A harvest for hunger in rural Zim

CHIMANIMANI, Zimbabwe — Smart Makuyana braves the hot summer temperatures as he wobbles along the three-kilometre distance towards the house of Chenjerai Maosa, also known as Chief Muusha to the local community. Earlier in the day, the 79-year-old Makuyana — from Muusha village in the southeast of Zimbabwe near the border with Mozambique — contacted the chief to notify him that he had run out of food supplies. Makuyana lives with his wife and a young grandchild. All his children have left home for work elsewhere or are married. This is the third time in two months he has received food aid. “I cannot work in the fields on my own anymore and my wife is also very old,” he said.

Makuyana is one of the beneficiaries of the zunde ramambo, which means chief’s granary in the Shona language. It is based on a traditional concept in Zimbabwe where, according to Maosa, communities come together to cultivate crops that will serve their collective well-being in times of need.

Over time, many communities that had practised zunde ramambo abandoned it. Recently, however, there has been a resurgence spurred by the positive impacts in communities practising it, particularly in combating food insecurity.

With only a two-hectare piece of land, Maosa’s zunde ramambo is one of the most successful, according to Raymond Saurombe, a chief from the same district.

Maosa says he was prompted to implement the programme in 2020 by the food insecurity he witnessed in his community. “As a chief, you have responsibility to your people. People always come complaining of hunger, and I would give them food from my family reserves,” he says.

Food insecurity is a trend that cuts across the country, especially in rural Zimbabwe. In the lean season of 2022-23, more than 3,8 million rural Zimbabweans experienced food insecurity, according to World Food Programme. Between 2009 and 2014, 8,3% of the country’s population was food insecure, according to a report by the United States Agency for International Development. That figure has increased in all but one year since then. Nationally, 26% of rural households in Zimbabwe are now likely cereal insecure, according to a 2023 estimate by the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee.

Through the zunde ramambo, Maosa believes his community can alleviate the problem. So far, seven villages in Chimanimani participate in his zunde ramambo. The community works together on the land, which Maosa, as the custodian of land within his jurisdiction, allocated to the programme.

After harvest, the village heads — who act as administrators — distribute the harvest equally among those who most need the help, including the elderly and vulnerable children. Others experiencing food scarcity before the next harvest may also receive help.

Although Maosa does not have the exact number of households benefiting, he says since 2020, the zunde ramambo has taken care of 15 children, including orphans, children from child-headed families and children affected by parental disputes. “The food help feed these children during times they stay with us, as some will be taken by the government Department of Social Welfare or parents after resolving their disputes. Families with elderly members have also benefited”, he said.

The support also extends to funerals and community development projects by providing workers with food.

So far, the yields have been impressive, according to Maosa. “We now have food reserves for the community, by the community through zunde,” he said. For example, in 2022, community members harvested four metric tonnes of maize and 2 metric tonnes of beans. “We managed to sell about a tonne and the remaining three tonnes we kept in the granary, and we still have some.”

After that harvest, the community planted potatoes. In December, they harvested 60 bags, each weighing 15 kilogrammes.

They also grow and sell produce and use the money to buy more foodstuffs if the granary runs out. “We also use the money to pay for fees for orphans and child-headed families and get seeds and fertilisers for [the] next crop,” he says.

Maosa hails zunde ramambo for not only providing food, but for unifying villagers. “We have seen people voluntarily coming to participate from all the villages. Because of the unity, it takes us a day to plant and two days to weed, giving people time to also attend to their personal fields.”

After seeing the success of such initiatives, in November 2020, the government through the Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development ministry, has been supporting the revival of zunde ramambo

that had fallen into disuse by providing seed, fertilisers and chemicals, according to Barbra Machekano, the ministry’s acting director of communications and advocacy.

Phillipa Rwambiwa is the director for agricultural advisory and rural development services, Manicaland. She said the government was also using the zunde ramambos to support learning centres for communities. “We have what we call farmer field schools, where farmers gather and learn through practical lessons. Extension officers have the duty to facilitate at these farmer field schools and do field days,” he said.

But the programmes are not without challenges. In communities that rely on rainwater, warming trends that affect rainfall have an impact. “We are lucky to have a river nearby, so we draw water for irrigation from it,” Maosa said. The river is about three kilometres from the zunde ramambo plot.

Rwambiwa says to mitigate water challenges, the government has been drilling boreholes in different parts of the country through the Presidential Rural Development Programme.

To date, the programme has drilled 2 524 boreholes, some of which facilitate zunde ramambo programmes across the country, said Marjorie Munyonga, the corporate communications and marketing manager at the Zimbabwe National Water Authority. She adds that they plan to drill 35 000 boreholes nationwide by 2025.

The changing climate is only one of the challenges zunde ramambos face. Occasionally, government-supplied seeds and fertilisers arrive late, Maosa says, prompting the community to sell their produce to cover the costs. Other times, the government does not always have all the seeds they need.

Evolving social structures have also called for modifications to zunde ramambos. In the past, running such a programme was easy since communities lived in the same compound with their chief, says Chief Saurombe, who revived the first zunde ramambo in Saurombe village in Chimanimani, Manicaland, in 2001. The people a chief needed to organise to participate were right there.

“Nowadays people are scattered all over, as a chief’s area can cover a big area,” he said. “For one to travel, say, 10 kilometres to come and work in zunde fields can be a challenge.”

As a result, chiefs have had to create “mini zundes” managed by village heads. “Villagers can get [food] from their village heads. Once that is finished, the village heads can get [food] from the main granary at the chief’s place,” Saurombe said.

In fact, Saurombe’s approach is a little different. Unlike Maosa’s zunde ramambo, Saurombe allocates land of identical size to each participating family. After harvest, each family contributes a share of its harvest — two 25-litre buckets of grain — to the zunde ramambo for vulnerable community members.

The secret to success, according to Saurombe, is to involve people. “If you want people to work freely and for transparency, just be a supervisor with committees chosen by the people on the forefront,” he says.