Voice of America
July 29 2007
By Peta Thornycroft
There has been no mealie meal in Zimbabwe’s second city Bulawayo for the past week.Not a single bag has been available in any of the city’s supermarkets and even blackmarket supplies have dried up.
“We are very worried and we are not yet ready to increase food distribution until September,” said an executive with a top non-government organisation in Harare, who asked not be named.
David Coltart, opposition member of parliament for the Bulawayo South constituency, says he is “alarmed” at the disappearance of mealie meal. “I have been trying to source mealie meal for the past two days and have gone to a wide variety of supermarkets around town. I have also approached wholesalers and it is simply unavailable.”I have been to my own constituency every day in the past week, and there is no evidence of any international or domestic NGOs distributing food for the needy.”We are at a point where people on the margins are starving.”
Traditionally relief agencies stop supplying food to people under threat of starvation from the onset of the maize harvest, usually May until September.
Another NGO worker said on Thursday: “We know the situation in the south is particularly bad, but believe me it is bad in lots of places and I am not sure we have the right numbers of people who will need food aid before the next harvest in 2008.”
The World Food Programme estimated that about 4.1 million Zimbabweans, or more than a third of the population, will need emergency food aid before the next harvest.
Until the seizures of white-owned farms which began in 2000, Zimbabwe has only needed donated food once since independence in 1980 during a catastrophic regional drought in 1991/92.
Since 2000, relief organisations have provided food aid continuously for between 300 000 and five million people a year in rural areas.
“Each homestead in my district is suffering two funerals a day, mostly very young and old people and that is because of hunger. There are only wild fruits and dried water melons to eat, but no maize, no mealie meal at all,” said Abednico Bhebe, opposition Movement for Democratic Change MP for Nkayi in Matabeleland.”The health of those suffering from HIV and Aids is exacerbated by the lack of food,” he said.
Zimbabwe is importing maize from Malawi but none is available to millers in Bulawayo.
A leading national supermarket chain in Zimbabwe has not received any deliveries of mealie meal for more than a week.
Beef is not available and small supplies of chicken and pork are far too expensive for about 80 percent of the population, even after enforced price cuts over the last three weeks.
“I think the government has known for some time there would be shortages, but this catastrophe may not be countrywide as subsistence farmers in the north had good rain, but here, in the south, the situation is dire, and the government has been derelict in its duty,” Coltart said.