Hunger is stalking the rural folk in Chimanimani, about 450km east of Harare, and the political fallout could be significant.
Traditional chiefs are normally the rearguard of President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF. But this time round, it appears that some have thrown their weight behind Heather Bennet, wife of jailed Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) MP Roy Bennet. At a rally of about 5 000 people she addressed in Chimanimani last Sunday, a defiant local chief stood up: ”To hell with a government that can’t provide its own people grain.”
His protest reveals simmering discontent in rural areas where people have remained loyal to Mugabe since independence. ”Failure to provide food,” analysts warn, ”could be Mugabe’s downfall.”
A drive out into the rural areas reveals stunted maize withering in the searing sun. Commercial farmlands along the Harare/Masvingo and Harare/Bulawayo roads are lying idle.
The humanitarian disaster confronting Mugabe’s rural vote could easily turn it against him.
Issack Matongo, MDC national chairperson, has visited 90 constituencies. ”We are winning this election despite what our detractors are saying,” he told the Chimanimani rally. ”We know hunger is a problem and the responsibility lies with the government to help you,” he exclaimed, reminding his audience that last year Mugabe had told the international community not to ”foist food upon us”.
Mugabe has been importing food in the past year, which humanitarian agencies have said is not enough to meet the target of two million tonnes to feed the destitute.
A parliamentary select committee on land and agriculture warned the executive last year that Zimbabwe had a shortfall of 900 000 tonnes.
”I don’t think contingency plans were put in place to address drought,” said Alois Masepe of the University of Zimbabwe. ”Instead of planning how to feed our people, we are concentrating on how to get agricultural inputs in the hope that it results in a bumper harvest.”
Instead of dealing with hunger, Masepe said, Mugabe is targeting the youth vote by donating computers to schools. ”He should just donate them quietly, not campaign using computers. It’s an insult. Where there are no textbooks, furniture, classroom blocks you don’t need computers. It’s a luxury.”
But there’s a logic to Mugabe’s drive to woo the youth. The ”born frees” do not share their parents’ regard for Mugabe as a war hero, and largely voted for the opposition five years ago.
After Mugabe narrowly won the 2002 presidential election, he went on a campaign to change the education curriculum to reorient the youth, whom he accused of falling victim to Western propaganda and deserting his government.
National youth training centres were created where school dropouts had to go for a six-month training course that involved military drills and lectures on the liberation war. The majority of the graduates enlisted in Zanu-PF’s youth militia that became notorious for its intimidation of the opposition.