Zimbabwe: missionaries summoned for feeding the hungry

The Registrar-General, Tobaiwa Mudede, yesterday summoned two missionaries from their home in Harare following reports the pair was providing food to people who queue at the Passport Office and later sell their places to passport seekers. The Presbyterian missionaries, Marth Joan Trevelyan and her son Craig, work from a house opposite the Passport Offices in the capital. Riot police were also called in to flush out the queue holders, while Mudede warned the Trevelyan family to stop feeding them. Mudede said: "I am not happy with this family. We are not declaring peace with them. We cannot have a situation where people are being fed and have energy to come and steal from our people, painting a very bad picture on the state of affairs here." He said most of the queue holders who were briefly detained by the police were street children who also engaged in criminal activities. Mrs Trevelyan said she had come to Zimbabwe specifically to assist less privileged people. She said they were also assisting the Department of Social Welfare, which seemed to have many children to look after.