Yesterday I wrote a diary about the tragedy that is unfolding in the crumbling nation of Zimbabwe.
Today, the New York Times ran a story with some photos of exactly the kind of devastation that is being experienced by the people of Zimbabwe.
First, a little background, courtesy of The Economist:
The government has declared a national emergency and appealed for outside help. The latest catastrophe is a cholera epidemic that has hit at least 12,000 people. The World Health Organisation reckons that more than 560 have died, but a local organisation says the toll is already at least twice as high. Most doctors no longer go to work. Harare’s main hospitals have virtually ceased to function. The water and sewerage system has broken down in many places, including Harare, where the authorities turned off the taps for a few days in a vain effort to stem the spread of the disease. Sick Zimbabweans are streaming into neighbouring South Africa. The bordering Limpopo river is cholera-contaminated.
Indeed, the nation's collapse has made it impossible for some areas to keep the water supply clean and uncontaminated. In some areas, like Budiriro, raw sewage is spilling onto the street.
The Times recounts the tragedy on a personal level:
Cholera swept through the five youngest children in the Chigudu family with cruel and bewildering haste.
On a recent Saturday, the children had chased one another through streets that flow with raw sewage, and chattered happily as they bedded down for the night. The diarrhea and vomiting began around midnight. Relatives frantically prepared solutions of water, sugar and salt for the youngsters, aged 20 months to 12 years, to drink.
But by morning, they were limp and hollow-eyed. The disease was draining their bodies of fluid.
"Then they started to die," said their brother Lovegot, 18. "Prisca was first, second Sammy, then Shantel, Clopas and Aisha, the littlest one, last."
Indeed, children are dying at an alarming, tragic pace. A manufacturer of coffins in Zimbabwe said he would normally have to construct about one child's coffin every week. Last week, he sold fifteen.
So is the government of Zimbabwe, led by Robert Mugabe, doing anything to try and stop this? It does not appear that way.
From the same Times article:
Zimbabwe's once promising economy, disastrously mismanaged by Mr. Mugabe's government, has been spiraling downward for almost a decade, but residents here say the free fall has gained frightening velocity in recent weeks. Most of the nation’s schools, which were once the pride of Africa, producing a highly literate population, have virtually ceased to function as teachers, whose salaries no longer even cover the cost of the bus fare to work, quit showing up.
With millions enduring severe and worsening hunger, and cholera spilling into neighboring countries, there are rising international calls for Mr. Mugabe to step down after 28 years in power. But he seems only to be digging in, and his announcement about the epidemic's end came just a day after the World Health Organization warned that the outbreak was grave enough to carry "serious regional implications."
Just how bad are things getting in Zimbabwe? Numerous graves are being dug for those who've fallen victim to the cholera.
It is not just the children who are dying though, something well known by the two sons of Philadelphia Mbavha, a woman who died of cholera and left these two boys, 4 and 9, without a mother.
What is going on in Zimbabwe is a tragedy, a crisis, and a crime. Robert Mugabe must step down and the U.N. and W.H.O. should intervene.
This tragedy will get much, much worse without significant intervention.