MP Cross warns Zim to 'pray for rain' because we have no capacity to import enough food

According to MDC MP Eddie Cross if the rains fail this coming season then Zimbabwe will need to import 1.2 to 2 million tonnes of maize and maize meal for which the country does not have the money to buy the grain, the region does not have port capacity to handle the imports, NRZ does not have the train wagons and locomotive to move the imports and there are no usable silos to store the grain, etc.   

"The last time we faced a basic food shortage of this magnitude was 2008 when the collapse of the agricultural industry, like the whole economy, was at an all-time low driven onto the rocks by massive inflation. There was no money to import our basic needs and our shops were completely empty," wrote Eddie Cross.

"That year we were saved from a real calamity by the G20 Summit in 2007 where the President of South Africa persuaded the international community to support the process of political reform and change that he was instituting and which would lead to the Government of National Unity in February 2009."

Tragically the "process of political reform" failed to bring about any political change as at the end of the GNU Zimbabwe did not have the democratic system of government but the same corrupt, vote-rigging and tyrannical Mugabe dictatorship the whole process had promised to end.

"Hit the metal whilst it is hot!" or "Make hay whilst the sun shines!" whites say. You should know these adages; you are a "white African", as you prefer to call yourself. If the rainfall fails as you and others have said then you will be forced to remember that you and your MDC friends got us into this nightmare.

You are right that Zimbabwe will not be prepared to deal with the food crisis and many lives will be lost because of this corrupt and incompetent Mugabe regime. But there is no point in mourning about this corrupt regime because we had a golden opportunity to end the dictatorship during the GNU by implementing the GPA reforms. We failed to get even one reform implemented because some village idiots failed to hit the metal whilst it was hot, failed to make the hay whilst the sun was shining. We both know who those village idiots are!

As time goes and the true cost of the continue Zanu PF dictatorship mount in human suffering and lost human lives MDC leaders will be asked again and again whether the thirty pieces of silver they received from Mugabe to betray the nation was worth it?

"We better all go to Church this Sunday and pray for rain," concluded Eddie Cross.

Mr Cross, Zimbabwe has had to import food almost every year without exception since the violent and chaotic farm seizures started in 2000. This is happening in a country with some of the best land and great weather for growing crops and farming animals. Until 2000 we not only produced enough to meet our needs but had surplus to keep our silos full and still had plenty left over for exported.

If we were going to have a poor growing season but started with full silos then we would not need to import as much. It is the decades of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption that have destroyed the country's railway network, silos, etc. Are you going to ask the nation to pray for train wagons and silos too?

We had starving in the Garden of Eden because of decades of misrule by Mugabe. Are you going to ask God to implement the GPA reforms necessary to end this Zanu PF dictatorship too?

"By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground," commanded the Lord to the retreating figures of the fig-tree leaf clad lovers, Adam and Eve. It was within MDC leaders' powers to end the Mugabe dictatorship during the GNU and it is for us to create another opportunity to force political reform. God does not do what mankind can do for himself!