If the Ndlovu family had a television, they would learn that Zimbabwe has just harvested a maize crop so bountiful that there is no longer any need for emergency food aid.
For the last week, government officials and economists have appeared nightly on the state broadcaster, ZBC, to marvel that a country recently stricken with hunger is now a breadbasket.
The Ndlovus are not celebrating. They get their information from the field beside their mud-brick house, and there the news is not good. A pile of maize bound with twine is the sum of their harvest.
”It’s been pretty poor — might last us till September,” said Sichelesile Ndlovu (30) sitting among five of her six children at their home in Lundi, a village west of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city. And after September? ”We’ll see.”
The one certainty is that the family will not see international food aid, because the government has reported a harvest of 2,4-million tons, one of the highest in decades, which would allow Zimbabwe to feed itself and export a sizeable surplus.
The agriculture minister, Joseph Made, attributed the bumper yield to the land reform that transferred white-owned farms to black peasants and commercial farmers. There was no more need for the UN’s World Food Programme or relief agencies, he said.
But those in other villages near Lundi said the same thing as the Ndlovus: despite decent rain, a shortage of seeds and fertiliser during the planting season had produced a poor to moderate harvest which would run out in months.
Patrick Dube (48) was one of the few farmers to have enough seed and money to rent a tractor for his three hectare, but even his family would run out by December, he said. ”If we share with neighbours it won’t last that long.”
Human rights groups fear the discrepancy between government rhetoric and reality means President Robert Mugabe is preparing to use hunger as a political weapon.
”If independent assessments are correct, the risk is that food will be used for political ends and food supplies will go first and only to supporters of the ruling party,” said Amnesty International.
Pius Ncube, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo and a leading government critic, said the govern ment was preparing for general elections due next year.
”They will use food politically,” he said.
Independent estimates suggest Zimbabwe’s harvest is less than 1m tonnes. The Commercial Farmers’ Union estimates 700,000 tonnes and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, an independent German thinktank, estimates slightly more.
No one knows for sure, because two weeks ago the government kicked out the UN’s crop assessment team before it could survey the country.
Outside the government, there is a consensus that Zimbabwe cannot feed itself this year. ”There is no doubt that certain segments of the population will need food aid,” said Robinah Mulenga, the head of the World Food Programme’s sub-office in Bulawayo.
There was no evidence that the government intended to starve communities to death, as had been seen in the recent history of Afghanistan and Ethiopia, relief groups said. The plan, rather, was to use imports and an existing stockpile of 250 000 tons to attempt to gain more votes.
On Sunday the Observer reported that the government had struck a secret deal with a group of US firms to provide thousands of tons of grain in exchange for tobacco and minerals.
But even if enough food was imported, the delays and uneven distribution could put the lives of children, the elderly and the sick at risk, said one aid worker. Poor nutrition speeds the onset of full-blown Aids for those with HIV.
Eddie Cross, a senior official with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, and who advised Mugabe on agriculture in the 1980s, said the authorities were adept at using hunger. ”They can threaten people: if you want food from the government, don’t vote against the government. The message is clear, it’s simple,” he said.
As an Ndebele area, Lundi should be an opposition stronghold, but when Mrs Ndlovu was asked if she would vote for a party which gave her family food, she nodded. That attitude is likely to extend to cities, where shops are well stocked but with goods at prices that the growing number of destitute people cannot afford.
Fari Dube, the deputy headteacher of Bulawayo’s Nkwalongwalo primary school, said that before the WFP donated maize to make porridge, children used to faint in their classrooms. ”In truth, some of the staff are also starving.” – Guardian Unlimited Â