Mugabe's Party Feasts While Zimbabwe Starves

Over 200 farm animals to be consumed during four-day Zanu-PF conference
By Nick McMaster,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 19, 2008 12:30 PM CST
Mugabe's Party Feasts While Zimbabwe Starves
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe arrives at the National Heroes Acre in Harare, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2008, where he spoke at the burial of Eliot Manyika, a government minister who died in a car accident.   (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi)

The government of Zimbabwe has planned a decadent feast for delegates from the ruling party while starvation and cholera run rampant in the general population, Time reports. Robert Mugabe and 5,000 Zanu-PF delegates will treat themselves to 124 cattle, 81 goats, and 18 pigs across a four-day conference now under way. "This truly is incredible in a country where millions of impoverished souls are starving," said an editor of thezimbabwetimes.com.

Besides inflation and financial mismanagement that has forced Zimbabweans to resort to a barter system, a cholera epidemic—which Mugabe has denied the existence of—has claimed 1,111 lives so far. And though Zanu-PF will eat well at its annual conference, new UN estimates say that nearly half of Zimbabwe’s population will need food aid in the next quarter.
(More Zimbabwe stories.)

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