Zimbabwe: the politics of food

Zimbabwe: the politics of food

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• Moyo says harvest enough for season

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• UN warns 2,4 million pople need food aid

• Zim still expects 'bumper harvest'

• Mudenge denies Zim snubbed UN envoy

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• Zim rejects food aid

• UN aid agencies pull out

• Zimbabwe turns back food aid

By Renson Minyekile Gasela

WHEN we got to the second week of November 2005, without rain, I became increasingly convinced that we were staring a 1991/92 scenario where it never rained at all.

The skies were showing my naked eyes, a similar situation. At that time the cicadas were singing louder. Their singing caused me to wonder whether their noise was caused or motivated by the scorching sun or they were announcing the imminent coming of rain.

What I saw when it started raining towards the later part of November, led me to believe that there was a huge tangible difference between rain and water. Rain brings life while water saves life. Two or so days after it started raining, I saw so many flying insects attracted by light at the farm.

Amongst these insects was a very large black, long insect – maybe 12 cm long. I really wondered where it had been. How suddenly it came to life with the arrival of rain! Within the next few days, we cited no less than seven snakes around the farm. The highlight of the snakes was that on Monday, December 5, my wife Susan, while cleaning the farm house, and re-arranging this and that, to her utter horror, terror etc, there was a snake in a cardboard box, raising its head and hissing at her. Susan’s fear of snakes is legendary. She will scream and throw away a newspaper, book, just because there is a picture of a snake! Here is a live one hissing at her. She nearly fainted.

All throughout the year, we irrigate one crop or another. There is water around the farm. But there is no other life that is brought by the water we use in the fields. Rain is life. Look at the transformation around the country since the end of November. Rain makes grain. Because the rainy season was delayed this year, the crops are generally young. January is normally a very dry month. However, this year, it has been extremely wet. It does appear now that we are going to have an extremely good year as far as rainfall and its distribution is concerned.

With such a promising season, what prospects are there for sufficient food? The young crop is already suffering from fertifilizer deficiency. If ammonium nitrate was to be availed to the people now, a lot of the crop could be saved. Even if fertilizer was to be found now, there will not be enough food produced this year. The reasons for continued food shortages are many and simple.

Seed production is a long arduous and painstaking process that requires considerable skill and experience. The process starts from embryo stage through foundation to multiplication before such seed is released to seed farmers to grow and make it available to farmers. This first stage of seed production is very specialized. The process from embryo to multiplication takes up to three years. Yes, we know that some black farmers are now seed producers and during this period of their gaining skill and experience, their yield is very low – an average of two tones per ha instead of the normal average of five tones per ha.

What the country has not been told is whether we have these few farmers who produce the first stage. If we no longer have them, then we are saddled with a long term food deficit situation.

In the first place local seed availability was only 30% of national requirement. There was an appearance of over supply of seed because it was too expensive. In short, not all the 30% of seed available was bought because of cost. Many small farmers bought what may end up producing enough food only for their families.

The second factor is the perennial shortage of fertilizers. With so much rain and many of the farmers in sandy soils, there is already great need for top dressing fertilisers.

The third factor is tillage. I witnessed a very embarrassing scene in Gweru on Tuesday 20th December 2005 at the AREX offices. For one of the few times since the start of the season, there was farmers’ diesel available.

Hundreds of farmers went to queue for allocations. As Arex staff was serving farmers on a first come first saved basis, senior army, police and Zanu PF officials were jumping the queue resulting in a riotous situation where police had to send dogs to restore order. The point here is that government is selling fuel to these farmers at the end of the ploughing season. The majority of these farmers do not have their own tractors but would hire any available tractor and use their diesel. Whether that actually happens is an academic point for this paper.

The purpose of this paper is not to prove that there will not be enough food next season. I have just mentioned the factors contributing to food shortage. The purpose of this short paper is to show and prove that it is a grand design or scheme of Zanu PF and its government that Zimbabweans are pliable and controllable under food shortage situation. Zanu PF as a party has destroyed the economy of this country. Only people who have direct benefit from its largesse can continue to vote for it. It must continue to stay in power at any cost. Zanu PF, using councillors and village heads, will force people starved of food in the rural areas to comply.

The Zanu PF government knows that it can never win a free and fair election. The country has one election or another every year. We had parliamentary and senatorial elections in 2005. This year in about September there will be rural district council elections. Visit any GMB depot and see how rural district councillors are there daily either coming to get mealie meal, seed or fertilisers, which products are sold to Zanu PF card holders only. The campaign for RDC’s has already started. Next year there will be elections for the urban councils. In 2008, there will be presidential elections. It is therefore the permanent interest of government, ZANU PF and the state to be in full control of the people. There is a perfect goal congruency in these institutions.

My point is that it is deliberate policy to keep Zimbabwe in semi permanent food deficit situation and my reasons are as follows:

a) Land Reform:
While the need for land reform in acceptable as a means of resolving the land question, the manner in which it was done was clearly never intended to solve the land question. One only needs to look at the beneficiaries to see what its intentions ultimately became. There is land audit after land audit. Those who own multiple farms are not touched. There are millions of hectares lying fallow.

b) Inputs
The parliamentary portfolio committee on Lands and Agriculture in 2003 made specific recommendations on how to deal with the inputs crisis, having had evidence from stakeholders. When the report and recommendations were presented to parliament, Minister Made specifically rejected both report and recommendations. See Hansard of 17th December 2003 Columns 2140-2142. Last year 2005, the same portfolio committee came up with the same findings and made nearly similar recommendations. Again, these have not been accepted.

In his closing remarks at Esigodini as reported by Sunday Mail of 11th December 2005, President Mugabe said: “It's clear we still have serious bottlenecks in the system of procuring and supplying inputs to our people now on the land. I have a few questions to ask my minister on that, a few issues to take up with my Minister on that. Seasons are not predictable in their occurrence. We know every year there is going to be an agricultural season. Yet year in, year out, we are caught flat-footed and unprepared. The farmer prepares for the season diligently, only to be failed by the various arms of government, which must move in with inputs.

“There are serious shortcomings in Government Planning and steps will have to be taken to correct that. Does it make sense that we do not have enough fertilizer at this point in the season? We have been talking about shortages since last year. Cabinet will have to deal with this matter in two days’ time.”

Can we really believe that President Mugabe does not know why there is no fertilizer? Can we really believe that he has over the past five years actually failed to ensure that his Ministers perform? Did Cabinet meet in two days and if so, what solutions this late hour did they come up with? The questions are many but they have none to answer.

c) Operation Taguta
Over the past nine months, we have had Operation Murambatsvina, Operation Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle and Operation Taguta. There have been many other operations in the past few years. Who needs further proof that Zimbabwe has been completely militarised? More able people can write about the militarization but for me, I want to comment on Operation Taguta.

Having recognized the failure of the land reform programme, the government decided late last year to mount Operation Taguta. This is the army going into the underutilized farms and literally taking them over by tilling the land and putting in some crops.

Operation Taguta is trying to plant maize even as late as now. When did the regime discover that land was underutilized? Is the army the right vehicle for food production? Are not some of the military people also failing in their individual capacities to produce food? Is this not an admission of the failure of land reform?

We understand that the army has thousands of tonnes of Ammonium Nitrate Fertilizer for Operation Taguta. Since it is so late now to begin ploughing and planting any crops why not release the fertilizer and save the crop on the ground?

To complete their goal, the government now wants to spend $1.5 trillion dollars buying the shares of fertilizer companies.

All the fertilizer companies are operating at below capacity due to shortage of foreign currency which the government should provide if they were serious about agriculture. It would appear that the government is deliberately sabotaging the fertilizer companies by failing or refusing to provide them with foreign currency. If this is not so, where are they going to get the foreign currency after nationalization? One can only conclude that the whole idea is the perfection of the patronage system when they are in full control.

d) Food Aid
The government was fully aware that their pipe dream of 2.4 million tonnes of maize in 2004 was not there. Last year the rains were poor. Even as they claimed they had too much maize, they never stopped imports, during that big surplus year! Zimbabwe has been eating secretly imported maize over the past 24 months. However, when it was obvious to everybody that people were starving the government refused food aid. When the City of Bulawayo was reporting starvation related deaths, Minister Chombo investigated the City Council instead of causes of those deaths.

The regime eventually accepted food aid at the end of the year, after much suffering of the people. The people are still suffering as there is no mealie meal to be found.

e) Operation Murambatsvina
The government found a formula of controlling people in the rural areas. This is done through the system of Wadco and Vidco. Each Wadco or Ward, has a Zanu PF employee who is paid by government through Ministry of Youth. This official works with village heads and ward councillor. With perennial induced food shortage, this structure ensures compliance of rural people. The patronage system has been perfected.

In the urban areas, the people are much freer and make their own decisions. The hundreds of thousands of informal traders were self sufficient and therefore did not look upon the state to do anything for them. Their lack of dependence meant that government could not control them as those in rural areas.

In order to bring control, Operation Murambatsvina was conceived and implemented with unparrelled ruthlessness. Hundreds of thousands of victims were sent to the communal areas where they are now controllable and controlled.

In conclusion, this is a perfect example of goal congruency by the state as led by Zanu PF. No one can convince me that the government is willing but is unable to plan properly and get the country out of the food shortage and back to its glory of being the breadbasket of the region. Control the people by starving them and stay in power. This can only be done by an evil party which believes that it is the only one which has divine authority and right to rule this country forever. The time has come for the people to say enough is enough.

Renson Minyekile Gasela is the MDC's secretary for agriculture and former MP for Gweru Rural
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