Food aid not being used as a political tool, govt

Concerns that food aid could be used as a political tool in Zimbabwe's upcoming parliamentary elections have been rejected as "baseless" by the government. Spokesman Steyn Berejena on Tuesday dismissed a recent Amnesty International (AI) report claiming that the government's forecast of a bumper harvest had been "widely discredited", and warning of "further violations of the right to adequate food and the right to freedom from discrimination in the run-up to the 2005 parliamentary elections". The AI report, 'Zimbabwe: Power and Hunger - Violations of the Right to Food', states that despite an earlier government forecast of a bumper maize harvest of 2.4 million mt, "stories of hunger and food insecurity in Zimbabwe emerge almost daily", and that "rather than fulfil its obligation to ensure the right to food for everyone under its jurisdiction, the government of Zimbabwe is manipulating the country's food shortages for political purposes and to punish political opponents". International food aid was halted in mid-2004 when the government said the country would produce enough crops for domestic consumption. "The cessation of most international food aid distribution has left millions of people dependent on grain distributed by the government-controlled Grain Marketing Board (GMB), which has a near monopoly on the trade in and distribution of maize - the staple food in Zimbabwe. But it is unclear whether the GMB has sufficient stocks to meet the country's grain needs. The GMB also has a history of discriminatory distribution of the grain it controls. Those who do not support the ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), have regularly been denied access to GMB grain," AI alleged. However, Berejena said that under the government's food aid programme "people are not required to produce [ZANU-PF] party cards - that's not a requirement. When the needs assessment is done it is not a requirement that one has to produce party cards". Food aid distributions were not conducted by politicians: "They are done through the civil servants and social welfare departments; through the traditional leaders, who identify the vulnerable within their communities." If politics did play a role in food aid distributions, he said, "you would rather give it to the opposition to win their support". As to the accusations that the government's predicted bumper crop had failed to materialise, Berejena said it was impossible to expect the GMB to have the entire 2.4 million mt grain harvest in its depots. "We don't expect the GMB to have 2.4 million mt - it's not possible to have it stored in the various depots because, since the forecast, people have been consuming [harvested crops] and not all the food is going to be housed in the depots. For example, farmers, after harvesting, say 10 mt, will sell whatever is surplus and keep some for domestic consumption, animal feed, etc. There is inter- and intra-community trading as well," Berejena explained.