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Food Security and Agriculture
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2004-33
Monday August 16th - Sunday August 22th 2004

Debate over the country's food security raged on in the week with more private media reports rebutting government claims that its agrarian reforms had yielded sufficient food for the country.

While they pointed out that the reforms had led to the destruction of the country's agricultural sector the government-controlled media steadfastly defended the authorities' policies.

But this defence was made more difficult by conflicting government statements over the exact food security situation. For example, despite the authorities' famous predictions of a bumper harvest of at least 2.8 million tonnes of cereal, ZTV (16/8, 6am) quoted Social Welfare Minister Paul Mangwana as telling Parliament that the country needed "177 000 tonnes of food" to feed people facing food shortages. As a result, he said, government had set aside $48 billion for such humanitarian relief.

However, the station did not ask him how this related to the number of people facing starvation or whether government had the resources to cope with the humanitarian relief programmes.

This was especially so as Power FM and Radio Zimbabwe (18/08, 1pm) reported ZANU PF MP Edward Chindori-Chininga as urging government to conduct food assessments in the country urgently as "areas like Masvingo and Matabeleland are in need of food aid".

But even as his officials inadvertently admitted to widespread starvation in the country, The Sunday Mail and the Sunday News (22/8) quoted President Mugabe berating Roman Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube for exposing the starvation calamity.

Said Mugabe: "Where are you getting all that? Where in Zimbabwe have people died of hunger?"

But as SW Radio Africa (17/8) surmised, the appeals for food relief by Mugabe's officers "contradict and totally embarrass the government".

Despite this, Mangwana still maintained on ZTV (18/8, 8pm): "We have asked donors to move away from general food distribution because we are now able to feed our own people."

But Studio 7 (18/8), carried two stories on food shortages in Zimbabwe, one of which quoted Binga MP Joel Gabhuza sending an SOS to donors and sympathisers to help feed "at least 100 families in the area (who) are in desperate need of food aid".

In the same vein The Zimbabwe Independent reported that the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee (ZIMVAC) had revealed that Zimbabwe would need 52,000 tonnes of food aid for the period between July and November because "about 2,2 million people in the rural areas will not be able to meet all their food needs on their own". In addition, ZIMVAC bemoaned the suspension of supplementary feeding by aid agencies because of government claims that the country had sufficient food saying "this was likely to leave a majority of households vulnerable to hunger".

In fact, The Standard (22/08) reported that Rotary International, a charitable organisation, had responded to reports of starvation in Bulawayo by donating 100 tonnes of maize-meal to over 20 families.

Only the private media was categorical about the extent that agricultural production had been eroded by agrarian reform. For example, SW Radio Africa (18/8) reported that Charleswood Farm, owned by MDC MP Roy Bennet but which government "illegally" seized had now been "completely run down", with "no production taking place".

The Independent reported that other once prosperous commercial farms were fallow because most resettled farmers "say they have no resources such as draught power or money to farm", while SW Radio Africa (18/8) reported that continued farm violence by militant ZANU PF activists had also forced more commercial farmers off their farms.

To corroborate this, the Independent cited a 2003 Commercial Farmers' Union report noting that farm production had plummeted since the inception of the fast track land reform programme. It claimed that the production of flue-cured tobacco and maize had each dropped by 72 percent, cotton by 95 percent and soyabeans by 70 percent.

The government media glossed over these problems. For example, the Chronicle (20/8) reported that the newly resettled farmers in Mberengwa had "recorded a bumper maize harvest", while their communal counterparts were in need of food relief.

ZTV (20/8, 6pm) dutifully quoted RBZ governor Gideon Gono assuring farmers at the Indigenous Commercial Farmers Union congress, that government had set aside enough money for the agricultural sector to ensure that "Zimbabwe returns to its status of being the breadbasket of Africa".

But the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association did not share such optimism. A ZTA official told Studio 7 (18/8) that mainly because farmers had failed "to access loans from government", Zimbabwe's tobacco output this season would remain the same as that just harvested.

Power FM (18/8, 1pm) grudgingly acknowledged that tobacco production had experienced "an 18.06% drop" from last year, but distorted this development by measuring the financial turnover in local currency. Thus it claimed that gross turnover at the Tobacco Auction Floors actually translated into a "333% increase in local currency trends" even though "the total sales reflect a drop rom US$144m realised last year to US$118.4m".

The station ignored the highly inflationary environment under which it calculated the purported increase.

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