Zimbabwe accuses US of ‘tantalising’ aid offers in return for Mugabe regime change

ZIMBABWE yesterday accused the US of stepping up its campaign to oust President Robert Mugabe with “tantalising” offers of aid to ease the suffering of the southern African nation’s largely impoverished population.

The official Sunday Mail reported that recent US strategy documents recommended foreign donors begin drawing up aid and recovery programmes that could only be delivered once there was “regime change” in Zimbabwe.

The documents were drawn up for the US government by a Harvard University think tank on international and domestic governance, according to the newspaper.

They recommended that donors hasten Mugabe’s departure from office by stopping all remaining assistance to the country — as it faces its worst economic crisis since independence in 1980.

It said Zimbabwe government spokesman George Charamba dismissed the strategy as a destabilisation package to bring political changes that ignored local political realities and the country’s “liberation ethos” under Mugabe.

“The US vainly hope they can tantalise Zimbabweans through empty offers of aid ... The overall intention is clearly to turn Zimbabwe into a neo-colony,” Mr Charamba said.

With inflation at 1,043% — the highest in the world — Zimbabweans face acute shortages of food, petrol and imports.

Power and water outages occur daily and health and education facilities have crumbled. An estimated 80% of the 12.5 million population live below the poverty line in Zimbabwe, which was a regional breadbasket before the often-violent seizures of thousands of white-owned commercial farms began in 2000.