Zim

Harare hospital 'has become a place of death'
December 03 2008 at 02:41PM
By Francis Hweshe

Activist for refugee rights Braam Hanekom has reported the dire situation facing his countrymen in Zimbabwe after he managed to sneak into the country last week.

At a press conference in Cape Town on Tuesday Hanekom told of the horror he had witnessed first-hand.

"At Parerinyatwa hospital in Harare where I was born, there is no electricity, running water and about 50 sick people are turned away daily to go and die at home," he said.

"In its mortuary I saw bodies piled upon bodies as the facility has become a place of death."

Hanekom is the chairman of refugee lobby group, People Against Suppression, Suffering, Oppression and Poverty (Passop). He has visited his troubled homeland twice recently after a three-year absence.

He said a health official at the hospital had told him: "It's better for them to die at home than here."

The doctor also told him those who were admitted to the hospital were sure to die due to lack of medicine.

Hanekom said he had seen staffers at the hospital's mortuary working without proper protective gear such as gloves and bodies were not being cleaned as the city did not have water.

He said he had been deeply touched by an incident when a relative had come to collect his beloved's body but staffers had refused him access to the body as it was in a "mess".

"The agonised man protested that he could bring a bucket of water to wash the body but they refused, as that would bring cholera."

Hanekom described the cholera situation as volatile - people have ceased greeting one another with handshakes for fear of contracting the disease which has claimed hundreds of lives.

"It's a hopeless situation... people are dying of dehydration... there is no water, even in affluent areas," he said.

He said he had interviewed disgruntled civil servants including soldiers and police officers, some of whom said they wanted to band with civilians to overthrow President Robert Mugabe's government.

Soldiers earn R70 a month but for the past two months have not been paid and they are frustrated, he said.

Hanekom said MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai should exploit the moment and turn the tables on Mugabe.

He warned that failure to do so could result in the emergence of rebels.

"Schools have shut down, national examinations have been cancelled and concerned parents are paying private tutors in foreign currency, which they don't have.

"Malnutrition is everywhere, we estimate that about 40 percent of the people are living beneath the daily nutritional intake needed for basic survival.

"Queues ran across the city streets outside the banks with up to 300 people desperately waiting to withdraw their daily limits of Z$500 000 (R5)."

He said in the rural areas, where hunger and starvation is taking its toll, subsistence farming had started, but many of the farmers lack the necessary resources.

Zimbabwean refugee Barbara Zhungu, also present at the media briefing, said: "We are caught up in a tight situation as it is tough for us to live in this country."

This article was originally published on page 3 of Cape Argus on December 03, 2008
____________________________________________________________

Well fuck me .... All hail the great MOTHERFUCKER MBEKI ... fuck you mbeki you cunt, you and your fucking quiet bullshit.
Always more interested in HISTORY than people .... well i fucking hope that history puts you down as the fucking politician RESPONSIBLE ... may your sould be bathed in the blood of the dead and dying.

My god ... it's the black plague ... bring out your dead ... except they cannot even afford the pennies for the ferryman.

May God have mercy on them all. Holidays are coming, i wonder if my children will even go to school next year, or if the plague will have reached us by then. Our water supplies are already suspect.