Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu
Some parts of Zimbabwe are reported to be experiencing an acute shortage of food with some localities being so hard hit that their people now resort to picking up left-overs from bins of some local boarding schools.
That is said to be the case in some parts of the Masvingo Province, particularly near Zimuto Mission.
Shortage of food may well be the experience of several other areas that have not harvested much, if anything at all, from their fields in the past two or so successive seasons.
Food shortage is generally attributed to drought, a weather phenomenon that occurs with appalling frequency in many parts of Matabeleland, the Midlands, Masvingo and Manicaland.
However, there are other factors that can cause agricultural disasters among which are pests, lack of draught power or suitable implements, agriculturally poor soils characterised by what soil scientists call oligotrophy, that is soils that are relatively poor in plant nutrients.
Ignorance, leading to the repeated planting of the same kind of crop on the same piece of land may result in qualitatively or quantitatively very poor yields in spite of plentiful rain.
Agriculture, especially cropping, is labour intensive. Lack of suitable personnel can cause poor harvests, so can labour management and the application of inputs such as manure/ fertilizer and pesticides.
Some of these negative factors can be avoided or mitigated by the professional guidance of extension officers.
In spite of all this, including manuring or application of fertilizers to oligotrophic soils, poor yields can still occur because of one or other factor or factors.
To minimise food shortage in all areas under traditional leadership as represented by village heads (bosebhuku), headmen and chiefs, the traditional practice of maintaining “chiefs’ granaries” must be urgently and vigorously re-introduced.
It is this writer’s belief that the practice was long legalised and formalised, and that it is merely the duty of each chief to instruct his people to construct such a granary or granaries, and to either till a given kind of grain for the chief’s granary or granaries.
Those legally empowered to have and to maintain such granaries are headmen and chiefs, and, thus, food aid from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the government proper should be delivered to and distributed through headmen and chiefs.
That would eliminate corruption as each village head would queue with only those people in his or her book to the exclusion of infiltrators and fraudsters.
That is, in fact, how each chief is supposed to distribute whatever is in his or her granary or granaries.
It is obviously up to each chief to build and maintain such contingency granaries and organise his or her community accordingly to ensure that the granaries are supplied with food grains.
Meanwhile each district administrator works with each headman and chief in the district.
Food aid distribution should be done with the official knowledge as well as either personal or representative presence of the administrator.
Food shortage reports should be made by village heads to headmen who should then pass on the information to the chiefs.
In some cases, it may be convenient to report directly to the chief, depending on how geographically close the affected villager is or villagers are to that of the chief or chiefs. Politics ought not to feature in any of this process.
The role of rural district councillors and members of parliament, both of whom are politically affiliated, should also be apolitical when it comes to food distribution.
Associating food aid with political party campaigning is no less a form of bribery than handing actual cash.
If it is unlawful for a political personality to give hard cash to people attending his or her public political meetings or rallies, it is, ipso facto, unlawful for the same personality to give food stuffs, clothing or bedding, houses or vehicles to people attending his or her public meetings or rallies.
However, if the meetings or rallies are meant for people of a particular political party, it is certainly neither unlawful nor immoral for the party’s leaders to give whatever to whom so ever as the gathering is to all intents and purposes family or household albeit of a political nature.
We should note that bribery is committed if and when what is given is likely to influence the recipient to adopt the religious doctrine or the political ideology or membership or partisanship, or the cultural beliefs or practices, or the social tastes and behaviour of the giver or givers.
In the case of food donations, the most appropriate channels to use to reach various publics are the traditional leadership via district administrators; or church organisations through their respective congregational welfare bodies; or through appropriate hospital agencies or departments whose aims include the promotion of nutrition; or through associations or clubs catering for the physically disabled, and, finally through orphanages and old people’s homes.
Public servants such as councillors and MPs have two very important duties.
One is to identify the difficulties or threats facing their wards or constituencies, and the other is to procure and apply solutions to those difficulties.
When shortage of food occurs in an area, the local councillor or MP or both should be the first to sound an alarm.
They should also be the first to knock at the district administrator’s office, and, together with the headmen and chiefs, should seek ways and means to alleviate the problem.
While councillors handle threats at ward level, MPs deal with them at constituency level; one level is concerned with local government by-laws and the other with national legislative instruments.
The same approach should be used when handling problems such as food shortages.
The best way to deal with such problems is to be pro-active rather than be re-active.
A visionary type of leadership similar to that of the biblical Joseph is required in an economic-climatic environment such as Zimbabwe is presently experiencing.
Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a retired, Bulawayo – based journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734 328 136 or through email. [email protected]