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South
African maize heads to Harare
IRIN News
June 12, 2008
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=78714
A 300,000 metric
tonnes consignment of South African white maize is currently being
dispatched to Zimbabwe a few weeks ahead of the 27 June presidential
election re-run.
According to South African
Grain Information Service, a non-profit company providing market
information, it was aware of the 300,000mt order of maize to Zimbabwe,
but it had not as yet been officially registered with the information
service.
President Robert Mugabe,
who is attempting to extend his 28-years in office after coming
off second best in the first round of voting in March, told an election
rally on 29 May that his government had brought 600,000mt of maize
from its neighbour South Africa to alleviate the country's chronic
food shortages.
Zimbabwe's economy is
in meltdown, with inflation unofficially cited at more than one
million percent, and where shortages of fuel, power and foreign
currency have become commonplace.
At current prices of
about R1,800 (US$231) per metric tonne for white maize, a 300,000mt
white maize consignment would cost Zimbabwe about US$70 million,
before transport costs. It is assumed that Zimbabwe's government
is paying for the maize imports, although no one was available to
speak to IRIN at Zimbabwe's embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, to
confirm the payment details.
Transnet Freight Rail
spokesman Mike Asefovitz told IRIN that the South African parastatal
was "definitely involved" in the transport of the maize
consignment and additional resources, such as wagons and engines,
were being called-on to facilitate the order.
The bulk of the maize
being transported was "loose", Asefovitz said, although
there was a small amount of maize that had been bagged. Maize was
also being transported by road haulage companies, he said.
Food
stress
Muktar
Farah, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs country
deputy, told IRIN, that no food distribution had taken place since
Zimbabwe's government suspended all humanitarian operations on 28
May, after accusing nongovernmental organisations of "political
activity."
He said Zimbabwe's crop
assessment by the Food and Agricultural Organisation and World Food
Programme was expected to be released next week, but that according
to the government predictions of a one million tonnes maize shortfall
it was expected that "food stress" would probably be experienced
in July/August 2008, much earlier than last year.
International donor agencies
provided food aid to 4.1 million people, more than a third of the
population, between October 2007 and March 2008. The country's acute
food shortages, compounded by government's recent admission that
only 13 percent of the planned 2008 winter wheat crop had been planted,
has led to expectations that food assistance would be required earlier
in 2008 than the previous year.
Mugabe is facing
Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the opposition party Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC), in this month's re-run election after neither
attained a 50 percent plus one vote majority in the first round
of voting on 29 March to win outright.
The elections saw the ruling ZANU-PF lose its majority in parliament
for the first time since independence from Britain in 1980. Parliament
has yet to be reconstituted.
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