Sukulwenkosi Dube
KUBELELO Ngwenya, 88, a communal farmer in Mnigau area, Bulilima District, is a proud woman who grows her own food.
For many years, her working culture has inspired younger villagers to perfect the art of self-reliance.
But this farming season her fortunes have taken a painful downturn.
She has hopelessly watched her maize and other crops wilt before completely drying up.
Ngwenya, who can hardly see because of old age, is now battling to put food on the table for her 16-year-old great granddaughter, Irene Matowe and herself.
The teenage girl, a Grade 7 school dropout, performs most of the household chores and acts as Ngwenya’s eyes whenever she moves around.
When she wakes up every morning, Irene’s first port of call is their kitchen hut where she has to start a fire. She later moves on to prepare “breakfast” for her great grandmother and herself.
The family’s breakfast constitutes of nothing but plain black tea, a ‘meal’ meant to sustain them for the entire day.
Their only decent meal is supper where they get to eat sadza/isitshwala accompanied by mainly vegetables or beans as relish.
Ngwenya now relies on begging from neighbours for most of her food. She has no close relative to turn to after all her seven children died.
“I have no one to support me after all my seven children died. In the past villagers have been assisting me to plough my fields.
This time around I do not even have a single crop because the rains were poor.
“I am benefiting under the social welfare department but the money they give me only lasts for a month.
The following month I will be begging for food while waiting for the next assistance under the programme. This kind of life is unbearable,” said Ngwenya.
Her health and body are paying the price for having plain tea and a single decent meal in the evenings. She is grateful to fellow villagers whose benevolence saves her from total starvation.
“At times I have to beg for almost everything, from mealie-meal, sugar, cooking oil and relish. I am now living like a destitute. My diet, if it can be called that, is not good for someone of my age.
The only relish that I get from my neighbours is okra and bean vegetables.
I know that if the rains had been good my situation would have been better.
“By now I would be eating some crops which I would have harvested from my fields.
I would not be drinking my tea plain but I would be taking it with melons, maize, groundnuts and other crops. If all is well in my fields getting relish isn’t a big deal for me,” she said.
Ngwenya says if she had the energy and her full sight, she would weave some baskets to sell or start a garden marketing project to raise money for food.
Her plight has been compounded by successive droughts in the past farming seasons that compromised her crops.
Even the security of a safe roof over her head is under threat. Ngwenya’s huts are dilapidated, threatening to collapse any day. Her biggest challenge is her failure to raise money to pay a builder for renovating the huts.
“Despite these challenges I am still living in this homestead and my daily wish is that I can regularly get food for my great granddaughter and myself to eat.
“My great granddaughter wrote her Grade 7 exams in 2013 and it pains me to see her spend the entire day at home while her peers go to school.
She is quite an intelligent child. I have no doubt that she passed although I cannot raise the money for her to pay her outstanding fees in order to collect her results,” said Ngwenya.
The old woman and her great granddaughter are not alone in this predicament.
Most villagers in Bulilima and elsewhere in the rural side of the country are feeling the harsh effects of the drought.
Some villagers in several parts of Matabeleland South Province are either going for a day without eating while some have reduced their meals to once a day.
While some elderly villagers rely on their working children to bail them out during such times, others like Ngwenya can only look to the government and donor community for aid.
Hunger stricken families are employing any means of preserving the little food they have.
The optimistic lot keep looking up to the sky hoping that the heavens will open up and save the late planted but wilting crop.
Some villagers planted seeds for the fourth time this farming season in a desperate bid to secure food for their families.
Others did not even bother to plough their fields at all as the rains were poor.
Hikwa area village head Peter Masuku bemoaned the poor farming season.
He said the successive droughts have compromised his area’s food security and a number of homesteads were in urgent need of food aid.
“Previous food aid programmes catered for a section of the community but this time around there is a need for a programme that will incorporate all villagers,” Masuku said.
Chief Tshitshi of Mangwe District says villagers should start buying their food supplies from grocery shops.
He, however, acknowledged that most families would find buying food a big challenge as they did not have money.
“The price of mealie-meal is beyond the reach of many. A number of shops are selling a 50kg bag of mealie-meal for as much as $27 and people do not have this kind of money.
“Buying mealie meal and relish is a foreign phenomenon among the rural folk because people are used to eating what they harvested especially during this time of the year.
The groceries they normally buy are those which they do not produce in their fields,” he said.
Agricultural and Rural Development Authority (Arda) board chairperson, Basil Nyabadza, says villagers should resort to irrigation farming given the unreliable rain patterns facing several parts of the country in recent years.
He said this form of farming could help secure household food security in rural communities.
Nyabadza said irrigation schemes could be implemented in areas which have reliable water sources.
“As a rural development authority we have identified irrigation farming as a key tool in ensuring food security at national level.
However, there is a need for reliable water sources such as dams which can irrigate large pieces of land.
“It is unfortunate that a number of dams are either damaged or silted. Some do not have the capacity to irrigate.
This limits the number of vibrant irrigation projects,” he said.
Matabeleland South Provincial Administrator, Midard Khumalo, said there was a need for government to extend the food relief programme as the number of people desperate for food was increasing.
“All the seven districts in the province are in a bad state as almost all the crops are a write-off.
The number of people in need of assistance continues to increase which means government will have to extend its intervention to contain the problem.
“The number of struggling families is even higher this year compared to last year.
The situation is promising to improve though as government is working on strategies to address the hunger problem,” he said.