ZANU PF minister denies barring UN groups from food assessments
By Alex Bell
18 March 2011
ZANU PF’s Agriculture Minister, Joseph Made, has denied barring
international aid agencies and other NGOs from participating in food
assessment surveys in Zimbabwe, claming he was “misquoted.”
The IRIN humanitarian news service quoted Made this week as telling them
that United Nations (UN) groups in particular, “are not welcome” in
Zimbabwe. He called the food and crop assessments “a national security
matter that should be treated with the utmost caution and exclusivity.”
“Hence our decision as government to exclude outsiders from the surveys. UN
agencies in particular are not welcome because they send out negative
information about the country. We don’t want to have politics in food
issues,” Made is quoted as saying.
The news has prompted allegations that ZANU PF is deliberately hiding the
truth of Zimbabwe’s food situation, in order to once again use food as a
political weapon during the forthcoming elections. The Commercial Farmers
Union (CFU) told SW Radio Africa on Thursday that they believe the decision
to exclude the UN and other groups is all related to ZANU PF’s political
strategy and election campaign. The party has traditionally used food to
either garner support or punish the opposition, by controlling food
distribution.
Economic analyst John Robertson meanwhile is also quoted by IRIN as saying
that the exclusion of the international groups was to hide the truth that
Robert Mugabe’s land reform scheme has been a disaster for the country. ZANU
PF insists that Western targeted sanctions are to blame for all of the
country’s problems, including the devastation of the once prosperous
agricultural sector.
Robertson told IRIN that excluding the UN groups from food assessments is an
attempt “to cast Mugabe’s fast-track land-reform programme in a positive
light.”
“President Mugabe’s side of the government, to which agriculture minister
Made belongs, wants to make the statement that land reform in Zimbabwe is
succeeding. In this case, they are likely to inflate figures of yields and
also seek to blame only the weather for poor yields,” Robertson said.
It is no surprise that Made has now backtracked on what he told the IRIN,
saying the group ‘misquoted’ him. He told Voice of America news that he
“would work with UN agencies and non-governmental organizations as long as
they stay out of Zimbabwean politics.”