http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s743310.htm
(((So, I'm thumbing through Jared Diamond's cheery masterwork COLLAPSE
and then this thing shows up.)))
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2534805,00.html
A game ranger friend tells me that hyena attacks on humans, previously unheard of, have become increasingly common. “So many babies, not all of them dead, are being dumped in the bush that hyenas have developed a taste for human flesh,” he explains.
A vast human cull is under way in Zimbabwe and the great majority of deaths are a direct result of deliberate government policies.
Bulawayo, capital of Matabeleland, is a virtual ghost town, its wide and gracious streets sparsely peopled even at midday, for emigration and starvation have drained its lifeblood.
Harare’s northern suburbs are as beautiful as ever — tall trees, plants and flowers and luxuriant birdlife. The death rate among four-footed wildlife has rivalled that of humans these past few years as land invaders move on to game reserves and massacre the animals. Nobody has been able to kill off the birds.
Some 29% of sexually active Zimbabweans are reckoned to be HIV-positive and the economic collapse has devastated the health system and stopped the distribution of anti-Aids drugs.
World Health Organisation figures show that life expectancy in Zimbabwe, which was 62 in 1990, had by 2004 plummeted to 37 for men and 34 for women. These are by far the worst such figures in the world. Yet Zimbabwe does not even get onto the UN agenda: South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki, who has covered for Mugabe from the beginning, uses his leverage to prevent discussion. How long this can go on is anyone’s guess.
After Rwanda, the UN vowed “never again” but Mugabe — and, to a considerable extent, Mbeki — have already been responsible for far more deaths than Rwanda suffered and the number is fast heading into realms previously explored only by Stalin, Mao and Adolf Eichmann.
(((The "international community" has no resources left to deal with mere genocide. Way too busy now with wars for oil.)))
