Politicising of food must be stopped

IT is a pity that the Zanu PF-led government has started politicising Plan International and Welfare assistance on Manicaland province floods disaster victims, particularly in Mutare.

Partisan distribution of food to people who have been affected by Cyclone Idai and Chalane is very wrong and must never be allowed to happen.

Politics is now at play as Zanu PF members Ben Moyo and Mary Mpofu were given the task to write down names of the affected members.

What is now worrying is that they are busy writing down names and giving out assistance to Zanu PF members only, leaving opposition members who were also affected.

The situation was made worse from the outset when the authorities gave Zanu PF the mandate to write down names of the affected victims, which was unconstitutional and unacceptable.

The actual truth is that help is coming from Plan International and Welfare, but then Zanu PF got the opportunity to grab and politicised the whole programme and process.

Now the situation on the ground is that they are distributing food to the ruling party Zanu PF members only, and leaving out MDC Alliance supporters.

We now call for help or Plan International and Welfare to intervene so as to save people from starvation as a certain powerful businessman is now being claimed to be the sponsor.

Through this, it’s clear that Zanu PF is stealing from the people.

It’s unfortunate that the Zanu PF government is taking advantage of both the COVID-19-induced lockdown and floods to manipulate and frog march people into bowing down to its whims.

If the government wanted to be fair enough, it was supposed to allow some neutral people to also assess the situation and help the affected people.

Government must not take advantages of these disasters to put its candidates in the limelight yet they have already failed.

Fanuel Chinowaita