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Zimbabweans avoid starvation but food fears persist
Peter Apps, Relief Web
February 04, 2005

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/HMYT-69AT9X?OpenDocument&rc=1&cc=zwe

JOHANNESBURG - Hungry Zimbabweans are staving off starvation by selling property and getting money from relatives abroad, but rights groups fear food may still become a political weapon ahead of elections in March.

Many Zimbabweans have had to pull children out of school or sell assets -- including cattle and tools needed to grow crops -- to feed themselves, while others have cut back to only one meal a day, leaving them weak but alive.

"There aren't obviously starving people walking the streets but people are having to resort to things like selling their last cow to buy food," a Western diplomat said.

Soaring unemployment and inflation have hit the ability of ordinary Zimbabweans to buy food, and critics say chaotic seizures of white-owned commercial farms by landless blacks have destroyed production in the country of 13 million people.

Around 3.5 million Zimbabweans have left the country and aid workers say the $1 million they send home every week helps thousands buy food.

Food shortages have left millions hungry across southern Africa in recent years -- with 25 percent of children malnourished in some rural parts of neighbouring South Africa. But Zimbabwe's shortages have become politicised in a way not seen elsewhere.

Political favouritism
Human rights groups have accused President Robert Mugabe's government of using grain stores for political ends in the past, and some rights workers say they fear this may be repeated as the country gears up for March 31 parliamentary elections.

Amnesty International says the government's Grain Market Board (GMB), which also controls access to seeds and fertiliser, has in the past denied supplies to government opponents, instead favouring ruling ZANU-PF party members.

While some aid groups say the GMB's main problems are poor logistics, bad planning and fuel shortages, Western observers have reported anecdotal evidence of Zimbabweans having to show ZANU-PF membership cards to access GMB grain.

"The GMB's history of inept and discriminatory distribution of food ... provide the potential for violations of the right to adequate food around the elections," said Amnesty South Africa Executive Director Heather Van Niekerk.

But many food analysts say Zimbabwe's food problems have deeper roots -- and that the country's hard-pressed people will be forced into increasingly desperate strategies to stay fed.

"It's not fair to just blame the government," said Ann Witteveen, food security co-ordinator for aid agency Oxfam. "The problems in Zimbabwe are a combination of the declining economic situation, political problems as well as the weather and the impact of HIV/AIDS."

The U.N. World Food Programme says it believes the 2004 grain crop was no more than 1 million tonnes -- short of the 1.8 million the country needs but an increase on 2003's 800,000 tonnes. Some analysts see this as a sign that black farmers who took over white-owned farms were learning the skills they need.

Assessments of the 2005 crop vary, but based on the area planted, drought and seed shortages the diplomat said it would likely only be around 800,000 tonnes, keeping the food pressure on Zimbabwe long after the March elections.

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