Zimbabwe on brink of collapse as outbreak of cholera spreads•

[cali]

The situation in Zimbabwe may soon "implode" as a cholera outbreak spreads and basic services collapse, South African leaders and a group of international statesmen warned yesterday.

On the eve of talks in South Africa between Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party and opposition rivals, South African leaders sharply upgraded their crisis assessment and warned of Zimbabwe's imminent collapse if urgent action was not taken.

About 6,000 people have contracted cholera in recent weeks, according to the UN, and almost 300 have died. A chronic shortage of medicine has sent hundreds of people south to seek treatment in South Africa.

"Unless this root cause of the political absence of a legitimate government is solved, the situation will get worse and may implode and collapse ... It is now an urgent matter, because people are dying," said South Africa's caretaker president, Kgalema Motlanthe.

Three eminent statesmen representing a group called the Elders, which was established last year to tackle international issues, said Zimbabwe was in a far worse position than previously thought.

The team - the former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, former US president Jimmy Carter and Graça Machel, the rights activist and wife of Nelson Mandela - had planned to visit Zimbabwe last weekend to assess the humanitarian situation but were refused visas by the government. Instead they remained in South Africa talking to aid groups, refugees and civil society leaders.

<snip>
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/25/zimbabwe-internationalaidanddevelopment

[tekisui]

1. Maybe this will finally bring down Mugabe.

They have suffered so much.:-(

[pampango]

2. It is incredibly sad, but apparently "acceptable" to the world at least in the sense

that every possible solution is worse that just letting the crisis continue. Perhaps Obama will have the moral stature and leadership to deal with the problem. Even if he does, it is along two months before his inauguration.

"Speaking in Johannesburg on Monday, Mr Carter said: "The crisis in Zimbabwe is much greater, much worse than anything we had ever imagined."

The three members of the Elders group were refused entry to Zimbabwe
He described the government in Harare as unwilling to communicate and said President Robert Mugabe did not want to admit that there was a crisis, preferring to blame problems on what Mr Carter called "non-existent sanctions". " There are no economic sanctions against Zimbabwe and does not want to admit that there is a need for assistance," he said."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7746229.stm