BUHERA, Zimbabwe – Teenager James Mamuka not only worries constantly about keeping his siblings in school, but also watches them slowly starve like half of Zimbabwe’s population as another drought looms.
Mamuka, 18, joined some 5,100 villagers in Zimbabwe’s eastern district of Buhera Jan. 3 to receive handouts from the United Nations’ World Food Program.
“Whatever I can get today is all I will have to feed my family. With this drought there is nothing else,” said Mamuka, with the same sense of hopelessness as many of his neighbours.
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Since his parents died within a year of each other, Mamuka has been the main bread winner for his six younger brothers and sisters. The task is not getting easier as drought continues. Once the breadbasket of southern Africa, Zimbabwe is one of the countries hardest hit by food shortages that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says threaten 40 million Africans.
Critics blame president Robert Mugabe’s controversial seizure of land from minority whites for redistribution to landless blacks, which they say has disrupted agricultural production, exacerbating food shortages.
Last week the official Herald paper, citing the Meteorological Office, projected below normal rainfall for most of Zimbabwe between January and March.
“There are greater chances of below normal rainfall for the eastern and southern half of the country, while northern areas are expected to receive normal rainfall,” the paper said.
Mugabe’s government denies contributing to the food shortages, which it says are due solely to the drought that has hit the small-scale black farmers who account for 70 percent of Zimbabwe’s annual corn output.
Aid agency Christian Care, the food program’s implementing partner in Buhera, distributed about 60,000 tonnes of food Jan. 3 among 5,100 villagers, many of whom have written off their summer crop.
Tracts of dry land lie unplanted along the highway to Buhera, 220 kilometres southeast of the capital Harare.
Villagers have planted corn and other commodities in places, but crops are wilting under the relentless heat or not developing properly, meaning they will not give a normal yield.
Bedraggled villagers sighed with relief as they loaded their food allocations into donkey-drawn carts and wheelbarrows, but many said it was still not enough.
Jestina Nherera, suckling her 14-month baby from shrivelled breasts, said her portion of 10 kilograms of cornmeal, one kg of beans and one of corn and soybean porridge blend would last her family three weeks at most, even with strict rationing.
“In the past, our men would go to the towns, get jobs and bring food to their families back here. But now our men have no jobs, and even if they did, we hear there is no food even in the towns,” Nherera said.
Farai Mutsetse, Christian Care project officer for Buhera, said food from donors falls far short of the number of people seeking aid.
“Even those from the towns are starting to flock here to benefit because they know in the rural areas there is some food…. If the rains are not going to improve, we are going to have starvation,” she said.
“We are well into the rainy season and by this time people should have started harvesting and eating something from the early crop, but unfortunately the weather is not promoting that,” Mutsetse added.
