Back to Index

Stop this madness!
The Financial Gazette
January 13, 2005

http://www.fingaz.co.zw/fingaz/2005/January/January13/7523.shtml

Controversy continues to dog the food security situation in Zimbabwe — Southern Africa’s erstwhile regional bread basket. The country’s confusing food security puzzle last week sparked yet another political storm.

The furore touched off by an equally puzzling statistical haze over the food situation pits on one hand, the government, which has hardly behaved like it has nothing to hide and on the other international aid agencies, humanitarian organisations and the opposition political parties — all of which government accuses of ulterior motives.

This is because the food situation is one of the more contentious issues in Zimbabwean politics — which explains why there has always been this unfortunate ill-feeling between government and Western-backed aid and humanitarian agencies, some of whom have indeed not been working in Zimbabwe’s best interests.

The Zimbabwean government is wary of the influence of Western governments, which have persistently accused it of a democratic deficit and of allegedly exploiting politics of the stomach by using food aid, particularly amongst vulnerable groups, as a weapon to coerce them to vote for it. The thinking in government is therefore that food relief from aid agencies provides its Western detractors with a perfect heaven-sent opportunity to whip up emotions against it from a population gripped by disenchantment and fear of starvation — in order to effect regime change.

Hence the haggling where government insists on claims of self-sufficiency while its critics say that the nation has again been led up the garden path insofar as the food security situation is concerned. The figure of 2.4 million tonnes projected harvest of the staple maize for the 2003/2004 season bandied about some few months ago by the government, which unfortunately faces a severe crisis of confidence when it comes to issues pertaining to State held records — thanks to Ministers like Dr Joseph Made who touch nothing they do not dehydrate — is thought to be a gross overstatement for political reasons.

Critics maintain that the regional bread basket-turned-basket case could not have produced more than 1.3 million tonnes of maize in the 2003/2004 agricultural season — 500 000 tonnes short of the annual national requirement. According to the critics, therefore, figures in government’s estimates were just plucked from the air.

Government, on its part, dismisses this as an alarmist stance taken by those desperate for not only a regime change but discrediting the land reform as well — to give credence to claims that the land reform programme was the seal of death for the once vibrant agricultural sector which had the single biggest sectoral contribution to the country’s gross domestic product. Indeed given this confusing scenario, as indicated in one of our comments of five months ago, the question is, if reason consists of seeing things the way they really are, why then do we have these striking discrepancies in the figures on the food situation?

Unfortunately caught in the middle of this haggling are the ordinary people who, in the previous food debacle, experienced the sharpest edge of the knife. In the past when Zimbabwe experienced acute shortages of food, after repeated official assurances on the food situation, it is they who suffered the most. Put simply, they wear the shoe and therefore know how and where it pinches.

This is the very reason why the people get increasingly worried when this war of words between government and aid agencies over the food situation does nothing more than muddy the waters, so to speak. To get a semblance of a clearer picture of the food situation, the people would have to rely on reading between the lines — that is if basic commodities haven’t started disappearing from the shops. Yet the government has the data.

That is why we are of the view that no matter how polarised the political situation in the country is, there is no need for government to over-state figures regarding the food supply situation or for those on the other side of the political divide to exaggerate the "crisis". It is not about political point-scoring. Most importantly the government should come clean on the food situation so that various critical stakeholders would not be found asleep at the switch. There is clearly need for a paradigm shift in the way the authorities have been handling the food security situation. Instead of the current short-sighted and narrow self-serving public posturing of painting a rosier-than-real picture of the situation on the ground, government should order its various arms that handle the issue to release figures that reflect the true situation, no matter how ominous, on public interests grounds.

The last time the government was economic with the truth, the nation was lulled into a false sense of security and inevitably found itself stuck in awkward scrapes. That the less-than convincing Grain Marketing Board — which only recently got into a scapegoating mode when it faced the Parliamentary Portfolio Committe on Lands and Agriculture which was trying to ascertain the situation as regards last year’s harvest, claiming that it had nothing to do with crop forecasting — this week tried to assure the nation on the food situation does little to assuage the general perception that the country could plunge into yet another food crisis.

While we are aware of the need to withhold information in the areas of national security and law enforcement, it is our considered view that there would be no prejudice to national interest posed by the release of figures on the food security situation which remains very much a subject to the public interest test. If there could be any "harm" posed to state interest that "harm" would certainly not outweigh the public interest that could be served through the release of such information.

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP