United Nations officials threatened to stop delivering food relief to the hungry in Zimbabwe if the government proceeded with plans to take control of the distribution of food aid, the UN food agency said on Friday.
A government directive issued earlier this week ordered international donors to hand food aid over to ruling party-dominated rural committees and local leaders in famine-hit districts, raising fears the government will use the food as a political weapon.
The government has denied previous accusations by relief organisations and the opposition that it uses food assistance to peddle political influence.
The directive from the government came ahead of next week’s rural council and provincial elections.
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said in a statement to partner charities carrying out emergency feeding operations that it was seeking an agreement from the government to carry on food distribution without interference.
Without such an agreement, ”distribution itself should be postponed until we have received appropriate clarification,” the statement said.
The WFP estimates about 3,3-million Zimbabweans are in urgent need of food aid. By January, ahead of the next harvests, that number is expected to rise to about 5,5-million, nearly half the population.
Mass starvation in Zimbabwe — once considered the bread basket of the region — was only averted last year by international aid and food imports.
Luis Clemens, a spokesperson for the WFP, said since the government’s new directive was issued it appeared not to have been implemented and feeding was continuing unhindered.
”We still have not had any incidents of political interference. If we have a problem, we will stop,” he said.
The WFP insisted on ”a zero tolerance policy on political interference in donor-provided food aid”, Clemens said.
Rural areas are the traditional stronghold of President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party, but its support has waned as the country faces its second year of famine and the worst economic crisis since independence in 1980.
Last month Zimbabwe launched a belated emergency food appeal, asking foreign donors to provide about one-third of the country’s food needs.
Western donors are still drawing up their emergency humanitarian aid packages for Zimbabwe. The European Union has so far donated $30-million toward the new appeal.
Long-term development aid has mostly come to a halt in protest of political violence and abuses of human and democratic rights in the past three years.
Erratic rains and violent, state-supported seizures of white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to black settlers have wrecked the agriculture-based economy.
Zimbabwe is suffering acute shortages of basic foods, gasoline, hard currency and local cash.
The WFP has appealed to donors for $308-million to feed 6,5-million people in Southern Africa over the next 12 months, at least two-thirds of them in Zimbabwe. — Sapa-AP