No aid, please

last updated 8 January 2015

Harare, Zimbabwe

The U.N.’s World Food Program said this week that it was being forced to dismantle many of its aid operations in Zimbabwe at the request of the government. Zimbabwe was once a top African food producer, but years of mismanagement, including confiscations of white-owned farms, have wrecked the agriculture industry and brought famine. Last year, more than half of the country’s 12 million people depended on the WFP for food. But President Robert Mugabe, the dictator who has ruled for 24 years, insists that this year his country will have a crop surplus. “Why foist this food upon us?” Mugabe said recently. “We don’t want to be choked. We have enough.”