Swazis in the east of the tiny kingdom are eating wild nuts and berries to supplement an ever-shrinking diet as food shortages take hold with the onset of winter.
Ben Nsibandze, who heads Swaziland’s Disaster Task Force, appealed a month ago for urgent food aid, saying that more than 150 000 people faced starvation if the situation did not improve by the middle of June.
”Nothing has changed,” he told AFP Friday, although a team from the UN World Food Programme had since visited to assess the situation.
The kingdom, sandwiched between South Africa and Mozambique, needs 130 000 tonnes of food aid to tide it over till the next harvest, he said.
”What is making matters worse is that even schools do not have food to feed hungry children, some of whom are orphans and have to fend for themselves to survive,” Nsibandze said.
Tencwela Simelane, 55, tells of the battle to feed her three children.
”I visit a teachers’ college immediately after lunch” every day, she said. ”I pretend I’m collecting left-over food for my dogs. I choose fresh-looking pieces of meat and mealie-rice for my children so that they can have something in the evening.”
”I used to lie to them because I was afraid they would be angry that I was giving them left-overs. But one day I plucked up my courage and told them ? and they appreciated the effort I was making to give them something to eat.”
Wilson Mdluli a teacher at a school in Nhlangano, in the southwest, says some pupils fall asleep immediately they arrive at school after trudging up to 10 kilometres (six miles) because of exhaustion and hunger.
”Some of them tell us that the only food they get is the three slices of bread and a cup of soup that the school provides during break,” he said.
Hailstorms destroyed some cornfields earlier in the season, and were followed by a heatwave; the result is that the corn that remains is withered.
In Hlane, in the east, dozens of people send their children into the mountains to search for wild fruits and berries, to fish, and to hunt for game.
The news that King Mswati IIIs 34th birthday is to be celebrated in eastern Swaziland on Friday was greeted with jubilation in Hlane, because it means he will provide a feast ? 75-year-old Lomavundvo Tsabedze said she would not mind dying after a nice meal as she had not eaten a decent meal for the past three months.
”I would die happy,” she said. ”We’ve been eating sugar cane and wild fruits and berries to keep going.”
Sibongile Hlophe of the Swaziland Red Cross Society said the situation was so bad that the organisation did not know how to alleviate the hunger, and that the number of those affected was increasing.
”It’s unfortunate that the worst hit group are the elderly and the young who do not have means of survival under such difficult conditions,” Hlophe said.
”This has even forced some young orphaned girls to offer themselves to older men in order to get food for their younger siblings.” – AFP
