<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/zimbabwe/3067305/Zimbabwe-starves-as-Robert-Mugabe-stalls-on-new-government.html>Zimbabwe
starves as Robert
Mugabe<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/zimbabwe/3067305/Zimbabwe-starves-as-Robert-Mugabe-stalls-on-new-government.html>
stalls on new government
Thousands of Zimbabweans are close to starvation
as President Robert Mugabe delays forming a new government.
By Sebastien Berger in Garanyemba
Last Updated: 3:03PM BST 23 Sep 2008
The hills around Garanyemba, deep in Matabeleland
South province, are littered with stunning rock
formations, stark testaments to the power of nature.
But man cannot eat landscapes, and the people of
Garanyemba – a village whose name, by cruel
irony, means "we live on beans" – have little
time for the beauty of their surroundings.
Instead one thought consumes them – food.
"Next time you come you will find us dead," said John Sithole, 45.
All he had to feed himself, his wife, and their
seven children was a bunch of choumolia leaves
and a single tomato, to be boiled up without even salt for seasoning.
The family's chickens have already gone to the
pot, slaughtered after they stopped laying with no grain to eat.
"The problem we have is starvation," explained Mr
Sithole, an agricultural labourer, with the
earnest dignity typical of impoverished
Zimbabweans. "What happens is we cook whenever we
have got something. There was no food yesterday.
The children have gone to look for wild fruit which are not there.
"I feel really bad when the children are crying,"
he said. "I can't do anything."
His sunken cheeks and the ribs showing through
the flesh of his chest were silent evidence of his veracity.
Across Zimbabwe, food is the highest priority
issue for millions of people like Mr Sithole, and
addressing the crisis will be a key test of
Morgan Tsvangirai's ability to govern as prime
minister after signing a power-sharing deal with Robert Mugabe.
But Mr Mugabe is stonewalling over the allocation
of ministries between the parties, and making
clear he intends to retain as much authority as
possible. With food long used as a political
weapon in the country, a senior Western diplomat
predicted difficulties and obstructions from Mr
Mugabe's Zanu-PF loyalists. "Zanu-PF knows the
man who delivers food in this country is king," he said.
Vast swathes of Zimbabwe are suffering from food
shortages, with the issue concentrated in the
south of the country, much of which the World
Food Programme classifies as "red zones", and the
first, albeit unconfirmed, claims of deaths by
starvation are beginning to emerge.
According to the organisation, more than two
million Zimbabweans already need food aid out of
an official population of just under 12 million.
That number will rise to more than five million
by the peak of the hunger season in January.
Total production of maize meal, the staple food,
was estimated at a mere 575,000 tons this year,
down 28 per cent on last year, with total cereal
production 840,000 tons, down 40 per cent. For a
country which was once a regional breadbasket,
exporting food to its neighbours, the figures are abysmally low.
"It was a very bad harvest this year," said
Richard Lee, a WFP spokesman. "It was even worse
than the poor harvest in 2007." But while the
rains have been poor for several years in a row,
nature is by no means entirely to blame. There
are similar climatic challenges in other
countries in the region, but Zimbabwe has by far
the highest percentage of people needing food
aid. This is a man-made hunger, and not only
because of Mr Mugabe's destruction of commercial
agriculture by the invasions of white-owned land from 2000 onwards.
In Zimbabwe the government, through its Grain
Marketing Board (GMB), is the sole purchaser and
distributor of cereals, and Mr Lee said that the
buying price it set was too low. "That proved to
be a disincentive for farmers to strive to
produce a surplus." At the same time key inputs,
such as seeds, are in short supply, on top of the
problems brought on by the shattering of the
economy by Mr Mugabe's misrule. On top of that,
the government imposed a ban on fieldwork by aid
agencies for two months, claiming they were
campaigning for the opposition in the country's
elections, which has severely delayed the
distribution of food by NGOs, and even now some restrictions remain.
Mr Lee declined to apportion blame. "This is a
very complex situation," he said. "Now the issue
is not really to look back and apportion blame
but rather to try to stabilise the current
situation so this doesn't become a major crisis."
But others have no need to be diplomatic. Paul
Themba Nyathi, a leading light in the Movement
for Democratic Change and a former MP for Gwanda,
the area which includes Garanyemba, pointed out
that the government has taken over as much of the
production and distribution system as it can.
A 50kg bag of maize meal from the GMB costs
Z$1,000, about US$2 (£1.08) at the cash rate and
a pittance at the interbank transfer rate. But on
the black market a bucket of the flour – a third of a bag – costs Z$1,500.
To obtain the cheap grain, local leaders have to
apply to the GMB, with a list of beneficiaries.
In Mr Themba Nyathi's village, Nyandeni, a
request filed in February was not fulfilled until
July, and even then was 200 bags short.
"The reason for doing that is inspired by
political considerations," said Mr Themba Nyathi.
"The need to use food as part of political
patronage and a tool of political control would
be higher in the order of things than voodoo
economics. It's gone on far too long.
"We are faced with a humanitarian disaster. For
partisan political expediency the government has
tried to downplay the humanitarian crisis. If you
admit you have a serious food shortage you are
admitting that your land reform redistribution
programme was a disaster so they can't do that.
They would rather play it down." Mr Mugabe and
his Zanu-PF party resolutely refuse to accept any
responsibility for Zimbabwe's suffering, instead
blaming Western sanctions and businessmen
supposedly plotting against the government for
the situation, even though the only measures the
EU has in place are a visa ban and asset freeze
on named individuals connected with the regime.
Such issues are simply irrelevant to people like
Lakheli Nyathi, 62, who lives in Nyandeni, and
has never known such shortages in her life. Her
entire food supplies were down to a fraction of a
bowlful of maize-meal, and half a small cup of sugar.
She has two cups of tea for breakfast – no solids
- and spends the morning looking forward to 2pm,
when she allows herself a small plate of sweet
porridge. For dinner, she has nothing.
"What can I do?" she asked, her head in her hands. "I'm hungry."
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so that all our prayers and works may begin in You and by You be happily ended.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.
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