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Food
security issues
Media
Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2004-19
Monday May 10th – Sunday May 16th
Government’s
decision to stop a joint crop assessment team from two international
food relief agencies seeking to establish Zimbabwe’s food needs,
captured the imagination of the media in the week under review.
The Harare authorities
stopped the team from the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO)
and the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) from completing its work
on the grounds that Zimbabwe no longer needed food handouts because
the country was expecting a "bumper harvest".
The move, reminiscent
of the misleading declaration by Agriculture Minister Joseph Made
in May 2001 (The Herald) that Zimbabweans would have adequate
food during that year, seemed to replay itself this year with the
same minister again predicting a surplus food output amid independent
forecasts to the contrary.
Radio Zimbabwe
(11/5, 12/5, 6pm & 8pm) and The Herald (12/5) quoted
Made saying results from the "final crop assessment"
for the 2003/2004 season showed that more than 2,4 million tonnes
of maize would be produced this season. He added that if the total
tonnage of sorghum and millet were to be included, the country would
have more than 2,8 million tonnes of cereal, a figure he said, that
surpassed the country’s requirement of between 1,5 million and 2
million tonnes.
While Made reportedly
arrived at his 2001 harvest predictions on the basis of an aerial
view from a helicopter, the methods used to assess this year’s crop
were not disclosed. Neither would the government media challenge
him to explain how and when government conducted the evaluation.
On the contrary,
they quoted Social Welfare Minister Paul Mangwana simply saying
the country will "not require food imports or food aid".
Again, these
media did not quote alternative food experts or carry independent
investigation to verify the claims.
However, the
private media wondered at the timing of the mysterious development,
especially as it came amid unprecedented economic turmoil less than
a year before the country’s next parliamentary election.
The varied opinion
accessed by these media either interpreted the government move as
designed to spruce up the image of its controversial agrarian reforms
or a calculated move to cause State-induced hunger among the citizenry,
which it would capitalize on in the 2005 parliamentary poll to buy
votes from a famished electorate.
In fact, despite
the authorities’ claims that the UN food assessment team had been
sent home on the basis of a projected harvest surplus, SW Radio
Africa (10/5) revealed that Made had admonished the group "a
few days into the mission" for being in the country
"without his approval".
The radio station
claimed this was in spite of the fact that "a government
newspaper has seen a letter from Made’s ministry dated 30 March,
2004, inviting UNWFP officials to come and estimate the country’s
food aid needs".
The report quoted
journalist Andrew Meldrum attributing the reasons for the expulsion
of the UN team to government’s fears that independent observations
of the real crop situation in the country were likely to discredit
government’s assertions that its land reforms had boosted productivity.
Meldrum reported
public fears that the government intended to deliberately starve
people with the aim of using the maize in its custody as a "political
weapon" in the forthcoming election.
Studio 7 (14/5)
supported this sentiment when it cited Amnesty International raising
the same suspicions. It noted that government had "manipulated"
food aid "over the past couple of years",
with little regard to people’s "fundamental right to
food, upon which all other rights are dependent".
So did The
Zimbabwe Independent (13/5). It observed that government’s inflated
crop yield projections to justify its decision to turn down food
aid would leave the electorate "at the mercy of the ruling
party, which in the past has demonstrated a penchant for using food
as the carrot in its often vicious campaign strategy".
But the government
media censored the government’s banishment of the UN crop assessment
group from the country, choosing instead to celebrate Made’s projections
in their reports saying the development demonstrated the success
of the land reform programme.
For instance,
in its comment, Bumper harvest shames detractors, The
Herald (14/5) observed that the projected yields had shown that
previous food shortages were not due to land reforms but "four
consecutive droughts" which "coincided with the
massive exercise to redistribute land".
Similarly, ZBC
used government’s unverified predictions of plentiful food as a
tool to "shame" Zimbabwe’s "detractors"
over what they thought government’s agrarian reforms "will
never achieve", ZTV (12/5, 6pm and 8pm).
Amid this euphoria,
Studio 7 (13/5) reminded its listeners that last year government
had made similar claims of projected good harvests only for it to
make a surprising U-turn later and approach the UN for aid.
The station
(12/5) also quoted Harare-based independent agro-economist Roger
Mupande watering down government’s bumper harvest predictions as
"surprising" since the current season had
been impacted negatively by late rain, under-utilization of resettled
farms and shortages of equipment and inputs.
Mupande noted
that the projections would have been more authentic "if
other agencies like FAO and WFP were allowed to assess the crop
situation", the results of which would then be fed
into the SADC Early Warning Food Systems.
SW Radio Africa
(11/5), Studio 7 (13/5), The Zimbabwe Independent and The
Sunday Mirror (16/5) also cited other farming experts, as revising
government’s maize output forecasts for the year from the estimated
2.4 million tonnes to between 600 000 and 900,000 tonnes.
The Independent
quoted the UN as describing the projected harvest as an "impossibly
big figure" and a "complete nonsense".
Meanwhile, SW
Radio Africa (12/5), revealed that government was working on a tobacco-for-maize
deal with an unnamed American bank, to ship maize over to Zimbabwe,
package it in GMB sacks and then claim it as local produce.
Likewise, Studio
7 (13/5) and the Independent reported that government was
clandestinely importing maize from Zambia and storing it in Mashonaland
West GMB silos.
However, Studio
7 also quoted Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union’s Silas Hungwe denying
the allegations saying, "the government has never imported
maize from Zambia".
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