- PRETORIA -- The number of
Zimbabweans needing food aid has increased to 7.5m, nearly two-thirds of
its population, according to a joint assessment by UN experts and Zimbabwean
officials published yesterday. It said there had been a remarkable increase
in the number of people going hungry since September, when 5m were then
considered in need of help.
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- International donors say they are scrambling to provide
adequate supplies and accuse President Robert Mugabe's government of refusing
to admit that the policy of widespread land seizures has reduced food production.
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- Mr Mugabe's government is withholding food from opposition
supporters, according to human rights groups - an observation confirmed
by interviews with hungry rural people. There are 5m in rural Zimbabwe
who are dependent upon international food aid.
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- But the new study also shows that hunger is now widespread
in the cities as well. It estimates that 2.5m urban dwellers cannot get
enough food.
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- Urban Zimbabweans are also struggling to cope with an
unemployment rate of 70%. Many people are finding it difficult to feed
their families because of food shortages and a 600% inflation rate.
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- "My pay is not enough to feed my children,"
a factory worker said. "Prices go up every week yet my pay stays the
same. We can barely afford one meal a day. We haven't tasted meat for a
month."
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- The price of Zimbabwe's staple, maize meal, has soared.
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- Last year the state grain monopoly sold a 50kg (nearly
9st) bag of maize for Z$580 (40p). Now maize is generally available only
from illegal traders who sell a 50kg bag for as much as Z$40,000 (£28).
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- The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is struggling
to provide enough food. According to Zimbabweans and human rights groups
the government routinely withholds supplies to rural people in southern
Matabeleland and many other areas which voted for the opposition in Mr
Mugabe's disputed presidential election in 2002.
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- But the WFP has been criticised by Human Rights Watch
for not taking a strong line against the political manipulation of food
aid. WFP officials say they have corrected any problems.
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- "We categorically deny that the government interferes
with our food distribution," its spokesman Richard Lee said.
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- "We determine who should get our assistance by collaborating
with the entire community and we never rely solely on a beneficiary list
given to us by the government."
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- WFP's Zimbabwe representative, Kevin Farrell, has been
widely criticised for failing to say that the land seizures are the primary
cause of the growing food shortages.
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- "What we need are UN representatives who, without
losing their diplomacy, are prepared to tell it like it is," Iden
Wetherell, editor of the Zimbabwe Independent, wrote in a recent column.
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- "Dancing around the problems in some misdirected
concern for the sensitivity of their hosts is simply going to compound
official complacency and discourage donors."
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- Even when nearly two-thirds of Zimbabwe's people are
either hungry or dependent upon international aid, the government has forced
through parliament a law to speed up land seizures and to take big sugar
plantations and more farms.
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- It has already taken more than 90% of the country's privately
owned, mostly white-owned, farmland.
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- Now it is preparing to seize the rest, according to agricultural
experts.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/zimbabwe/article/0,2763,1136823,00.html
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