Survival Is Key Concern as Zimbabwe Faces Vote

Hunger has become a way of life for the laborers left at the Biri River Farm.

Maize, a staple for ordinary Zimbabweans, is unavailable or too expensive. The white farmer, whose land was slated two years ago for resettlement by landless blacks, also is struggling to make ends meet. He owes his workers back wages.

Food is on everyone’s mind as Zimbabweans prepare to vote Saturday and Sunday in a presidential election pitting incumbent Robert Mugabe against former trade union official Morgan Tsvangirai.

But as the candidates battle, many people are going hungry.

“Even bread we don’t see these days,” said Last Chimutashu, 37, a longtime farmhand at Biri River Farm, about 50 miles from the capital, Harare.

Drought and floods have reduced agricultural production throughout most of southern Africa, significantly slashing the output of maize, the region’s staple crop. In Malawi, religious leaders recently issued a plea for food aid after reporting that many villagers had resorted to eating roots and leaves. Mozambique has suffered in the last two years from flooding that killed more than 800 people and destroyed hundreds of homes and farms.

In Zambia, a combination of heavy rain and dry spells has reduced crop production by 24%, according to the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

Swaziland, Lesotho, Namibia and Angola also are facing shortages because of erratic weather.

In Zimbabwe, once known as the region’s breadbasket, the problem has been exacerbated by political violence and the controversial and often brutal occupation of white-owned commercial farms. Farmers have found it difficult to cultivate their land, and hundreds of farm laborers have fled. The country’s maize harvest dropped 28% in 2001, according to the FAO.

“It is a food crisis,” said Anna Shotton, a Harare-based officer for the U.N. World Food Program, which estimates that more than half a million Zimbabweans face acute food shortages and many others are eating only one meal a day. “It’s very serious. And the situation is deteriorating.”

“We are just struggling,” said Richard Arlett-Johnson, owner of the Biri River Farm. “We are just trying to survive.”

When the government slated his farm for resettlement two years ago, squatters identifying themselves as veterans of the country’s independence war wasted no time moving onto the land--even before it was officially divvied up.

Squatters Have Forced Farm to Cut Production

Production on the 500-acre tobacco and maize farm was disrupted almost immediately as the new settlers erected makeshift wooden shacks amid the crops. The decrease in production led to a sharp reduction in profits. Arlett-Johnson was forced to lay off 38 of his 54 workers. Two others died of unrelated causes.

Though he has been able to provide jobs and semi-steady wages for 14 farmhands, several of the workers he let go have failed to find work and have moved back to the farm compound, where they survive on handouts.

Arlett-Johnson has only enough money now to plant fewer than four acres of corn and 15 acres of beans. Under pressure to feed his workers, and owing each of them a month’s pay of at least $85, he has had to seek food and financial assistance from local charities.

The scenario is repeated many times around the country, relief officials say.

Mugabe has accused white farmers of hoarding food in an attempt to create an artificial crisis that can then be blamed on his government. He has promised that “no one will die of hunger.”

Tsvangirai has said the disruptions caused by squatters and the widespread displacement of farm laborers because of violence and intimidation have exacerbated the food crisis.

For the last several weeks, supplies to supermarkets have been sparse and erratic. Long lines wrap around buildings and snake across streets when maize appears.

“As it is now, you see people sleeping on queues, waiting to get [maize],” said Gift Muti, a grass-roots coordinator for the General Agricultural and Plantation Workers’ Union of Zimbabwe, a Harare-based group that helps distribute food aid. “Sometimes they wait for hours, even overnight.”

When maize is available, the price is often out of reach of the rural poor.

Maize normally provides 60% of the daily energy requirement for an ordinary Zimbabwean, according to Shotton, the WFP official.

She said many families in rural areas where she was distributing food were surviving on black tea for breakfast, a mixture of wild fruit and seeds for lunch, and a stew for dinner made from a type of caterpillar found in tree trunks.

“There is almost a complete lack of cereal in their diet,” Shotton said. “There is a very sharp reduction in energy level due to the lack of maize meal.”

Middle Class Also Facing Food Shortage

Some middle-income families have been able to supplement their diet with rice or wheat flour, but rice costs 10 times more than maize. Even they are having to cut back on how much they eat.

Aid workers say war veterans and pro-government militias accuse them of using food aid as a political tool and have prevented hungry farm laborers from taking the food.

“They feel that maybe we are feeding the opposition,” Muti said. “But we just want to feed people who have problems. We are not politically motivated.”

Muti said that most local and foreign relief groups had suspended food distribution until after this weekend’s vote because of safety concerns.

Chimutashu, the Biri farmhand, takes care of his wife, mother, three children and younger brother. He said that he could no longer depend on his monthly salary and that the squatters would not allow him and other farm laborers to cultivate their small private plots.

“Now there is no money,” he said. “There is no field to grow my maize. There’s nothing.”

“It’s disgraceful,” said the Rev. Tim Neill, an Anglican priest who runs the Zimbabwe Community Development Trust, a Harare-based crisis and relief group. “Whole livelihoods have been ruined on a massive scale. Kids aren’t going to school now. They’re hungry. It’s awful.”

Even the squatters have not escaped the wrath of the unfavorable weather, which has destroyed their meager crops, and few have enough money to buy fertilizers and farm equipment. Of the 17 squatters who occupied Arlett-Johnson’s farm, only two remain on a permanent basis.

Some foreign aid workers are optimistic that under the right circumstances, Zimbabwe could overcome this humanitarian catastrophe.

“No one can control the weather,” WFP chief Catherine Bertini said recently. “What man can control, however, is peace--or at least create peace. If [Zimbabwe] returns to its earlier stability, it could return to its earlier productivity.”