Green hills mask harvest failure

The hills of Swaziland's eastern Lubombo district, made lush by a month of good rains, have never looked more picturesque. But with this year's harvest already compromised by earlier drought conditions, more residents than ever are dependant on food aid. "You can't eat scenery. Maybe the tourists like it," said Justice Mngomezulu, a food aid worker at a distribution point near the hamlet of Sikhaleni, on the border with South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province. "This year we have received rains since January. The people who planted at the new year may see harvests if the rains continue - we hope so. But most fields are not planted, or were planted at the start of summer, when there were no rains and the crops died young," said Malunge Dlamini, a food aid monitor for the World Food Programme (WFP). A new Swaziland Vulnerability Assessment Committee analysis predicts a record number of Swazis - 348,000, or over a third of the population - will be affected by the food crisis by June. Currently, 247,000 of the most vulnerable people are receiving assistance through various aid programmes, including government relief efforts. In the eastern lowveld, maize fields have reached the tasselling stage, and whether the grain thrives to maturity or withers under the sun of Swaziland's hottest region depends on rainfall. Eighty percent of Swazis live as subsistence farmers on communal land and cannot afford to irrigate their small plots. By contrast, the green, irrigated sugar cane fields of mainly white-owned commercial farms stretch as far as the eye can see behind the food distribution point at Mbuthu, a 10-minute drive from Sikhaleni. "Sometimes the local people will find work on the farms during the weeding and cane-cutting phases. This gives them some income to purchase food, because their own harvests at home are poor," said Dlamini. There is not enough food aid to go around, said Iris Fakudze, food distribution officer for the Lutheran Development Service (LDS). The number of people in need surpassed projections, so some who qualified as beneficiaries are doing without. "There are people who need food aid, but who aren't getting it. There is not enough money in the 'pipeline' to get food. A contributing factor is, we thought there would be some harvest this year. Unfortunately, there hasn't been any." A good-natured woman beneath a broad-brimmed straw hat to give protection from the lowveld sun, church employee Fakudze, whose cell phone ring plays "Amazing Grace", oversees distribution of food to about 2,000 people a day. Each household is given 12 kg of maize, 1.8 kg of pulses, 0.75 kg of cooking oil, and 1.5 kg of corn-soya blend, a high-protein yellow powder. "Some complain that what we give them is too little - they say it is finished before the next distribution date. It's supposed to last a month," said Fakudze. WFP trucks supplies from its central depot at the Matsapha Industrial Estate outside the commercial town of Manzini to regional warehouses. From there the LSD lorries, and those funded by the NGO World Vision, transport the food to distribution points, where the maize kernels are measured out in sacks per household, taken home and ground into maize meal. Community volunteers like Mngomezulu help out. He is one of the barefoot, strapping young men in tattered t-shirts who carry 50 kg sacks of maize. "At meetings they ask when we can find funds to pay them a little something, but we don't have the money. These boys are keeping their communities alive," said the WFP's Dlamini. He refers to the community committees that handle the on-the-ground food distribution as "the women", although 30 percent of the volunteers are men. Community committees have the job of identifying the area residents in need of assistance. "Sometimes there is misunderstanding or jealousy. Not everyone is qualified, because they may have a relative working elsewhere who sends a remittance to enable them to purchase food. They object and say, 'This food comes from the King, and it must go to all the people.' We tell them the food comes from WFP, and they say the WFP intends it to go to all the people," said committee member Busie Mavimbela. Dlamini's main job is household visits to assess how food aid is being used. "To qualify, a person has to be 'vulnerable' – an orphan, a member of a woman- or an elderly- or a child-headed household. Not all widows get food aid, because some may have other means. This is where the women of the community committees come in handy, because they know their neighbours' needs," Dlamini explained. The gap in the food pipeline is being filled by the government, which is providing 2,200 mt of food from the nation's emergency stocks. The government also distributes relief assistance to 60,000 people. "More people than expected have been affected [by the food crisis]. Drought is a factor, but even if it wasn't there, food security would be a real problem," said Sarah Laughton, Emergency Relief Coordinator for the WFP in Swaziland. "On my last trip to hard-hit areas, which was last week, not only was there land not completely utilised, but vast stretches of land are not under cultivation at all. There are no able-bodied people to do this work. The reason is AIDS. This is an immediate and growing problem," said Laughton. The new Vulnerability Assessment report measured factors like household income to project the ability of Swazis to cope with diminishing food supplies and rising food prices, but the impact of AIDS was not included. "Food production and income were considered, but the effects of AIDS is not explicit. But AIDS is one of the reasons, we assume, contributes to this continuing downward trend," said Laughton. Health and Social Services Minister Sipho Shongwe opened an antiretroviral drug dispensary this week in the southern Shiselweni Region, an area hit by drought, and said that over half the patients admitted to health facilities nationwide were HIV-positive.