With an embarrassed smile Million Ndlovu admits that he has begun eating okra. Zimbabwean men say it is a ”weak” vegetable, because of the slimy liquid it exudes when cooked, and think that by eating it they, too, will become weak.
But now men like Million have no choice. He eats okra and picks weeds from the fields to boil into a sauce, and drinks tea to fill his stomach when there is nothing solid to eat.
The rains have not fallen and his village’s maize crops have shrivelled in the fields. But that is not why he is hungry.
As Thursday’s parliamentary election approaches, the government has taken sole control of food distribution in rural areas.
These elections, observers say, will bring less of the outright brutality that scarred previous polls. Instead, according to accounts, the government party, Zanu-PF, is offering villagers a simple choice — vote for us or starve.
In Million’s village, east of Bulawayo, people pooled money to buy maize flour from the state-owned grain marketing board. Last Saturday the food arrived.
Million (62) said: ”Sitting on top of the heap of maize [sacks] was the district chairman of Zanu-PF. He said that maize would be distributed to supporters of Zanu-PF only — not to supporters of the MDC [the opposition Movement for Democratic Change].”
Each villager who reached the head of the queue was given a 50kg (110lb) sack of maize, said Million. But anyone believed to support the opposition was ordered to leave.
”It was announced that MDC supporters should go out of the queue so as not to be embarrassed,” he said. ”But I stayed in the queue because I was hungry.”
Instead of a sack of maize Million, an MDC voter, was given back the 37 000 Zimbabwean dollars [now equivalent to only about R40] he had put down as an advance payment three months ago.
Now he survives on one proper meal a day. ”In the mornings we take tea. In the afternoons, when the children come home from school, we take tea. In the evenings we have some sadza [maize porridge].
”We have it with okra. Men used not to eat this okra, because it was said that it makes them weak. We eat a plant called uludi, which we pick in the fields. It grows in ruined buildings.”
Million is a ”rainmaker”, a community elder who performs the ceremonies meant to bring rain. ”We ask for rain for the whole country,” he said. ”But the maize that comes from this rain is being divided on party lines.”
Million’s ceremonies have not been successful of late. Rain should be falling now, but Zimbabwe’s skies are clear blue with puffs of white cloud rather than black with full-bellied stormclouds.
In Matabeleland, the province around Bulawayo, the rivers are dry beds of yellow dust and stone. The maize planted last autumn is brown and wilted.
Aid agencies say about four million people – a third of the population – will need food aid this year because of the drought. The poor harvest may be nature’s fault, but it is being turned to political advantage.
Last year President Robert Mugabe boasted of a bumper harvest and stopped aid agencies distributing food to rural areas. In an interview with Sky News, he said: ”We are not hungry. Why foist this food on us? We don’t want to be choked.”
The move gave Zanu-PF complete control of food supplies in the countryside, through the grain marketing board. Shari Eppel, who belongs to a human rights group in Bulawayo called the Solidarity Peace Trust, said: ”What we have heard is that the grain marketing board only sells food at Zanu-PF rallies. People who go to buy food are turned away and told, ‘You are MDC – you were seen at an MDC rally last week.”’
Mugabe admitted for the first time last week that the country was seriously short of food. ”The main problem we are facing is one of drought and the shortage of food,” he told a Zanu-PF rally. ”We are going to work out a hunger alleviation programme … I promise you that no one will starve.”
On Thursday state television service reported that the government was importing enough grain from South Africa to feed the country for 18 months – the latest evidence of the collapse of agriculture in Zimbabwe.
Mugabe’s critics say the grain shortages highlight the country’s economic crisis. Policies such as the seizure of white-owned land – much of which is now idle – have proved disastrous.
According to the Commercial Farmers’ Union, Zimbabwe grew only 850 000 tonnes of maize last year: not enough to feed its own people. In 1999, before the land seizures began, it grew 1,5-million tonnes.
”The whole ‘food-as-a-weapon’ thing is backfiring,” Eppel said. ”Things are even getting to the point of the government not being able to feed its own supporters. Even Mugabe himself is finally admitting that we’re short of food and saying [to his supporters], ‘Don’t worry – we won’t let you starve.”’
Opposition to Zanu-PF is deeply entrenched in Matabeleland. The province was the target of a brutal campaign of massacres and beatings between 1982 and 1984 aimed at wiping out support for a rival party, Zapu. Families that once supported Zapu have now transferred their allegiance to the MDC. Even faced with starvation, many villagers are refusing to back the government party.
”We have never knelt to Zanu here,” said a villager, Jesilea Sibanda (69). ”I for one have never done so. I would rather die.”
Another woman from the village, Asa Sibanda (82) said that she had been offered food in return for switching to Zanu-PF.
As she spoke her neighbour raised her hand with her palm open, to make the sign of the MDC. Then she clenched it into a fist, mimicking the salute of President Mugabe.
”They said there is no way they are going to give me food that belongs to Zanu-PF unless I repent by coming to join Zanu-PF and denouncing the MDC,” she said. ”I was told that I should denounce the party with the symbol of the open hand and join the party with the symbol of the fist.” -Guardian Unlimited Â