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"Just
airlift the food"
IRIN
News
October
31, 2008
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=81235
It gets worse each day
for Zimbabweans struggling with shortages and escalating food prices,
now denominated in US dollars.
"There is nothing
you can buy in local currency, everyone now wants foreign currency
and this is causing so much suffering, as people are failing to
buy food because they do not have any foreign currency," said
Thabani Msipa in the southern city of Bulawayo.
At the beginning of October
the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) licensed hundreds of shops to
sell goods in foreign currency, and unlicensed retailers followed
suit.
Msipa gets a monthly
remittance of R300 (US$30) from his two sons working in South Africa,
but it is not enough. "The price of goods in the shops is too
much, even in foreign currency. A 10kg bag of maize-meal is going
for R100 (US$10) here in Zimbabwe; a similar bag costs about R40
(US$4) in South Africa."
Lindiwe Moyo, a primary
school teacher, is even worse off: she has to feed a family of six
on her meagre salary. "The only people who are accepting Zimbabwean
dollars are vegetable vendors. We have been surviving for weeks
on green vegetables from our garden, which we mix with soup from
the tomatoes we buy from the local market."
She said simple basics
like bread, maize-meal and cooking oil were all beyond her reach,
and sometimes the family slept on empty stomachs. An average salary
is Z$400,000, currently less than US$4 on the parallel market, but
a loaf of bread costs Z$100,000 (US$1).
We have
nothing left to eat
In theory, rural areas
are better off. Although they face the same shortages as a result
of a disastrous harvest and a staggering inflation rate of over
230 million percent, they do have access to wild foods - a traditional
emergency larder in times of hardship.
Zimbabwe's food crisis
was deepened by a three-month ban on NGOs imposed by the government
in June, after accusing them of supporting the opposition. The ban
was lifted at the end August, but the NGOs - central to relief work
- are yet to resume full-scale operations.
"We have
nothing left to eat and it is useless even checking with other villagers,
as they also have nothing to eat, and we are just waiting for [the
development agency] World
Vision to resume food distribution," said Samuel Ndlovu,
in the Nkayi district of southern Zimbabwe's Matabeleland North
Province.
"Every day we eat
the wild fruit that are available in the bush, but the fruits are
not good to eat every day; and school children are no longer going
to school but spend the whole day looking for the wild fruits."
When food does become
available in the depots of the state-run Grain Marketing Board,
a 50kg bag cost Z$1.4 million (US$14), far too expensive for most
villagers, said local councillor Cain Ndlovu.
"As a result, you
find that people from urban areas are the ones who buy the maize
for resale in urban areas, where they sell the maize in foreign
currency because it is also not available in urban areas,"
he explained.
"We should
just have airlifting of food to affected areas, as is happening
in the Darfur region [of Sudan] and other areas in the world, because
very soon we will be recording fatalities," the councillor
said.
The UN World
Food Programme has warned
that by the beginning of 2009, 5.1 million Zimbabweans - almost
half the population - will be in need of food aid. The organisation
has appealed for US$140 million to help meet those needs.
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