Starving voters more worried about food crisis

Food shortages are approaching critical levels in parts of Zimbabwe, raising the spectre of some voters starving to death before the presidential poll in two weeks.

Children have been fainting in schools, pregnant women miscarrying from malnutrition and people going for days without food. Grain and vegetable oil shortages prompted by severe drought, endemic poverty and the state-sponsored invasion of commercial farms by "war veterans", are beginning to bite. The staple maize crop has dropped by nearly 50 per cent.

The United Nations estimates that about half a million of Zimbabwe's 12.5 million people are already going dangerously hungry, and many of them are also angry – bad news for President Robert Mugabe, who blames the shortages on drought and grain hoarding by white farmers intent on toppling him. In the parched south, people have accused the government of "playing with their lives".

Outside a supermarket, a young woman with a baby on her back, begs: "Please buy me some food. Anything. I haven't eaten since yesterday." Around the country, irritated people stand in long queues for hours for small rations of maize, and police have had to calm unruly crowds.

Eddie Cross, economic spokesman for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), whose head, Morgan Tsvangirai, is Mr Mugabe's main rival, said: "The situation is frightening. Food shortages are causing extreme hardship, across the board and across the country.

"The political implications are profound. I would hate to run a campaign amidst a food crisis for which there is no solution. Also, 'war vets' are leaving commercial farms in droves, because their crops have failed for lack of water. Zanu PF's fast-track land reform – the heart of its programme – is collapsing. People are blaming it for their hunger."

People are most at risk of starvation in the south, west and far north of Zimbabwe, naturally arid areas where subsistence maize crops have shrivelled with the absence of rain for nearly two months.

An estimated 2.7 million people in Masvingo and Matabeleland – more than half of the population of those provinces – face extreme hardship.

New figures by food industry leaders, released to The Independent, estimate a shortfall of maize of 300,000 tons, and stocks to deplete by February and March. In 2002-2003, there is forecast to be a shortfall of more than a million tons.

Three years ago, Zimbabwe was the bread basket of southern Africa, fully self-sufficient in basic foodstuffs with surpluses for export including maize, wheat and soybean meal. It supplied 25 per cent of the world's flue-cured tobacco and 8 per cent of European horticulture imports. Now it is a large net food importer, and wheat, tobacco production and horticultural output are down 25 to 30 per cent. Most serious is the 50 per cent fall in maize.

Because maize is in short supply, demand for bread has soared. This is rapidly depleting wheat stocks, which are expected to run out by June.

The World Food Programme began distributing imported food relief to 40,000 people in Matabeleland North this week. It calculates that 19 of the country's 57 districts are at risk. "The situation could get rapidly worse," says the WFP's Anna Shoffon in Harare.

As the economy shrinks, companies close, jobs are lost and 117 per cent inflation erodes incomes and causes food prices to rocket. Even where food is available, growing numbers of people cannot afford to eat in a country where more than a third live below the poverty line, with less than $1 (70p) a day to meet their needs.

Mr Mugabe has promised people in his re-election campaign that nobody will starve, and that 200,000 tons of maize are speeding their way towards Zimbabwe from South Africa. But the food is not coming in anywhere near fast enough.