on there being ‘ NO CHOLERA ‘, the truth was being written in bold letters right in the graveyards of Harare.
Even HIV, at its peak, never wrecked that much havoc ! Not even the massacres at Nyadzonia and Lusaka by the ‘ racist former colonial power ‘ sponsored rebel Ian Smith during the liberation war ! If anything near, then the Gukurahundi massacres, and then he did not even shed a remorseful tear ! Why would he today ? To do so would be to signal a weakness in a national leader ! So NO ! He would joke about it instead ! How sadistic ! How sacarstic !
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/world/africa/12cholera.html?_r=1&ref=africa
But enough of that ! That is the international image of a country in turmoil, raped and plundered by its crazed illegitimate national leadership ! And he does not give a damn !