Nearly 70% of the country faces starvationHARARE – Millions of Zimbabweans are to have their food ration from the
UN halved, bringing it below the level required to keep an adult alive.
For the seven million people, or 70% of the country's entire
population, expected to need food aid through the UN's World Food
Programme (WFP) next month, the core maize ration will be reduced from
10kg a month to 5kg – which equates to just 600 calories per person per
day. The recommended monthly maize allowance is 12kg.
Richard Lee, a WFP spokesman in southern Africa, said that while the
calorie count would be boosted by a quota of beans and vegetable oil,
recipients of food aid would now have to find additional means to stay
alive.
"The new ration falls below that considered necessary for survival.
Some will be forced to make up the difference by sending their children
to hunt for wild fruits. Others will look to sell possessions they
haven’t already sold to buy food," he said. "People will be more
vulnerable, more malnourished and more susceptible to disease."
Poor harvests, partly caused by the Mugabe regime's corrupt and violent
land reform programme, and the collapse of the economic
infrastructure have created a sharp increase in the number of people
dependent on aid. Zimbabwe is now the world’s third largest food aid
operation after Afghanistan and Ethiopia, and it leads the field in
terms of the percentage of its population in need. The knock-on effect
is that donations from foreign governments are now falling well short
of demand.
Since May 2008, donors – mainly the European Union and the US – have
given US$240 million. Botswana is the only country in the Southern
African Development Community to provide any funding – it donated
US$150,000.
The WFP says it needs another $65 million to keep feeding Zimbabweans
until the end of March. But donors are reluctant to put more resources
into the beleaguered African state and what aid there is has been
partly diverted to the cholera crisis.
Oxfam is currently feeding 253,000 in Zimbabwe’s Midlands province. One
of its workers there, Caroline Gluck, said the organisation relied on
food supplied by the WFP and so it would be forced to halve the ration.
"Families are being stretched. Sometimes adults are skipping a meal so
their children can be fed, or they are supplementing what they have
with wild fruits. They’re selling livestock and household goods to buy
staple foods," she said.
"But it has reached a stage where people have sold what they can.
There’s very little they can do now to supplement their rations. People
are already thin; their frames are skin and bone. And when you look at
the fields you see there’s been no agricultural input. The soil is
little better than sand."
The food crisis has been compounded by the government’s failure to meet
a target of importing 800,000 tonnes of maize. It is believed to have
bought in only 200,000 tonnes.
The April harvest is unlikely to bring much relief either.
Agriculturalists say it will fail again. They estimate it will provide
less than a quarter of the country’s needs and that drastic food
shortages will continue into next year once the results of the harvest
have been consumed.
WFP's Richard Lee confirmed the problem of meeting demand for food aid
was getting worse. "We are cutting the ration so we can provide
assistance to everybody who needs it, and so we make sure they get
through February and March, the two hungriest and worst months of the
year," he said. "But the scale of the crisis, and how quickly it has
deepened, means we desperately need additional resources."
Food shortages are contributing to the rising number of cholera deaths.
About 1,000 people have died in the past fortnight, many of them too
weak for treatment because they have not had enough to eat. – First
published in The Guardian