Zimbabweans set to die before 40
FreeAfrica (April 8, 2006)
By: Thabo Siziba

Photo from CNN.com

…ever wondered what it would be like to live a life where you’re told that you’ll live no longer than 40 years old? What would you do when faced with such factual predetermined death? Having committed no crime, the people of Zimbabwe have today been given a harsh blow on the face through a report released by the world’s largest health monitor, the World Health Organization, an arm of the United Nations. In the WHO’s World Health Report for 2006, Zimbabweans being born today and most in their early years of life should not expect to live longer than 40years old. This, a tragedy and a depressing observation by the agency, true as it may be, will live many of Zimbabwe’s young population without hope and ambition for long term goals and the future.

WHO’s report listed life expectancy in Zimbabwe to be shorter than anywhere else in the world. Women in particular have been given the worst verdict of a life expectancy of no more than 34years while their male counterparts are expected to survive another three years and die at 37. While the women’s life expectancy fell down from 36 in 2003, that of men remained unchanged.

The report used the latest data from 2004. Last year's report, based on 2003, put Zimbabwe's average life expectancy one year higher at 37.

The figures above have been explained to be a result of the souring economic and political crisis in the country, coupled by very high HIV/AIDS cases. Zimbabwe is also reported to have one of the world’s highest HIV infected populations with more than half of the infections striking women.

The little hope that has been sort over the past several years to remove the main causes of such sufferings of the people of Zimbabwe has recently been tempered with as one of the country’s main political opposition forces lost grip within its owns ranks and was forced into a catastrophic to split. The current ruling administration in Zimbabwe, still unrecognized by many of the world’s bodies including the European Union, the Commonwealth Heads of States, and most of North America, including Canada and the United States of America, is under targeted sanctions owing to its illegitimacy in power.

The people of Zimbabwe have been held at ransom by a governing force, Zanu P.F, that has instilled so much fear in the country’s citizens that any hope of a genuinely democratic process to reverse the country’s fast-track downward plunge to poverty and severe famine seems unreal. The country has become a police State with all sorts of custom tailored laws drafted to keep the 30-year-old rule of the Zanu P. F regime intact.

Those who speak out against the Zanu P.F regime are systematically and brutally silenced, given sentences ranging from life and execution for treason, to 20 years in prison for speaking against the regime. In a country where a vast majority of the population is now dependent on international food aid, being known to be verbal or otherwise against the regime would see one and his family deprived of the essential food aid now widely used by the regime as political tool to retain support of the majority of the population vulnerable with famine. Entire regions of the country known to be strong opponents of the regime have be reported as having sufficient food surpluses when in actual fact people of those places faced extreme hunger. As a result food would be sidetracked to the regime’s strongholds. Only recently, the regime drafted a bill to monitor private wire communications in the country. These would include such communication tools as e-mails, telephones and even regular ground mail. This in a bid to subvert what the regime ironically calls potential terrorist threats.

N.B: Countries listed to be amongst the best in life expectancy included, Japan with a life expectancy of 82 years, San Marino and Monaco. Swaziland and Sierra Leone ranked alongside Zimbabwe in the top 10 worst.