Fishermen, farmers buckle under drought
MORE than 13 million people across southern Africa can’t put enough food on the table and the number is expected to surge in the coming months as the result of months of poor rains kick in, according to the UN.
In Zimbabwe, officials are urging people to tighten their belts as authorities scramble to find alternative food supplies.
“Families must not be wasteful. They must be conservative and prepare only food that is enough for the meal,” said Leonard Munamati, who heads the Agricultural and Rural Development Advisory Services, a government agency.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa has promised that no Zimbabwean will starve. But many are worried.
As soon as a ruling party lawmaker stepped out of his car upon arriving in Konje’s village of Kanyemba for a visit this month, a group of women heading to fetch water from a borehole dropped their buckets and quickly surrounded him to air their grievances.
“Families are relying on wild fruits,” MP Tendai Nyabani said.
Kanyemba’s Rushinga district is a stronghold of Zanu-pf, the party in power since independence in 1980.
Some have resorted to making flour
for pap or sadza, a traditional dish, with chemically treated maize seeds meant for planting and handed out under a government programme, he added.
The government has teamed up with charities and UN agencies to bring in aid and opposition politicians have called for Zanu-pf-leaning areas not to be favoured – something authorities have been accused of in the past.
Officials are also looking at increasing food imports. But this has become harder as El Nino -– which warms the sea surface in the southern Pacific and leads to hotter weather globally – wreaks havoc across the region.
“Traditionally we have been buying organic maize from Zambia. Now Zambia doesn’t have (any) and Malawi
also doesn’t have (any),” said Tafadzwa Musarara, chair of the Grain Millers Association of Zimbabwe.
Zambia declared drought a national disaster last month.
“We are all now buying GMO maize from South Africa,” said Musarara. Imports of GMO (genetically modified) grains were first allowed in 2020 as Zimbabwe faced another drought.
Zimbabwe’s agricultural sector has struggled to recover from the expropriation of land from white large-scale commercial farmers carried out more than two decades ago under President Robert Mugabe.
Aimed at correcting historical wrongs, critics say the move brought agricultural production to its knees, causing a sharp decline in economic output. |