Villagers face hunger — once again
http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk
Written by Rebecca Moyo
Friday, 06 August 2010 14:11
BINGA — AT 63 years old, Elvis Mutani should be slowing down on the manual
chores, like the countless trips he makes to the well to draw water for the
garden. (Pictured: Elvis Mutani planting an avocado fruit tree at his
homestead as some of his grandchildren play nearby. (Pic: Rebecca Moyo)
Yet, in Zimbabwe ‘s food-deficient Binga area where Mutani lives, fate
prescribes no rest for Mutani who in addition to creeping old age also has
to contend with a severe asthma condition.
It is a fate forged by three things: drought, hunger and HIV/AIDS.
Farmers in this rocky, remote north-western corner of Zimbabwe have for
years struggled to grow sufficient food because of the hostile climatic
conditions and unfertile soils.
And with the cash-strapped government in faraway Harare unable – some of the
villagers will say unwilling — to provide adequate food aid Mutani and his
fellow villagers here are left to fend for themselves or in some of the
cases get help for international food relief agencies.
“The government has forgotten about us, if the situation stays like this we
are going to die,” said Mutani.
“I do not remember the last time I had a decent meal, all I know is that
whenever that it was, it was not this year. My body and asthma does not
allow me to do laborious work but who can do it for me,” he said, a ring of
desperation in his voice too obvious to miss.
A widower, who has too look after his two orphaned grandchildren, Mutani,
like nearly everybody else here, often has to rely on wild fruits and roots
for survival.
“For now, I just need food, otherwise my grandchildren may die,” he said.
For example, another villager, James Mutinhe, say for the past couple of
days he has had to feed his family on wild fruits because he has no money to
buy food.
Tip of the iceberg
But the two Binga villagers’ stories only give a glimpse of the tip of
iceberg of hunger that, according to the United Nations, more than a million
villagers across Zimbabwe’s countryside face after yet another poor harvest
this year.
According to the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) Zimbabwe need to import
nearly 1.4 million of cereals tonnes — with 100 000 tonnnes of that
required urgently – to avert starvation.
Even Joseph Made, the agriculture minister who in the past refused to
acknowledge poor harvests, has admitted that this year’s harvest is not
sufficient.
“It’s not looking rosy,” he told the state media. ?Maize is being imported
at a price of between US$160 and US$180 per tonne, which means Zimbabwe will
need about US$136 million for maize alone – cash the Harare authorities do
not have.
“The deficit is huge in rural area and those that did not have good rains,”
CFU president Dean Theron said.
The national maize consumption requirement stands at two million tonnes per
annum but CFU says only 1,3 million tones will be realised from the
2009/2010 season to leave a deficit of about 800 000 tonnes. ?
Farm invasions
Wheat is Zimbabwe ‘s second staple grain, after maize but President Robert
Mugabe’s chaotic and often violent land reforms that saw experienced white
growers expelled from the land and replaced by poorly funded and untrained
black peasants have seen wheat put tumble down.
For example out of a national target to put 60 000 hectares under winter
wheat, farmers managed to plant only 11 000 hectares and Zimbabwe will have
to raise nearly US$130 million to import the bulk of the 350 000 tonnes of
wheat the country consumes per year.
“We ( Zimbabwe ) will have to import the wheat at an import price of US$380
per tonne and this translates to US$128 820 000, given our shortfall,” the
CFU said last week?.
In an indictment against Mugabe’s controversial land reforms, Zimbabwe will
this year have to once again import maize from Zambia and Malawi, countries
that a few years regarded Zimbabwe as a breadbasket.
The veteran leader insists he was right to seize land from whites and give
it over to blacks in order to correct a colonial land ownership system that
reserved the best arable land for whites and banished blacks to poor soils
in he most arid regions.
Colonial injustice
But critics say a desire to smash then opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s
growing support base among commercial farm workers — and not the need to
correct a colonial injustice — was the driving motive behind Mugabe’s land
reforms.
In addition, they say Mugabe’s cronies – and not ordinary peasants –
benefited the most from farm seizures with some of them ending up with as
many as six farms each against the government’s stated one-man-one-farm
policy.
But whatever the motives of Mugabe’s land reforms, Mutani and his fellow
villagers here wish they could rewind the clock back to in the old days when
poor yields from Binga stingy soils did not mean having to survive on wild
fruits like animals.
Because then, they government was always quick to sent trucks from the Grain
Marketing Board laden with maize, beans and other food for the villagers.
Not any more, not after many of the best producers were chased off the land!