Times

Zimbabwe only three months from famine

BY RICHARD BEESTON, DIPLOMATIC EDITOR

FOR the first time in its 20-year history Zimbabwe faces the threat of famine unless emergency food aid can be distributed to the country’s poor in the coming months.

According to a confidential Whitehall report prepared this month and seen by The Times, the production of maize, the staple diet for the black population, is down nearly a third on last year and shortages could become acute by November.

“They have basically got three months left,” a British official said. “They will need outside help or face food shortages,” the official added.

The World Food Programme now lists Zimbabwe, once one of the continent’s most productive nations, among its list of countries facing “exceptional food emergencies in sub-Saharan Africa”. Maize production this year is 1.47million tonnes, 28 per cent lower than last year and leaving a shortfall of half a million tonnes. Slumps in food production are not unusual in southern Africa, which is prone to droughts. This is, however, the first time that Zimbabwe will be unable to feed its population for entirely political reasons. Because of a related economic crisis it no longer has the foreign currency necessary to import food. What food is available is likely to be priced beyond many of the country’s needy.

Large parts of the farming sector have been brought to a standstill since last year’s policy of President Mugabe to allow so-called war veterans to seize land belonging to white farmers and people linked to the opposition.

To compound the problem, there are fears that foreign countries may be unable to assist starving Zimbabweans because hardliners in the regime in Harare do not want to admit that there is a problem. British officials say that Mr Mugabe will not want to admit that he needs outside help to feed his people as he prepares for a tough re-election battle next spring.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which has attempted to mediate in the 18-month land battle, has drawn up an emergency relief plan, but is unable act until it is asked by the Government. “There is a plan ready to help Zimbabwe, but the Government has so far shown no urgency in responding to the crisis,” Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), said.

While the world’s attention had been focused largely on the plight of white farmers, tens of thousands of black Zimbabweans were struggling to survive, he said.

Those most at risk are former black farmworkers who have been driven out of their jobs by land seizures as well as the urban poor, many of whom have lost jobs during the country’s economic troubles. The Foreign Office is hoping that, even at this late stage, pressure can be brought to bear on Mr Mugabe to halt the land seizures, restore law and order and reopen dialogue with outside countries.

Nigeria and South Africa are pressing Mr Mugabe to back down and will mediate between Britain and Zimbabwe at a foreign ministers’ meeting in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, next month. Britain is under no illusions. It has withdrawn a standing offer to provide £36million to help to fund a peaceful land redistribution programme.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 2001