When the rains begin to fall in the next few weeks
many rural households will have no seed to sow;
they would have eaten it all.
In Shona folklore there is always a character
called Dyembeu, one who eats seed; he is always
the laughing stock of the village. But this is no
longer a laughing matter; the food crisis in some
parts of the country has become so dire people
eat whatever is available, even if that, like seed, is
the only thing that can take them out of their
situation.
Last week Minister of Agriculture, Mechanisation
and Irrigation Development, Joseph Made urged
the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) to quickly move
10 000 tonnes of maize to Matabeleland North,
Matabeleland South, Masvingo and some parts of
Manicaland. One of the reasons he saw this as
particularly urgent was that the villagers in these
Godforsaken areas would begin to eat the seed
given to them as inputs.
This would be laughable if it wasn't so tragic. The
villagers have little choice; if they don't eat the
seed they die, if they eat the seed they die! So,
eating the seed hits them in two ways. The seed
is treated with deadly chemicals to kill pests,
making it almost impossible to clean off the
chemicals to make it safe for human
consumption. And, after eating the seed, they
have destroyed their planting season before it has
even started. So, a vicious cycle has been
created.
For this reason, government should declare the
food crisis a national emergence. Government
would have us believe that there is grain in the
GMB silos and the problem is purely a logistical
one namely, that the GMB does not have the
trucks, and probably the fuel, to move the
foodstuffs to the areas affected. We know the
problem is much deeper than that; the silos are
empty! That is why as early as last May, President
Robert Mugabe described the food situation as the
worst in living memory.
He said this when he launched the Food and
Nutrition Policy in Harare. Earlier in the year he
had appealed to his Zambian counterpart Michael
Sata for assistance. Sata promised to help by
supplying 150 000 metric tonnes of maize
without payment.
Now it appears Sata has reneged on that
promise, plunging Zimbabwe deeper into crisis.
The Zimbabwe government on its own cannot
dig itself out of this crisis. After the resounding
but disputed July 31 elections victory, expectations
among the rural folk that government will deliver
are very high. After decades of immiseration, in
which food aid was distributed on party political
lines in areas such as Matabeleland North and
Matabeleland South, the picture has changed
dramatically; these areas voted overwhelmingly
for the ruling party, and they will demand their
pound of flesh. Government does not have any
excuse for failure to deliver.