The Zimbabwe government has banned motorists from carrying fuel in containers, a routine procedure in the southern African country where there are chronic fuel shortages, a newspaper said on Tuesday.
The official Herald newspaper said people who wanted to transport containers of fuel privately would now have to obtain permission from the government or face arrest.
”If, for example, someone has a funeral or is a farmer who needs diesel, he has to apply to the ministry to be given permission to carry the fuel… otherwise he will get arrested,” Rueben Marumahoko, the Deputy Minister of Energy was quoted as saying.
The Herald said the move was intended to stamp out a thriving black market for fuel, which sells for anything up to 1 700 Zimbabwe dollars (US$2) a litre, way above the official price of Z$450 (54 US cents) per litre.
But members of the public are likely to be angered by the ban.
Motorists here often have to carry spare fuel with them on long trips out of cities, where they are unlikely to find fuel at service stations.
For the past three years Zimbabwe has faced severe fuel shortages that have in turn disrupted industry and commerce and caused transport problems for members of the public.
Motorists sometimes have to queue for days to obtain the scarce commodity.
The Herald reported that by Monday police at roadblocks were already confiscating fuel containers found in vehicles.
Last month the government claimed it had concluded a fuel deal with Libya that would see the oil-rich north African country supplying Zimbabwe with its fuel needs by the end of June.
Libya did provide Zimbabwe with 70% of its fuel needs, but the supply line was cut after Zimbabwe failed to meet its end of the bargain, which was to supply Libya with beef, tobacco and sugar.
Meanwhile, in South Africa, a report of the National Assembly’s agriculture and land portfolio committee recommends that when there is need for food aid in Zimbabwe, the South African parliament should back such a vote.
The report released by the committee — headed by African National Congress MP Neo Masithela — on Tuesday, also noted that when the Parliament considered the Communal Land Rights Bill — which is intended to transfer rights of title to peasants – it ”should take note of and learn from the lessons” of the Zimbabwean land reform process.
The recommendations follow a visit to Zimbabwe by members of the committee including ANC — which constituted a majority — and DA and IFP members.
There was a consensus, it noted, among Zimbabweans including non-government organisations and both the opposition and ruling parties that land reform was a good policy and should take place ”but in a correct way and on an equitable basis”..
The MPs met a variety of groups including the largely white Commercial Farmers’ Union and the black Indigenous Commercial Farmers’ Union and the Zimbabwe Farmers’ Union.
The CFU told the MPs that during the presidential election in 2002, farmers were on the front line and ”systematically organised commercial agriculture was shut down”.
”There is no doubt that while elections are high (on the go) and the ruling party is trying to maintain (a) grip on power … issues of production are not at the forefront of policy,” the CFU was reported as saying.
Production throughout the commercial sector, reported the CFU, had been reduced by 70% and is being further eroded.
The maize production had dropped from 810 000 tons in 2000 and was expected to be 80 000 tons this year. Wheat had dropped from 283 00 tons to an expected 60 000 tons. There were 1,2-million head of livestock in 2000, now it stood at 150 000.
A different picture was painted by the ICFU and the ZFU which argued that much of the livestock however, had been slaughtered by ”outgoing farmers slaughtering calves, cows and heifers”. They put livestock figures at a more conservative 5,5-million having dropped from six-million. The discrepancy in these figures was not explained.
The black farmers groups said the farmers who left the farms ”took their tractors”. Some were locked up ”in Harare or on farms”.
But the black farmers’ groups say that overall the land reform programme ”has unlocked the agriculture potential of the country. The large scale farms were too large for individual farmers with utilization of between 25% and 40% with farms now smaller and more manageable. – Sapa-AFP, I-Net Bridge