Aid Group Say Zimbabwe Misused $7.3 Million - Laura Johnson 11/7/08

The government of Zimbabwe, led by Robert Mugabe, spent $7.3 million donated by an international organization to fight killer diseases on other things. According to Mr. Gono, governor of the Reserve Bank and custodian of the Global Fund’s money spent the money to buy the country’s judges new vehicles, satellite dishes, and televisions. He bought 3,000 tractors, 105 combined harvests, and 100,000 plows for the country’s farm mechanization program even though the Reserve Bank had been getting foreign currency for imports of food and medicine.

The original donation was supposed to fund the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. Instead, it deprived the organization of resources it needed to expand life-saving treatment. The medicines have a very short shelf life and since the Global Fund can no longer finance the training of only 495 people (instead of the planned 27, 000 people) to distribute them safely, the most recent estimates suggest that were 2.7 million cases of malaria among Zimbabwe’a 12 million people according the World Health Organization.

Civic groups and opposition officials contended that Mr. Gono and the Reserve bank have helped finance the governing party’s patronage operation, essential to Mr. Mugabe’s hold on power for the past 28 years. Eddie Cross, a senior official in the opposition movement, accused the Reserve Bank of looting the Global Fund’s donations. The Global Fund told the Reserve Bank that it needed it’s money back but Reserve Bank officials have told the Global Fund that they do not have the foreign currency required. One has to assume that they spent it on other things. Even though Mr. Mugabe’s country is deteriorating under him by the minute, due to the high inflation rate making money that one receives one minute utterly worthless the next minute, a third of Zimbabweans are now hungry and in need of food aid, one million children have lost one or both parents, and millions die each year due to diseases, at least he has a nice home with televisions and a satellite. He is essentially living off the donations given to help rebuild his country and his only concern to build up his pockets.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/03/world/africa/03zimbabwe.html?pagewanted=2&ref=africa