Dispatches From Zimbabwe - To understand the election results, you must understand the nation's hunger. By Gretchen L.�Wilson

More on starvation and voting for Mugabe from Zimbabwe...
Dispatches From Zimbabwe - To understand the election results, you must understand the nation's hunger. By Gretchen L.�Wilson: "It's hard to overstate the extreme poverty and tremendous state power in today's Zimbabwe. The Economist has declared Zimbabwe the worst place to live in the world, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently included the nation in the world's six 'outposts of tyranny.'
In the weeks leading up to yesterday's parliamentary elections, the government's control and manipulation of food became a major campaign issue. The main slogan of the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, was, 'Let your stomach cast your vote.' Some people told me that even rallies of the ruling ZANU-PF party were interrupted by the crowd crying 'nzara,' the Shona word for hunger."...
"There is no food shortage in this country," said Muriel Thamu Zemura, a spokeswoman at the head office of the Grain Marketing Board, the state-run monopoly grain distributor. "We are ready to feed the nation for one and a half years to come."

Every time I told an average Zimbabwean what Zemura told me, it was met with rounds of laughter. Many told me they're now down to eating only one meal a day, something they say ZANU-PF ignores...

"Their use of food as a political weapon has angered Zimbabweans," he said. "But it's one thing to be angry and another thing to be starving two weeks from now because of a lack of food."...
"People will continue to cut down meals and soon will be eating one meal every two days," the official said. "Combine this with the high HIV prevalence rate in Zimbabwe, and when this crop is finished, we'll be seeing even more malnutrition deaths. Unless we import massive amounts of aid, we'll start to see deaths directly attributed to starvation."...