While the figures for drought and famine in Southern Africa are less apocalyptic than they were a year ago, the scale of human misery is unacceptably high and an appeal to the international community for special help looks inevitable.
This year food will have to be bought from South America. The drought in South Africa will make food either too scarce or too expensive to source here.
Last year the World Food Programme (WFP) made a special international appeal for $311-million and got $208-million. It was this that prevented people from dying of hunger, says Richard Lee, the WFP representative in South Africa.
Lee very much regrets that he will still have a job here for the foreseeable future.
”The situation is not completely dire, but it still looks pretty bleak. In numerical terms things are not as bad as they were at the beginning of 2003 when 15-million people in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe needed emergency food aid,” he says.
”In February last year alone the WFP reached 10-million people. Last December we reached five million people and we estimate that between nine and 10-million currently need emergency feeding.
”Although the number is lower, these people will have had two years without proper feeding. Our provisions can do no more than keep them alive and give them enough energy to continue farming.
”So they will have had another year of selling off meagre assets to survive. In some ways this year will be harder for the hungry, even though there may be fewer of them.”
The picture will become much clearer when harvesting starts in about six weeks’ time.
Many people have already started going hungry and are desperately waiting on the harvest. Early indications are that this year’s crops will be as bad as last year’s.
Lesotho, where there has been virtually no rain, has already declared a state of emergency. Between 600 000 and 700 000 people — a third of the kingdom’s population — will need emergency food aid.
Not only will Lesotho not get a maize crop in April, but its winter harvest last year also failed.
Swaziland is reportedly considering declaring a state of disaster. It has not done this since the drought of 1992, which first brought the WFP to the region.
Southern Mozambique faces its third year of drought and some areas of south-central Mozambique have seen no rain in four years.
The WPF is making an emergency assessment in southern Malawi ahead of the detailed crop assessments made by the United Nations’s Food and Agriculture Organisation in May.
”Things look okay for the harvest in central Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe where there has been some rain,” says Lee.
In some places even good rains would not greatly improve food security because farmers have either run out of seed and fertilizer or have failed to plant, fearing continued drought.
South Africa will not be able to step in as a donor and supplier as it did in 2000 when its gift of 100 000 tonnes of maize made it the fifth-largest donor internationally.
Late rains might make South Africa self-sufficient in maize this year. If there is any surplus it will be too expensive for the WFP to buy. Lee says South African prices have skyrocketed since December.
The continuing drought and the HIV/Aids epidemic is expected to keep the WFP in the region for years to come.
”Ideally we like to get in, provide the emergency assistance and then move on elsewhere,” says Lee. ”That is what we did here in 1992.”
The WFP has never provided South Africa with emergency aid. It bases its regional operation in the country for logistical reasons.
”Communications are good and we usually source much of our food from here,” says Lee.
”We had hoped to move away from the basic provision of food to addressing the HIV/Aids-related problems threatening long-term food security.
”But the continued drought means we have to continue providing the basic needs.
”Beating HIV/Aids is crucial to our job. HIV/Aid is the underlying cause of vulnerability in the region. It worsens the food crisis and the shortage of food in turn worsens the epidemic.”
HIV/Aids erodes production and income as parents die and families headed by children or grandparents farm less and earn less. This in turn hits people living with HIV who do not get the proper nutrition.
”Providing anti-retrovirals is no good unless it is accompanied by proper nutrition. It’s a vicious circle.”
The WFP is now working alongside the more focused UN operations against HIV/Aids.
”Only by mounting a joint attack on this scourge will we be able to deal with it,” says Lee. ”If we don’t work with regional and international organisations on this, we will simply continue to move from crisis to crisis.”