Household food hunger has been increasing over the years due to a combination of factors, among them bad harvests caused by recurrent droughts, perennial shortages of inputs and disturbances to agricultural production due to the accelerated land redistribution programme that started in 2000 and displaced close to 5,000 commercial farmers.
On the increasing food insecurity, the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency noted that the production of maize, the staple crop, has fallen acutely over the years.
“The average national maize production for the Zimbabwean economy fell from 1.6 million tonnes in the 1993-1999 period to 1.3 million in the 2000-2007 period and further dropped to 1.1 million tonnes in the 2010-2011 period,” says Zimstat in its report, Poverty and Poverty Datum Line Analysis in Zimbabwe—2011/2012 released in April 2013.
The 2011-12 main farming season harvests were equally poor, leaving more than a million Zimbabweans requiring food aid.
The incremental decrease in agricultural production coincided with an economic crisis marked by hyperinflation, massive job losses and shortages of basic commodities that peaked in 2008.
The establishment of a coalition government in early 2009 helped stabilise the economy, which is, however, still struggling to stabilise.
Rural areas have been more affected by the food hunger and the economic crisis than their urban counterparts. The rural average household income is far lower than in urban areas and a significant population survives on a dollar or less a day.
The government has also established a national programme, through the Grain Marketing Board to avail inputs and maize cereal to needy communities, on a subsidized purchase or loan basis.
Manipulating hunger
Reports indicate that politicians have been manipulating hunger, particularly in poor rural communities, to buy votes or distribute availed grain and inputs on partisan lines.
These reports have tended to accuse Zanu (PF) members of using the GMB food and inputs scheme of politicising food aid to buy votes and thus gain political mileage and punish individuals and households perceived not to belong to the party.
These reports motivated an investigation into the political manipulation of food aid, focusing on a poor rural area that is prone to food hunger.
Investigation objectives
The investigation sought to:
1. Establish whether the GMB grain and input loan scheme was being politicised and, if so:
2. Who were involved in the politicisation and their political affiliation
3. How deserving beneficiaries were excluded and who they are
4. Who the benefiting members are
5. Whether there are political patterns emerging from those that are chosen to benefit and are excluded and if that points to political exclusion and bias
The investigation, which assumed that there is, indeed, manipulation of food aid on political grounds, employed a combination of methods, as follows:
1. Field observations
2. Personal interviews
3. Telephone interviews
The research covers the period from August 2011 to December 2012, tracing the distribution of food aid and inputs. It was limited to three wards in rural Shurugwi: Ward 12, Ward 13 and Ward 24.
These straddle two districts, Shurugwi South and Shurugwi North, and contain more than 30 villages each with an estimated 120 households per village and an average of six members per household.
The three communal wards are typical of the two rural districts in the following senses:
1. They are prone to recurrent drought
2. The agricultural soils are poor and need much fertiliser
3. The majority of the village households principally depend on maize farming and unemployment is high
4. Most of the families do not have relatives who can remit money to them on a regular basis and when they do, the money is little
5. Households intermittently receive food handouts from the humanitarian community, but not enough to sustain them
6. Because of poor harvests, the majority of the households suffer severe food insecurity
7. While a significant number of people does not come out in the open regarding the villagers’ political affiliation due to fear of victimisation, there is evident Zanu (PF) and MDC (Tsvangirai) presence. Wards 12 and 13 are run by Zanu (PF) councillors while Ward 24 has an MDC councillor. Both parties have defined structures whose members tend to be open about their political affiliation.
Selectors of beneficiaries
In 2011, the wards were allocated both farming inputs (fertiliser Compound D and the top dressing AN) and maize cereal. Investigations showed that beneficiaries were supposed to receive 10kg of D, 10kg of AN in addition to 50kg of maize grain subject to availability.
In 2012, however, the aid was mostly limited to fertiliser distribution, mostly Compound D, and a limited amount of maize grain that was meant for the elderly was allocated.
The aid was availed to the Tongogara GMB depot, which caters for about 12 rural wards.
GMB officials at the depot, including the manager, Gwatiringa, were not willing to talk on the matter, thus it could not be established how much grain and inputs were allocated to the depot and what the precise role of the grain utility was in the distribution of the aid.
Their reluctance to talk also made it impossible to obtain official records pertaining to distribution of aid.
However, it was established that the selection of beneficiaries was left in the hands of councillors and traditional leaders who drew up lists of the people that would get the aid. The councillors and traditional leaders were helped by committees of varying numbers.
The Ward 12 committee was headed by the sitting councillor, Mathias Banda, who is also a senior teacher at a local school. It comprised Zanu (PF) members named as Phllip Hwengere, Lifa Hwengwere, Teddy Chipere and Tendai Ngirande.
Phillip Hwegwere is the Zanu (PF) Vice Chairperson in the ward while Lifa, Chipere and Ngirande hold positions in the ward structure.
In the run up to 2008 general election, Chipere was beaten by Banda as the Zanu (PF) councillorship candidate.
In Ward 13, Sheila Midzi headed the committee that also included Village Head Zireva. Other members in the committee, who were also confirmed as Zanu (PF) ward structure members and supporters include one Mudzoma, a village head and chairperson of headmen in the ward, Patrick Mashoko and Shepherd Mambure. Sheila Midzi is the sitting Zanu (PF) councillor and Zireva is an active party member.
The Ward 24 committee was led by Simon Tuvugari, a senior local structure member of Zanu (PF) and village head, and also included several youths.
The Ward 24 story is different from that of the other two wards. It is in the hands of an MDC councillor, Rabson Mudhehwa, who should have headed the selection and distribution committee as in the case of the committees in the other wards.
However, it was established that Mudhehwa was a committee member only in name. Not only did he fail to head and choose his own committee but he never participated in the set up as he was elbowed out by the Zanu (PF) members who dealt directly with the GMB management.
Mudhehwa said he made attempts to query his exclusion at the Tongogara GMB depot but when Tuvugari and his team learnt about it, they reported at the nearby police station that he had assaulted one of them during a quarrel and he was detained for two days.
He claimed he was released after paying a $10 fine for the alleged assault but could not produce the admission of guilt receipt.
A follow-up at Tongogara police station yielded nothing as the record could not be located but a former GMB part time employee testified that Mudhehwa was at one time detained by the police following a misunderstanding with the selection and distribution committee from Ward 14.
Partisan distribution
Investigations established that the selection process was partisan, with the Zanu (PF) led committees deliberately excluding MDC supporters while favouring themselves and those that belonged to the party.
However, several villagers testified that they managed to receive grain and fertiliser because they did not side with any party.
Some known MDC supporters admitted that they received some fertiliser in December 2012—5kg instead of the 10kg others had received—when the Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee was asked to intervene.
A Midlands provincial Jomic unit member, Llewellyn Sibanda, confirmed the intervention by his team after receiving reports of biased selection and distribution, after which an army team was dispatched to monitor distribution of the aid.
A soldier from Mhene Village in Ward 12 was part of the monitoring deployment.
The committees drew up the lists on their own, but sometimes after consulting village heads, and forwarded the names to Tongogara GMB. Their members would then coordinate the collection of the inputs and maize grain, directing selected beneficiaries to get into groups of four or five so as to collect their handouts.
The beneficiaries were not allowed inside the GMB depot, and had to collect their aid outside the perimeter fence.
Some interviewed villagers suspect that their names were included on the lists without their knowledge and their allotments diverted to committee members, but there was no confirmation of this as it was difficult to get the records even from the committees.
They also claimed that none of the elderly people who were supposed to benefit from last year’s limited grain aid scheme received it when youths who were recruited by the committees demanded that they get it since they were not being paid for their services.
Two grandmothers talked to, from Hananda Village in Ward 12—Mbuya Mutsvanga and Sheila Zvoushe—said they had submitted their names after being informed that they would benefit, but did not hear anything at all after that.
In one case in Ward 24, three orphans, the eldest of them 16, whose late parents were active MDC supporters, failed to receive food aid in 2011. Villagers interviews say numerous efforts were made to include them but unsuccessfully.
Conclusions
The following conclusions can be drawn from findings above
1. Grain and inputs distributed through the Tongogara GMB depot in the three wards was done in a politically partisan manner
2. Deserving and vulnerable MDC members were deliberately excluded
3. Zanu (PF) members gained
4. The selection and distribution were controlled by Zanu (PF) members
5. It required intervention from Jomic for some balance to be introduced into the selection and distribution of aid
6. It is not clear what those that controlled the distribution got, but there is a possibility of corruption, and they could have gotten more than they deserved
7. There was no transparency in the manner in which distribution and selection of beneficiaries happened
8. The role of the GMB officials in the politicisation of aid remains unclear, but Zanu (PF) seems to have the power to influence them.
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