Post-election violence in Kenya is creating pre-election nervousness among Zimbabwe’s voters ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections in March.
People are beginning to stockpile food in the event of any possible unrest, writes IRINnews.
Donald Dombo, a government employee, said he saw most of his colleagues in the civil service starting to hoard (hamstre, red.) food and firewood in their homes in case the Kenyan syndrome of violence spreads to Zimbabwe after the elections.
– I am planning to take my family to the countryside because I fear that any violent demonstrations would be held in urban areas, he said.
The scheduled elections will take place at a time when international donor agencies have predicted more than a third of Zimbabwe’s population, or 4.1 million people, would require emergency food assistance.
Food hoarding would likely add pressure to the country’s already acute food shortages.
Zimbabwe is suffering the world’s highest inflation rate, officially cited at 8,000 percent, but estimated by independent economists to be running at about 25,000 percent.
President Robert Mugabe, 83, who has been in power since Zimbabwe won its independence from Britain in 1980, has been nominated as the ruling ZANU-PF party’s candidate for the presidency; the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, (MDC) remains divided.
Kilde: www.irinnews.org
