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Food shortages present hard choices for Zimbabweans
Marko Phiri
April 13, 2005

To eat or not to eat, that is the tough question Zimbabweans, both rural and urban, have to grapple with each day. And to help them not forget, the national television broadcaster has a cookery programme on Mondays during prime time viewing showcasing mouth-watering culinary delights when the starving majority are sure to be glued to their tellies. It had been predicted that food shortages would be the downfall of Zanu PF at last month’s parliamentary polls, but the party which brought Zimbabwe independence now wields more clout than in did in the previous parliament as it emerged from the once again disputed poll with more seats that reportedly now give it an absolute majority in the House. A few days after the poll observers flew out after endorsing the election results despite allegations the ruling party was using food as a political weapon, clubs reportedly starting raining on the heads of the very people who had been denied that food as ruling party supporters punished hungry opposition party supporters. It can only be guessed whether the assailants themselves were hungry or not.

There have been reports about food being used as retribution with MDC supporters being smoked out and excluded from getting cheaper maize from the Grain Market Board. A report from ZimOline this week offers sobering thoughts about war veterans taking over at the GMB in Manicaland. "We know all the MDC supporters here so don't bother standing in the queue because we will flush you out. Some of you are buying Zanu PF cards to get food but you voted for the MDC. There will be no grain for you," a war veteran is quoted as having said to villagers gathered at the GMB depot to buy maize.

An old man who had just come to town from his rural home during the week said he was still trying to understand how his rural neighbours had voted for Zanu PF when the poor villagers had been without food for so long they cannot remember the last time they saw relief food. Compounded by the absence of rain, the old man said food has become the major talking point as villagers try to imagine how they are going to feed not just themselves but also their livestock. So what happens then? "We will have to buy food this time, and we have already started anyway," he said. What about those folks who do not have the money? "I don’t know," the old man said. But the president has already said no one will foist food on Zimbabweans, and amid such pronouncements, the fate of rural populations who will bear the brunt of the shortages more than their urban cousins is only too grim. And the government will be the first to deny hunger is claiming lives.

In the urban centres where the people know hardship when they see it, long faces have become a permanent part of shopping as people walk down the aisle of supermarkets. One has to see it to believe it. At a supermarket in Bulawayo’s CBD a man in a business suit grabs a packet of chicken gizzards, appraises it, moves a few steps along the fridges. He keeps staring at the packet he holds, but you can see his eye is on the drumsticks and the full chicken in the supermarket fridge. Shaking his head - oblivious of the shoppers around him - he finally throws the gizzards back in the fridge and walks away. Just making that decision of what to buy for his supper seemed enough to drive him nuts. He is not alone.

The rest of the people appear to know what they want as they approach the fridges, but after instinctively checking the bar-coded prices, they quickly put back the meat they would have bought were the circumstances different. Instead they settle for chicken entrails, which a few years ago when people would slaughter live poultry were buried in the soil or given to dogs. At a local township butchery, some old women queue for cow fat, the kind favoured at weekend barbecues as those folks who have sought to defy the odds here enjoy their lager. This fat seemingly gives the poor old ladies a whiff of the meat they cannot afford, thus giving them a deserved break from the incessant intake of greens that by now must have coloured their intestines.

A priest complained that it is increasingly becoming difficult for him to work knowing he is preaching to hungry people. "You can preach the Gospel of salvation to an extent," he said. ""It is not enough telling people about a better afterlife when it is obvious they are starving. When you see these hungry faces each day, you do not know what to say to them anymore." The hard times are having an effect on what in other circumstances would be called downstream industries. Even the clergy have become affected by the hardships, and not through their own avowed religious asceticism, but rather through the people they minister to.

University students a few years ago known for their intrepid activism even in the face of ever-looming threats of abduction and severe torture by state security agents have interestingly taken the gnawing hunger literally lying down. For "breakfast" and "lunch" a freezit and a bun will suffice. Maputi are also there to add to the constipation. These have become staple diets for the students who no doubt would like to keep this a secret from their neighbours. But because it has been said a good diet also nourishes the brain, one has to wonder the kind of brains these students then have considering the food they are taking in! Imagine a mass protest as students demonstrate because they got poor results and are blaming it on the government that the regime is responsible for the useless food that shrunk their brains, and therefore made them fail their examinations! To eat, or not to eat seemingly has also become an academic problem.

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