The Zimbabwean government on Saturday accused the West of deliberately starting the country's cholera epidemic, stepping up a war of words with the regime's critics as the humanitarian crisis deepened.The state-run Herald newspaper said comments by the US ambassador that the US had been preparing for the outbreak raised suspicions the West had waged "serious biological chemical war."
Zimbabwean officials often blame their country's troubles on the West. Their stranglehold on most sources of news to which ordinary Zimbabweans have access makes such rhetoric an important tool for a regime struggling to hold onto power.
After the first cholera cases, US and other aid workers braced for the waterborne disease to spread quickly in an economically ravaged country where the sewage system and medical care have collapsed.
Zimbabwe also faces a hunger crisis, the world's highest inflation and shortages of both the most basic necessities and the cash to buy them.
The Herald quoted the information minister, Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, as blaming cholera on "serious biological chemical war ... a genocidal onslaught on the people of Zimbabwe by the British."
"Cholera is a calculated racist terrorist attack on Zimbabwe by the unrepentant former colonial power which has enlisted support from its American and Western allies so that they invade the country," Ndlovu was quoted as saying.
Experts, however, blame the epidemic on Zimbabwe's economic collapse. The World Health Organisation said on Friday the death toll was at 792 and that the number of cholera cases that have been reported since the outbreak began in August was now 16,700.
