The government of Zimbabwe may be planning to use food scarcity as a political weapon in next year’s elections, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.
Millions of Zimbabweans are in danger of famine because the president, Robert Mugabe, has refused to ask for international aid, and there is increasing evidence to contradict his government’s claim that the country has sufficient food.
In the opposition stronghold of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city, 125 people have died from malnutrition this year, it was reported this week.
The toll in rural areas is unknown as there are no health statistics unavailable.
Human Rights Watch said it feared that food under government control would be restricted to those who supported Mugabe’s party, Zanu-PF.
By law maize must be transported and distributed by the state Grain Marketing Board.
Rural people have to go to its local offices to buy subsidised maize, and the board controls how much is sold in the cities.
”In recent years the grain board has been widely accused of discriminating against supporters of the political opposition,” HRW’s report said.
Many witnesses say grain board officials turn away those who do not have a Zanu-PF card.
The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube, has accused Mugabe of wanting to use food relief as a weapon to win the polls.
”They are planning to starve people into submission,” he said in London last month.
HRW’s paper says the government must make a full disclosure of the food stocks. By withholding vital information it is ”gambling with its citizens’ access to food”.
Earlier this week the Zimbabwean government said it was looking forward to ”an above-average national harvest”.
But farm output has plummeted as a result of Mugabe’s chaotic and often violent land seizures and failure to provide poor black farmers with enough seed and fertiliser.
For the past three years the country has depended on international food aid.
In May the government boasted that farmers had produced a bumper crop of 2.4-million tons of the staple grain, maize. Mugabe said there would be no need for international food aid. ”We don’t want to choke on your food,” he told an interviewer.
Experts, including the United Nations world food programme, dismissed the estimate as a fantasy, but the government ordered the WFP to stop its crop survey, saving its widely disputed figures from being factually contradicted.
The WFP has been forced to dismantle its operations in Zimbabwe and dismiss nearly half its 230 staff.
Virtually all independent agricultural experts reject Mugabe’s figures.
”Anyone driving through Zimbabwe can see that there are not many fields with healthy maize crops,” a local grain specialist said. ”Areas that used to produce large maize and wheat crops are now lying fallow.”
An estimated 4,8-million of Zimbabwe’s 12,5-million people will need food assistance in the coming year, the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee says.
To avert a famine last year, the WFP provided food to nearly six million people at the height of the country’s lean season.
It is currently feeding about 650 000 a month.
The privately owned Standard newspaper questioned assurances that Zimbabwe had plenty of food when it reported this week that 125 people had died of malnutrition-related causes in Bulawayo. Twenty-one of them were children under five.
The mayor of Bulawayo, Japhet Ndabeni-Ncube, confirmed the number, saying it came from city records.
He said it was the responsibility of Mugabe’s government to feed the people. ”This definitely needs a government approach if we are to save lives,” he told The Standard.
The government reacted with fury, threatening action against the mayor of Bulawayo and other city officials, and legal action against the newspaper.
”We are sure of our story,” The Standard‘s editor, Bornwell Chakaodza, told The Guardian on Thursday.
John Makumbe, a civic leader and political scientist, said: ”The truth is that there is not enough food in Zimbabwe and the government is hiding that.
”I have just come back from my home area of Buhera and I can tell you that there is very little food there. And in Matabeleland people are literally starving. People are desperate for humanitarian assistance.”
Makumbe said the government intended to use food to lure political support.
”The public will have to toe the Zanu-PF line in order to get any food.” – Guardian Unlimited Â