BINGA -- AT 63 years old, Elvis Mutani should be slowing down on the manual chores, like the countless trips he makes to the well to draw water for the garden. Yet, in Zimbabwe s food-deficient Binga area where Mutani lives, fate prescribes no rest for Mutani who in addition to creeping old age also has to contend with a severe asthma condition.
It is a fate forged by three things: drought, hunger and HIV/AIDS.
Farmers in this rocky, remote north-western corner of Zimbabwe have for years struggled to grow sufficient food because of the hostile climatic conditions and unfertile soils.
And with the cash-strapped government in faraway Harare unable some of the villagers will say unwilling — to provide adequate food aid Mutani and his fellow villagers here are left to fend for themselves or in some of the cases get help for international food relief agencies.
The government has forgotten about us, if the situation stays like this we are going to die, said Mutani.
I do not remember the last time I had a decent meal, all I know is that whenever that it was, it was not this year. My body and asthma does not allow me to do laborious work but who can do it for me, he said, a ring of desperation in his voice too obvious to miss.
A widower, who has too look after his two orphaned grandchildren, Mutani, like nearly everybody else here, often has to rely on wild fruits and roots for survival.
For now, I just need food, otherwise my grandchildren may die, he said.
For example, another villager, James Mutinhe, say for the past couple of days he has had to feed his family on wild fruits because he has no money to buy food.
Tip of the iceberg
But the two Binga villagers stories only give a glimpse of the tip of iceberg of hunger that, according to the United Nations, more than a million villagers across Zimbabwes countryside face after yet another poor harvest this year.
According to the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) Zimbabwe need to import nearly 1.4 million of cereals tonnes — with 100 000 tonnnes of that required urgently to avert starvation.
Even Joseph Made, the agriculture minister who in the past refused to acknowledge poor harvests, has admitted that this years harvest is not sufficient.
It’s not looking rosy, he told the state media. ?Maize is being imported at a price of between US$160 and US$180 per tonne, which means Zimbabwe will need about US$136 million for maize alone cash the Harare authorities do not have.
The deficit is huge in rural area and those that did not have good rains, CFU president Dean Theron said.
The national maize consumption requirement stands at two million tonnes per annum but CFU says only 1,3 million tones will be realised from the 2009/2010 season to leave a deficit of about 800 000 tonnes. ?
Farm invasions
Wheat is Zimbabwe s second staple grain, after maize but President Robert Mugabes chaotic and often violent land reforms that saw experienced white growers expelled from the land and replaced by poorly funded and untrained black peasants have seen wheat put tumble down.
For example out of a national target to put 60 000 hectares under winter wheat, farmers managed to plant only 11 000 hectares and Zimbabwe will have to raise nearly US$130 million to import the bulk of the 350 000 tonnes of wheat the country consumes per year.
We ( Zimbabwe ) will have to import the wheat at an import price of US$380 per tonne and this translates to US$128 820 000, given our shortfall, the CFU said last week?.
In an indictment against Mugabes controversial land reforms, Zimbabwe will this year have to once again import maize from Zambia and Malawi, countries that a few years regarded Zimbabwe as a breadbasket.
The veteran leader insists he was right to seize land from whites and give it over to blacks in order to correct a colonial land ownership system that reserved the best arable land for whites and banished blacks to poor soils in he most arid regions.
Colonial injustice
But critics say a desire to smash then opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirais growing support base among commercial farm workers — and not the need to correct a colonial injustice — was the driving motive behind Mugabes land reforms.
In addition, they say Mugabes cronies and not ordinary peasants benefited the most from farm seizures with some of them ending up with as many as six farms each against the governments stated one-man-one-farm policy.
But whatever the motives of Mugabes land reforms, Mutani and his fellow villagers here wish they could rewind the clock back to in the old days when poor yields from Binga stingy soils did not mean having to survive on wild fruits like animals.
Because then, they government was always quick to sent trucks from the Grain Marketing Board laden with maize, beans and other food for the villagers. Not any more, not after many of the best producers were chased off the land!
Post published in: Politics