Gasela: Zimbabwe must brace for food deficit next year

Gasela: Zimbabwe must brace for food deficit next year

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By Renson Gasela

REPORTS that Dorowa Mine, Iron Duke Mine and Zimphos were closed last month due to power cuts and none-availability of various raw materials spells disaster for the production of food this coming season.

Zimbabweans have learned to rationalise around problems and instead of calling a spade a spade, we call it 'agricultural implement'.

What has happened at these companies is nothing other than total failure by the government. It should not be called challenges. If it was a challenge, Chemplex Corporation would get around the power cuts. It is not a challenge to them; it is failure not by Zesa, but by government.

Zesa does not operate in isolation outside what is happening in the country. Can we expect Zesa to perform when no other entity is able to? Problems in this country do not lie with individual entities, but with the way the country has been governed.

Last week, I did an article where I showed that when this same government was caring, it was able to pump water from Darwendale Dam into Serui River. This water then gravitated into Mufure river and saved Chegutu. The government drilled many boreholes in the Nyamandlovu Aquifer and saved Bulawayo. The government laid pipes from Pungwe River to Smallbridge Dam and saved Mutare. I I can give more examples; all this was in 1992.

Now, there is hardly a city with sufficient water. The Sunday Mail reported that nearly every township in Harare has no water. Gweru is the same. Bulawayo is disaster with Minister Mutezo boasting that nothing will be done by government until the City Council hands water distribution over to Zinwa.

I must come back to Dorowa and others. If this problem, not challenge, had been highlighted at the beginning of the year, there would have been time to try and do something. The country will remember that when the power cuts started to get bad and that was beginning of May, we were all told that 'don't worry you will have wheat' as the power was going to wheat producers.

Ask wheat producers how much power they have been getting. I happen to be one of them. I am sure that the management of these companies have loads of correspondence to government about the impending disaster. Closing the companies was a last resort for them. What should have been done is to use the little foreign currency properly and importing maximum power from Snel, Eskom and Mozambique. Instead fleets and fleets of the latest vehicles have been imported to please a few powerful people in Zanu PF.

God Almighty, in his Divine Impartiality, will pour sufficient rain this season,
which by the way, starts in eight weeks. Those farmers who got tractors are raring to go, so we are told.

Only 160 000 tons against 600 000 tons of fertilizer, have been produced. There is no more production. Even if something was done now there will still be a shortfall of more than 50%. It is common knowledge that compounds are required at planting. Planting should really be over by the end of each year.

In all crops, the best planting time is extremely limited. You miss that, you are
finished, at least for that year. Every day counts and lost opportunity can only be remedied the following year. For example, the bulk of our tobacco is irrigated. Seedlings are put in very early in the year. The planting is at the beginning of
September. If the planting is delayed, that will have an adverse effect on both the size and quality of that tobacco crop.

It was reported by farmers in the state media this week that there is no compound C fertilizer which they need for planting tobacco. Dorowa mine is not producing phosphate. Compond C comes from phosphate. Tobacco planting starts next week. Please don't blame shortage of tobacco and foreign currency in April next year. The consequences of omissions and commissions done now will visit the nation next year.

One can see these closure spilling to Sable Chemical as their production AN has as one of its ingredients, phosphate. The problem will also spill to Windmill and Zimbabwe Fertilizer Corporation.

The long and short of what I am trying to say is that there will not be enough food produced next year since we cannot turn back the clock. It appears to me that one of the greatest lacking things or ability in this government is the ability to sit down and plan ahead. No I am wrong; the government is able plan how to do the wrong thing all the time.

Renson Gasela is Secretary for Lands and Agriculture in the MDC faction led by Arthur Mutambara
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