Hunger warning could be last straw

The recent warning that six million Zimbabweans face hunger could be the final straw for the country, already reeling from high inflation, daily food shortages and political instability. A regional food assessment puts almost half of Zimbabwe's population at risk of having no food mainly because of a drought and the country's land reform programme. Last week Finance Minister, Simba Makoni, told the World Economic Forum that Zimbabwe's economy had lost a third of its jobs since 2000 and was set to contract by 10 percent this year. He also conceded that the land reform policy had contributed to this year's poor harvests. Last week a survey revealed that the tourism industry, once a major money spinner, was losing millions of dollars to bad publicity. Critics are rounding on the part President Robert Mugabe's economic and political policies have played in the country's food crisis. Opposition Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai was quoted by AFP as saying: "Robert Mugabe is deliberately misleading the world by claiming that Zimbabwe has no food because of drought. The chaotic land reform, and government failure to take urgent measures to avert the crisis are to blame." Brian Kagoro, co-ordinator of Crisis in Zimbabwe, an affiliation of about 250 NGOs and church groups, said: "In the populist sense it is nice give land to the landless but realistically they will have no resources, no agricultural input and no technical input. The nation will wake up with insufficient wheat and grain and the people will revolt." Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) vice president Lucia Matibenga said: "People have been living with other problems over the last few years but starvation is the end of the road. People are only buying basics now, no luxuries like bacon and eggs. "Workers are living from hand to mouth and this year's wage negotiations are going to be very difficult. It will be like milking a dry cow. Business people are struggling in a collapsing economy and employees can't survive with the current high prices." Parallel markets were created during shortages, pushing prices up even more. Matibenga said urban Zimbabweans sometimes sent money to rural areas for farming, later collecting some of what was farmed to supplement their own food stocks. There had been instances lately where some of this food was confiscated. Matibenga said: "Once the state takes away what belongs to you, a person is bound to react." She also warned that in rural constituencies, where opposition members are allegedly denied access to buy food, there could be civil unrest as people tried to snatch grain from ruling party members. "It might implode to where people think 'at least I will get food in jail'. We all know that a hungry person is an angry person," she said. Matibenga said the ZCTU had no protests planned over the rising cost of living, but would concentrate on wage negotiations. Economist John Robertson told IRIN: "The crisis has had a gradual development and people adapt as they go and they tend to forget what they used to enjoy. They get used to the increasing stresses. "People do have jobs but the prices increase to double, sometimes treble, and inflation is over 100 percent. People get used to lower standards of living and get used to doing without." He said the inflation rate - at 114 percent in April - made people spend more on basics and less on luxuries. Robertson said the formal exchange rate had not changed since October 2000 and was still at ZD 55 to one US dollar. People had to use the parallel market to raise currency to source raw materials and this rate could be as high as ZD 640. This pushed up the price of finished goods. Government introduced price controls, which served only to drive the trade in such goods underground. "Now people don't buy a kilogram of sugar, they buy a cup full. Things like sugar run out very quickly. Mealie meal [maize meal] and cooking oil is scarce. To get milk you have to be at the shop first thing in the morning," he said. Robertson also referred to the government fixing the bank interest rate below inflation to bring down the interest payments on its own debts. "To blame the problems on drought is a simplification," he said. "Some of the shortages were because of reduced production. The war veterans on commercial farms didn't want farmers to grow maize because they were afraid that this would strengthen the farmer's claim to the land. Last year maize prices were rising so the government put price controls on maize. When people were planning for planting, the prices were less attractive so smaller crops were planted." Robertson said the government did subsidise communal farmers to help them plant more crops, "but they led people to believe they would get a large handout of fertiliser and seed but this came too late and crops were planted late". The effects of the economic crisis cut through all aspects of life in Zimbabwe, he said. School textbooks were almost "impossibly expensive" and parents claimed they could not pay levies to keep their children in school. He said up to 100,000 children were not going to school because schools on commercial farms had been closed by the disruptions. Fuel consumption in Zimbabwe had dropped because prices had gone up and many commercial farmers were not using their normal quotas of fuel. "The country is slowing down quite badly. It's a sad picture because none of this is necessary. It's going to impoverish people and take a great number of years to repair," Robertson said. However, the Zimbabwe Chamber of Commerce played down the problems, blaming them primarily on the drought and pressures from the International Monetary Fund. A spokesman, who declined to name himself, said: "All the surrounding countries have food shortages. We are trying to source maize from markets that have got surpluses and the government has put in place measures to mitigate the effect [of food shortages]. "The government has subsidised the cost of maize and put in place adjustable price controls which can be reviewed to have a balance between the manufacturer and the consumer." He said the government's commitment to agri-economy, linked to the land reform programme, and an irrigation scheme should pull the country out of the mire. A senior researcher at South Africa's Institute for Security Studies, Richard Cornwell, said Zimbabwe currently had "an economy in reverse". "They've fixed the currency, closed off the economy to outside forces and run interest rates below inflation. I can't see how the agrarian revolution will take place. Plots are too small and there is no money for inputs, no skilled farmers and bad weather," he said. Cornwell said the country was also handling a huge domestic debt and could currently only pay salaries. "There is also the collapse of the education and health sector. Sooner or later certain people in the palace guard will start asking questions," he said.