03/02/2004
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Food shortage in Zimbabwe’s rural areas, hit by a serious economic crisis.
Seven and a half million starving people, about two thirds of the population.
This is the alarming fact emerging from the latest UN report on the food emergency
in Zimbabwe, where the situation seems to be coming to a head.
Last September, five million people in the Southern African country depended on the aid sent by humanitarian organizations, but in the latest months this already troubling figure has increased up to over seven million.
Last September, five million people in the Southern African country depended on the aid sent by humanitarian organizations, but in the latest months this already troubling figure has increased up to over seven million.
Many believe that behind the situation of extreme emergency in rural areas and
communities in the country there is the hand of President Robert Mugabe, several
times accused of ferocious crimes against his opponents. The “white farmers”,
descendants of European colonists and big landowners, who until a few years ago
controlled most Zimbabwe’s cultivated lands, before being driven away with violence
in the name of an indeed proper redistribution, know better.
Farmers and humanitarian aid workers have repeatedly denounced the present government’s
food resource policy. The accusation is of hindering the arrivale of food-stuffs
in the areas in which Mugabe obtained a lower number of votes during the 2002
presidential elections, whose legitimacy is strongly suspected.
In addition to the humanitarian crisis is at 600 per cent, with an unemployement
rate of 70 per cent. According to the latest data, only one year ago a fifty kilos
of wheat sold for the equivalent of 0.60 euros. Today it is worth up to 20 euros.
“With my salary I can no longer provide enough food for my children”, says a
farm-labourer. “Every week the food prices rise. We can barely afford one meagre
meal a day and we haven’t eaten meat for weeks”.
The World Food Programme (Wfp), the main food provider in the country, has been
accused by different local and international organizations (including Human Rights
Watch), of not effectively objecting to the government’s decisions to privilege
only certains areas. But WFP spokesmen, Richard Lee, has explicitly denied any
links between his organization’s conduct and the Harare leadership.
The controversy is over the measures taken by the President and his collaborators,
responsible for having left the confiscated lands to run wild, gravely slowing
the agricultural production in the country and leaving many families in the rural
areas without food. Meanwhile, millions of people see their food rations diminish
every day as their children visibly lose weight.
They dread that the situation might soon get even worse.
Pablo Trincia
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