Gokwe South DA Mashindi
Patrick Chitumba, Midlands Bureau Chief
EVEN in the best of times, life in Nemangwe Village, in Gokwe South, Midlands Province, is desolate and harsh.
The area has light sandy soils that make agricultural activity difficult. They drain quickly after rain or watering, although they are easy to cultivate and work. Sandy soils are also known to dry out quickly and are low in plant nutrients, which are quickly washed out by rain.
This year, drought-induced hunger has taken its toll on the villagers and their livestock in Nemangwe area under Chief Nemangwe.
While other villagers from as far as Nembudziya and Chireya in Gokwe North and nearer home in Njelele and Chemagora areas in Gokwe South are now harvesting from their fields, the situation is different in Nemangwe area.
A worse predicament haunts 44-year-old Tanaka Chirinda, a mother of five abandoned by her husband two years back. Her husband dumped the family following years of successive droughts and left for South Africa seeking employment.
Chirinda’s maize and cotton crops are now a write-off, leaving the poor woman pinning her hopes for survival on the anticipated government food aid.
“My husband left me and the fields have nothing. It’s like this area is cursed because while other villages are receiving rainfall, we have nothing here. Food aid has been erratic and the local councillor, Masara Masheedzanwa, has indicated that the Grain Marketing Depot at Gokwe Town is empty. So we are solely surviving on the chief’s benevolence,” she said.
As hunger continues to stalk her family, Chirinda intermittently keeps looking up the dirt road that links her village with the highway leading to Gokwe Town expecting to see trucks carrying food-aid from government and the donor community.
Chirinda is one of the many villagers who throng Chief Nemangwe’s homestead begging for food every day. Nemangwe village is about 40km from Gokwe Town along the Gokwe-Chitekete road.
The villagers have seen rains, which have been pounding heavily in other villages in the early weeks of March, circumventing their area.
Nemangwe Village occasionally received a little rain which failed to breathe life into the wilting crops.
The past three seasons have churned out the same uninspiring story: villagers failing to harvest anything from their fields owing to the impact of drought.
At most homesteads, women have taken over the bread-winner cap after most men abandoned their families to seek employment in distant places.
True to the adage, ‘Desperate times call for desperate measures’ the villagers are now selling their livestock at giveaway prices.
“Our chickens are now going for as little as $2 compared to $6 in other areas while our cattle are going for less than $150 yet the same beast fetches $450 in other areas. Goats are being sold for as little as $7 which is way below the asking price of $30 in other areas. We doing this because we have run out of pastures and we also want to raise money to buy grain,” said Chirinda.
A five litre gallon of maize costs $2.
Most villagers have no money for supplementary feeding of their livestock hence they are selling the animals.
Clr Masheedzanwa says Nemangwe village last received food aid in December last year.
He says the number of vulnerable people who are in need of food aid keeps increasing by each passing day as the drought takes its toll.
“We approached the Department of Social Welfare which referred villagers to the GMB depot in Kwekwe, some 200km away, to get food aid. The problem is these villagers cannot afford to hire a truck to get their grain from Kwekwe where we hear there is food aid. The fields have nothing. Last week Chief Nemangwe assisted a funeral wake with a goat and two buckets of mealie-meal after the bereaved family failed to provide food to the mourners,” said the councillor.
Besides disintegrating families, another social vice born out of hunger in Nemangwe area is child prostitution, according to Clr Masheedzanwa.
The local leadership acknowledged its limitations in finding a lasting solution to the drought-induced social challenges from within.
Chief Nemangwe is appealing to the government to expedite food aid distribution to avert potential starvation in his area.
The chief says the government availed about 544 tonnes of maize to five constituencies including his area last year. However, Chief Nemangwe said, most of the grain was distributed among vulnerable families in his villages.
“There is nothing for the villagers to eat here. The villagers are hungry, they are suffering. There is hunger everywhere in my area and the people are coming to my homestead everyday for food aid,” he said.
Chief Nemangwe says only the government through its food aid can save the remaining families from disintegrating.
Besides women-headed families, Nemangwe area is also witnessing an increase in child-headed families as more men continue to abandon their families on the pretext of seeking employment in urban areas.
Chief Nemangwe is also worried by the high number of pupils who are dropping out of school.
“The children cannot walk many kilometres to school on an empty stomach. It is only after we have received food aid that we can solve most of the challenges we are facing in my area,” he says.
It also emerged that older children were leaving school for gold panning, vending or taking up menial jobs to enable them to provide for their younger siblings.
Gokwe North’s story is, however, a positive one as most villagers are expecting a good harvest.
Chief Nembudziya said some of his villagers had started harvesting maize from their fields.
The chief said hunger was no longer a challenge in his area. “In my area we are doing alright. The villagers took advantage of the rains which fell in December and today they are harvesting. There is grass for our livestock as well,” he said.
Although drought is blamed for this year’s crop failure, Zimbabwean farmers are reluctant to grow small grains such as sorghum and millet, which are more resistant to drought. Small grain as a staple is not favoured by many in Zimbabwe.
Gokwe South District Administrator, Edwin Mashindi, said most parts of the district were affected by drought.
He cited Chiefs Sai, Masuku and Nemangwe’s areas as among the most affected.
“Villagers are facing starvation and some are being forced to sell their livestock at giveaway prices. A chicken, for example is going for $2 while a goat is selling for as little as $7. The situation is pathetic,” he said.
Mashindi said the government was working tirelessly to mitigate the drought situation.
“Food aid is there but the number of vulnerable people and the number of villages in need of food aid has out grown supplies. The demand is just too high.
“But as President Mugabe said, no one will die of hunger. We’re working flat out to make sure that food aid gets to the people,” he said.
The drought is projected to affect areas across Southern Africa — from Southern Angola to Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique and Namibia, the World Food Programme (WFP) says.
The 2015/2016 harvest is forecast at 950,000-tonnes of maize, which is far less than the 1.8-million tonnes that Zimbabwe needs.
The government has plans to import 700,000-tonnes of white maize, which will cost $168 million.
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor, John Mangudya, last month said the country has secured a $200 million loan facility from the Afreximbank for maize imports to avert hunger.
“With a consumption of around 1,5 million tonnes and 300,000 tonnes of that going into stock feeds, we will have to start importing immediately,” he said.
Mangudya also said the Grain Marketing Board had gone to tender to secure a source for the imports.