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Zimbabwe's Tsvangirai Meets USAID Leaders
FrontLines - July 2009
The prime minister of Zimbabwe, Morgan Tsvangirai, came to USAID headquarters June 9 to thank senior officials for U.S. assistance and to request additional financing and aid to help small farmers plant their summer crops.
In a follow-up meeting with staff from USAID and the Treasury Department, members of Tsvangirai’s delegation said it is critical that farmers receive the aid in time to acquire farm inputs by September or the planting season will be lost.
The USAID visit was one of several for Tsvangirai as he looks to U.S. support to restore a functioning government in Zimbabwe. A transitional government with Tsvangirai as prime minister and longtime President Robert Mugabe retaining his post has been in place since February. In five months, reform has been incremental.
Tsvangirai subsequently met with President Barack Obama on June 12, when the president encouraged continued reform in Zimbabwe and committed $73 million in assistance.
The prime minister said
his objective is to install democratic
conditions, get a constitutional
reform process “kick started” by July, and launch media reforms.
News reports out of the country say that police continue
to arrest and harass journalists and human rights advocates.
The prime minister said that the repressive habits of the ZANU-PF party won’t go away at once after 28 years of monopoly power, but the transitional government is setting
up commissions to deal with human rights, corruption, media, and elections.
Tsvangirai said he has moved to reform the reserve bank and reined in soaring hyperinflation that made a loaf of bread cost millions of Zimbabwean dollars. And he warned that if international
banks and the United States do not provide financial and development assistance “that help the people” it will enable Zimbabweans to say “‘we told you so—they cannot remove sanctions’” blocking loans and financing.
“We have gone through a difficult
period—some call it a lost decade,” said Elton Mangoma, Zimbabwe’s minister for economic
planning and investment promotion. “There’s a realization
that things cannot continue this way.”
Mangoma, who met with USAID representatives from the Africa Bureau, the Office of Transition Initiatives, and the Office of Food for Peace, echoed earlier appeals from Tsvangirai for donors to move from humanitarian aid and safety net programs to development
assistance.
In the last few years, Zimbabwe’s political upheaval led to food shortages, rampant cholera, and shuttered schools.
“Anything that’s bad, you can associate with Zimbabwe. The people got tired of it,” said Mangoma, who also said he believes momentum is clearly behind the new government succeeding.
U.S. foreign assistance goes to democracy and governance, health, HIV/AIDS, NGO programs,
jobs, small-scale farmers,
and food aid.
Zimbabwe officials said they need seed, fertilizer, herbicides, and some technical
support to carry out the next harvest. The large commercial
farms seized from white farmers in recent years are largely non-productive today. But small farmers should be able to feed the country’s
people, Tsvangirai said.
★ —B.B.
FrontLines is published
by the Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs
U.S. Agency for International Development
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