Hunger returns for vulnerable households

Some households in drought-prone southern Zimbabwe are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, despite the government's insistence that there will be a bumper harvest, aid workers told IRIN this week. A tour through the traditionally dry districts of Bulilima in Matabeleland North province, and Mangwe and Beitbridge in Matabeleland South, found that although some families were still subsisting on last year's harvest, others had exhausted their supplies. "Since non-governmental organisations such as the World Food Programme and World Vision stopped distributing food aid, the situation has become increasingly bad for most people here," said the village headman, Tobokani Tshuma, at Matjinge area in Bulilima. Some households in Bulilima had resorted to barter, trading earthenware pots across the border in Botswana for food. Others with few employment prospects, IRIN was told, were relying on the generosity of their slightly better off neighbours. The government's cancellation of an assessment mission by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)/World Food Programme in April means there has been no independent survey of crop production this year. But the authorities insist that Zimbabwe will deliver a record harvest and in response, international food agencies have suspended general feeding. Despite the government's upbeat production forecast, the provincial governors of Masvingo, Matabeleland North and Matabeleland South made a joint appeal for aid in July, warning that people were already facing shortages. The Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee, made up of humanitarian organisations and government representatives, reported earlier in the year that about 2.2 million rural people would not be able to meet all their food needs on their own between July and November, and would require at least 52,000 mt of food assistance. The Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWSNET) said in its food security update for July: "The majority of the food-insecure households have already started relying on food borrowed from neighbours, friends and relatives, or by exchanging their labour for food and cutting down on meals." Beitbridge is a semi-arid district on the border with South Africa. "It is common knowledge that this area is traditionally dry and, over the years, people's yields have been complemented by aid food. But, now that distribution has stopped, hundreds of us are literally starving," said 55-year-old Menart Mazhale, carrying a pumpkin given to him by a neighbour for his family's evening meal. According to the Food Security Network (Fosenet), an umbrella body representing local humanitarian organisations, the food situation in southern areas like Masvingo, Manicaland, Beitbridge, Bulilima, Buhera, Mutare and Mangwe was troubling. "The situation is not good at all. It is quite clear that many households have already finished the grain from their last harvest. We have done a broad assessment and the outcome has pointed to a huge deficit that calls for immediate food aid," Fosenet programme manager, Jonathan Kafesu, told IRIN. The government has promised a maize harvest of 2.4 million mt, but Kafesu said the depots of the state-owned Grain Marketing Board (GMB) were not brimming with the maize that would be expected from that level of production. "Our assessment has revealed that most GMB depots are empty, and since no one is allowed to buy maize besides GMB, we wonder where all the maize has gone to? It's a fact that people are starving, and something certainly needs to be done about it," Kafesu stressed. An agreed figure for Zimbabwe's cereal output remains unresolved. FAO has predicted 950,000 mt against a national requirement of 1.8 mt, while FEWSNET has estimated 1.1 million mt, including urban production. Parts of southern Zimbabwe are already facing food security problems, but general countrywide shortages are expected to hit particularly hard during next year's lean season - the traditional gap between harvests from January to March. Some analysts suggest that although the crisis would not be as severe as 2002, it could match the level of hardship experienced in 2003, when 4.6 million people were in need of food aid. Agriculture minister Joseph Made said he had no comment when contacted by IRIN.