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ZIMBABWE:
Food - the key to absolute power
Sokwanele
August 29, 2004
http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=24384
It was none
other than Robert Mugabe who once remarked that "absolute power
is when a man is starving and you are the only one able to give
him food". Zimbabwe and the world should take note that he
and his party are in deadly earnest about demonstrating the truth
of this maxim. The suffering which will be inflicted upon millions
in the process does not deter him – or them – for one moment. It
is a price they are more than willing to pay in pursuit of that
hold on absolute power.
With the looming 2005 parliamentary poll already casting a deep
shadow across the nation, ZANU PF has positioned itself to take
total control of the food procurement, storage and distribution
process. To this end the massive famine relief operation of the
World Food Programme – to which over six million Zimbabweans already
owe their lives – has been closed down summarily by ministerial
decree, and NGO’s ordered to cease their feeding schemes with immediate
effect. And all this despite the dire state of the country’s own
agricultural industry, now reeling under the effects of the chaotic
fast-track land resettlement programme, and clearly unable to provide
for the nation’s food requirements.
In order to hide from its own people and from the world the enormity
of what it is doing, the regime has been forced to stifle the free
flow of information about the food situation. Hence the abrupt termination
of the WFP food security survey and hence the deliberate plan of
disinformation put into effect by the regime’s own propaganda agents.
This policy of disinformation was launched with the biggest lie
of all, broadcast to the world by Robert Mugabe himself, that Zimbabwe
was on its way to producing a bumper harvest this year – a grain
surplus which would render any further food aid unnecessary. Mugabe’s
lie has thus become the benchmark to which those colluding with
him in this massive deception, notably Joseph Made and Jonathan
Moyo, have to work. Their task, to which they have devoted themselves
with the usual enthusiasm, is to produce the "smoke and mirrors"
which distort the appalling reality and justify the decision to
send the international food donors on their way.
Zimbabweans surely have a right to know the true position concerning
the food security situation on which their lives ultimately depend,
but that information is now being deliberately suppressed. In the
past information about the food supplies was freely available, but
as Zimconsult, a group of independent economic and planning consultants,
say in their report entitled "Famine in Zimbabwe" (April
2004) "in the current situation of policy-induced food scarcity
and the militarization of the Grain Marketing Board (GMB), the public
is deliberately denied access to information". Hence the nation
has not been informed how much food was produced in the 2002/3 season,
what quantities the GMB purchased, or the current status of cereal
stocks in the country. And when the official records of Bulawayo
City’s Health Department show that already this year more than 150
people have died as a direct result of food shortages in this urban
area alone – surely the tip of the iceberg – the regime’s propaganda
machine goes into overdrive to rubbish the story.
Yet as Abraham Lincoln once so wisely remarked "you cannot
fool all the people all the time". No matter what efforts are
made to suppress the truth it has a habit of coming out eventually,
and in this case sooner rather than later. Already there are clear
signs of where the truth lies, and that truth is far removed from
the complacent picture painted by Messrs Made and Moyo. Zimbabweans
therefore will not have to wait until Robert Mugabe and his partners
in crime (in the full literal sense) are dragged before an international
tribunal to face charges of genocide and crimes against humanity,
before the appalling reality is revealed for all to see. While the
full story may only emerge later and in such a scenario, already
Zimbabweans are beginning to see through the labyrinth of ZANU PF’s
lies and deceptions.
There is a broad consensus among all concerned that the baseline
figure for Zimbabwe’s minimum cereal requirements is 1.9 million
metric tonnes. This figure includes human consumption, stockfeed,
industrial and other uses but does not include any provision for
strategic reserves. But it is the likely size of the country’s own
cereal harvest which is in contention. The figure of 2.4 million
mt touted by the regime would indeed provide a significant surplus,
but this figure has not been accepted by any of the other major
players. Indeed while the regime has provided nothing of substance
to back its wildly optimistic forecast, others have given the most
cogent reasons for discounting it.
We may begin with the report of the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment
Committee (ZIMVAC). This team comprising the United Nations, the
relevant aid agencies and some of the regime’s own officials, concluded
that there would be a cereal deficit of 177,681 mt for the year
to March 2005. In a summary of their findings they state unequivocally
that "a total of 2.3 million people will not be able to meet
their minimum cereal needs during the 2004/5 season. This represents
about 29.5 per cent of the total population". A stark warning
indeed, which would surely jolt all but the most uncaring or heartless
regimes into instant action.
The ZIMVAC report, completed in April this year, is both professional
and objective. If anything it is regarded among aid agencies as
erring on the conservative side in assessing present and future
food deficits. The amount of detail provided is impressive. Across
the country, district by district, it gives the numbers expected
to be in food deficit, for the periods April to June, July to November
and December 2004 to March 2005. The figures show a progressive
increase in absolute and percentage terms and also provide some
interesting comparisons – for example the range between a 13.8 per
cent of the population in food deficit in the Zvimba District (December
to March 2005) and a whopping 53.4 per cent in Hwange District for
the same period. A carefully researched and balanced document therefore
to which those responsible for ensuring adequate food supplies for
the nation should surely pay the closest attention. Yet once again
the regime has responded with denial. When they could not suppress
the report they chose to ignore its findings, holding blindly to
the official line that a "bumper harvest" was around the
corner which would supply all the nation’s needs. (One’s mind goes
back to the loyal Communist Party cadres in China who did the same
in the late 1950’s and early 60’s, sending in glowing - and completely
fictitious - reports about a record harvest rather than daring to
acknowledge the failure of Mao Zedong’s "great leap forward".
And they continued to do so even as the catastrophic famine, that
was to claim over 14 million lives, was beginning to take its terrible
toll).
In order to produce their report, "Famine in Zimbabwe",
the Zimconsult team conducted their own field observations in Mashonaland,
East, Central and West and in the Manicaland, Midlands and Masvingo
provinces. They also consulted the various farmers’ organizations
and drew on information provided by such reputable sources as Famine
Early Warning System Network (FEWSNET) and the SADC Early Warning
System. Their study looks at the factors determining the likely
level of production, including the areas under cultivation and average
yields – the latter being determined in turn by the availability
of seed, fertilizer and tillage, as well as rainfall. In each case,
with the exception of rainfall which is a "given", the
consultants found a chronic lack of planning on the part of the
government which resulted in major shortfalls.
Contrary to the ruling party’s own official dogma, seed growers
were evicted from their farms in the chaotic scramble for land,
resulting in only 40 per cent of the seed required at the start
of the season being available to farmers. The lack of foreign currency
to import raw materials for fertilizer production and the unrealistic
price controls imposed on the products, kept fertilizers in chronic
short supply. And tillage was severely restricted by such factors
as the acute shortages of diesel, the cost of ploughing, and the
lack of spare parts which grounded 50 per cent of the DDF tractors.
Combining the effects of these adverse "human" factors
together with the unusual rainfall pattern and failure of the early
planted maize, the consultants predicted a maize harvest of between
650,000 and 850,000 mt. Allowing for a crop of small grains of between
100,000 and 200,000 mt and also making allowance for the 250,000
mt maize purchased by the GMB last year (and retained in storage
despite the severe shortages of mealie meal in the country), they
envisaged a national cereal deficit in the current season of between
600,000 and 900,000 mt.
"Whichever way one looks at the situation", the consultants
conclude, "there will be a huge shortage of food in the country,
caused by a potent combination of chaotic land reform and destructive
macro-economic policies".
Nor are these predictions out of line with those of FEWSNET which,
with a slightly more optimistic appraisal of likely maize and small
grains’ yields, comes up with a shortfall of between 500,000 and
800,000 mt.
In summary, it is only the regime’s own apologists who are holding
to the line that Zimbabwe will produce enough food for all in the
current season, or to the ridiculous fiction that a bumper harvest
is on its way. Every other reputable authority is predicting a massive
food deficit. The most conservative estimate of that deficit (ZIMVAC’s)
leaves 2.3 million people, or nearly 30 per cent of the population,
unable to meet their basic cereal needs – in short a catastrophic
famine which is already under way.
The pain is already severe and it is becoming more intense with
each week that passes. None are more aware of this pain, nor so
frustrated by their inability to respond to it, than the NGO’s and
donor agencies which have been told to shut down their life-saving
operations. World Vision is one of the big players which have been
ordered to terminate all food distribution operations, though "not
to go away" at least for the time being. With the result that
while their warehouse in Bulawayo, with a capacity of about 6,000
mt, stands full of grain, they cannot use any of that food even
to continue their feeding programmes for the terminally ill, pregnant
women and lactating mothers and malnourished children under 5 years
of age. World Vision’s own careful research, completed before the
ban on information gathering, shows an alarming trend of increasing
food shortages in the rural areas where they were operating. For
example the cereal supply of 48.5 per cent of the population in
the Insiza area was expected to run out altogether by the end of
August, and of 70.5 per cent of the same population group before
the end of October. (The corresponding figures for Gwanda are 33.8
per cent and 55.1 per cent and for Beitbridge 22.2 per cent and
50.2 per cent respectively)
Even within ZANU PF the strain of holding to the official line against
the increasing weight of evidence to the contrary is beginning to
tell, with three provincial governors requesting food aid from central
government and asking for NGO’s to be allowed to continue distributing
food aid in their drought-stricken areas. Their intervention must
surely explain the recent, reluctant about-turn of the Social Welfare
Minister, Paul Mangwana, who has now said that NGO’s can resume
their schemes targeting specific groups such as orphans and HIV/AIDS
victims. At the same time, in what must surely rank as one of the
most ridiculous understatements both of the current national crisis
and of the contribution of international donors in saving millions
of Zimbabwean lives, Mangwana added that NGO’s will be "allowed
to chip in when there is an emergency".
Contradictions are also apparent within the regime’s own figures,
for example between their statistical forecasts of a national harvest
of 1.2 million mt and the mythical 2.4 million mt put about by Jonathan
Moyo’s propaganda machine. Consider also the importation of grain
from Zambia through Chirundu and from America, Argentina and South
Africa through Beit Bridge, a reality the regime has done its utmost
to conceal but which is now well documented. For example the South
African Grain Information Service records 168,000 mt of maize and
50,000 mt of wheat being shipped to Zimbabwe so far this year. Hardly
necessary if a bumper harvest is expected. No doubt this imported
grain is destined to be lodged in the GMB silos, now effectively
under military control, and used, not to feed the starving today,
but rather as a part of what one might call Mugabe’s strategic election
reserves.
What we are looking at here is not simply an appalling failure of
planning, as serious an indictment of the regime as that would be
in itself. True there have been the most dismal failures in this
regard which provide ample evidence that ZANU PF is unfit to govern.
But the most serious charge to level at Robert Mugabe and those
who follow him blindly, is not what they have left unplanned but
what they have planned with the utmost precision and the most diabolical
cunning – and that is a scenario in which they can exploit to the
full a national catastrophe. The conclusion is inescapable, that
Mugabe closed down the WFP feeding programme and ordered NGO’s to
cease their humanitarian assistance because he feared, first, that
they would dilute his power and second, that they would have direct
access to the facts which would blow his fiction of a bumper harvest
out of the water. Mugabe welcomes a famine as the ultimate means
of political control and absolute power. Whatever the appalling
cost to his own people, he will not permit anyone or anything to
undermine that hold on power.
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