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Food
security and agriculture
Media Monitoring
Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2004-39
Monday September 27th – October 3rd 2004
RECENT revelations
by Bulawayo City Council that 160 people from the city alone have
died this year due to malnutrition has rekindled media debate on
the country’s food security.
While the government
media continued to peddle official claims that Zimbabwe had produced
adequate food and established a sound agricultural base through
its land reforms that would see production rise, the private media
challenged such reports. They noted that government’s actions on
the ground actually proved otherwise.
For example,
The Zimbabwe Independent (1/10) revealed that despite the
government claims, Social Welfare Minister Paul Mangwana had actually
launched a feeding scheme in Matabeleland South. The paper contended
that the launch of the programme was an admission of the severity
of food shortages.
It quoted executive
director of Post-Independence Survivors Trust, Felix Mafa, saying
the move "confirms that lots of Zimbabweans are suffering
as a result of the food shortages. There is a scarcity of food shortages
in this country".
Zimbabwe Liberators
Peace Forum leader Max Mnkandhla agreed, adding that government
"was not sincere with the food situation in the country".
However, none
of the government media was prepared to dispute official pronouncements
of bumper harvests. Thus, ZTV (29/9, 6pm and 8pm) Radio Zimbabwe
and Power FM (29/9,8pm) were content to claim "revelations"
by Agriculture Minister Joseph Made that the country would harvest
up to 250,000 tonnes of winter wheat.
The stations
cited Made attributing the improved production to the fact that
farmers had increased the hactarage under wheat production from
last year’s 34,000 hectares to 72,000 but did not independently
verify whether the projected yield was realistic under the circumstances.
This was particularly
so as Power FM (29/9, 8pm), Radio Zimbabwe (30/9, 6am) and ZTV (30/9,
7am) reported farmers grappling with the problem of a serious shortage
of combine harvesters to reap the wheat. Still, these stations simplistically
used these unverified figures of a "bumper harvest"
to endorse Zimbabwe’s controversial land reforms as "now
bearing fruit".
But The Financial
Gazette’s (30/9) warned against reading too much into government’s
maize forecast of 2.4 million tonnes expected this year. It reminded
its readers that Made had made similar projections two years ago,
which proved to be "way off the mark".
"Given
the credibility gap in the last food debacle, how reliable are the
government’s estimates considering that Made has misled the nation
before?"
However, The
Herald (29/9) and ZTV (30/9, 7am) tried to give government’s
forecasts some credibility when it reported Agriculture Ministry
Secretary Ngoni Masoka as having told a Parliamentary Committee
on Agriculture that government projections followed a "comprehensive
analysis and monitoring of the situation on the ground by the Agricultural
Research Extension (AREX)", adding that his ministry’s
"agronomists" had also done "thorough
spot checks to verify information" from AREX.
Masoka noted
that only about 400,000 tonnes of grain had so far been delivered
to the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) against the national annual requirement
of 1.8 million tonnes because "shelling of maize might
take long and some farmers held on to their maize after the meteorology
department forecast a below rainfall season".
He thus maintained
that the country would realise the projected yield.
Meanwhile, the
government media carried stories that portrayed government as doing
its best to allay fears of an agricultural production crisis reported
in private media.
For example,
Power FM (27/9, 8pm) and The Herald (28/9) reported that
Zimbabwe would receive about 15,000 tonnes of maize seed from Pannar
Seed over the next two and a half months "under a deal…brokered
by government".
However, there
was no explanation on what percentage of the country’s total seed
requirement the figure represented. Rather, The Herald
merely said seed companies had put the demand for this year "at
above 200,000 tonnes" without verifying the figure.
Similarly, the paper (1/10) also reported that government had awarded
Seed Co (Pvt) Ltd a multi-billion tender to supply over 27,000 tonnes
of seed maize for the coming season without explaining the total
hectarage the seed would cover.
The Financial
Gazette remained sceptical. It quoted industry sources who contended
that the amount of maize seed the authorities had mobilised was
" a drop in the ocean". But the unquestioning
nature of the government media was fully exposed by their failure
to view the on-going farm evictions as a reflection of the chaotic
manner in which government was implementing its agrarian reforms.
Neither did they fully discuss the implications of these evictions
on the country’s food production.
This largely
appeared in the private media.
However, like
the government media, these media did not give a full picture of
the situation on the ground For example, they did not tell their
audiences how many people have been evicted countrywide. And except
for The Daily Mirror (27/9- 1/10) and its sister Sunday weekly,
none of the media sought government’s position on the matter from
the relevant authorities.
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fact
sheet
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