Favio brings no relief to drought-stricken farmers in southwest

Cyclone Favio, which ravaged parts of Mozambique last week, brought some relief to drought-stricken southwestern Zimbabwe, but farmers and agricultural experts said the rain was too late to save crops.

"For the past two months, I have been looking at my crops wilt and hoping the skies would open up and give us the relief rains," said Xolani Mkhwananzi, a communal farmer in Lupane, capital of the southwestern province of Matabeleland North. "But nothing came, and I am now staring hunger in the face. The recent rains came when all our crops had literally died of moisture stress, so they meant nothing at all."

Farmers and government officials in drought-prone Matabeleland North and South provinces have appealed for early food aid packages.

"The crop situation in the two provinces is dire. People have lost all crops due to the two-month long dry spell which started in January," a senior official in the Ministry of Agriculture told IRIN.

"Late planting is not advisable because the recent rains were not a normal occurrence; they resulted from Cyclone Favio, which has since passed over the country. The whole southwestern region is sitting on a food deficit of unparalleled proportions. Government must get ready to feed the people as soon as possible."

The provincial administrator of Matabeleland North, Latiso Dlamini, confirmed that the province was headed for a "serious" food deficit. "It does not look good ... The entire provincial maize crop has reached a state of permanent wilting, and the people are already facing a grim future without their staple food [maize]," he told IRIN.

Edward Mkhosi, shadow minister of agriculture for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said aid agencies needed to intervene as quickly as possible to avert a humanitarian disaster in the southwestern regions.

"There is nothing like a harvest to talk about ... I would like to appeal to aid agencies to return to these areas immediately and expand their food aid registers to cover those rendered vulnerable by widespread crop failures. The situation is bad across the country, but it's very grim in the southwestern region," he commented.

Matabeleland South governor Angeline Masuku reportedly told a drought committee meeting in Plumtree, near the Botswana border, a fortnight ago that she was worried because mitigation measures had been left until late, and it was apparent that most households in the province were now on the brink of starvation.

Agriculture minister Rugare Gumbo said he was aware of crop failures but refused to discuss the extent of the crisis. He said the government was already importing grain to cover shortages.

BARELY COPING

Survival has become harder for the population of more than a million in the usually dry provinces. Many people have resorted to selling their livestock, often the only household asset, as an extreme coping measure to enable them to buy food.

"Maizemeal, sugar and cooking oil are not available in the stores so we buy from the informal market, where a 10kg bag costs Z$15,000 (US$2 at the parallel market exchange rate)," said Masotsha Gumbo, from Kezi village in Matabeleland South. Most Zimbabweans live on less than US$2 a day.

In Plumtree and other towns in Matabeleland South, such as Tsholotsho and Gwanda, which are all near the border with Botswana and South Africa, many people are using the money from the sale of their livestock to pay illegal cross-border operators to take their children to Johannesburg, South Africa, to find work to keep their families in Zimbabwe alive.

"We are gambling on the possibility that if they get jobs, they will help us sustain the family through monthly remittances," said Kennias Ncube, a
father who has sent three sons to South Africa since September 2006. The smugglers charge about US$200 to get someone across the border to South Africa.

Others sneak across in search of seasonal jobs on farms in South Africa and Botswana, often braving xenophobia. "It is much better than waiting to die here," said Bigboy Malebeswa, from Plumtree. "The people in Botswana can be hostile, but we have to bear it in order to survive."

The future is bleak for those left behind, and they have pinned their hopes on food handouts from aid agencies. "We are waiting for help. Our only option is death if food aid does not come," said a woman who survives by selling fruit at a bus terminus near Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second city.

A recent report by the United States Department of Agriculture forecast a reduced national crop of 850,000mt - at most - from the 1.3 million hectares planted for the 2006/07 season.

Zimbabwe has experienced a serious deficit in food production, which has declined by over 50 percent due to disruptions in the agricultural sector since the fast-track land reform exercise was launched in 2000.

In its latest report, the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWSNET) noted that at least 1.4 million Zimbabweans were in urgent need of food aid.

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