WFP warns of disaster in Zimbabwe

Daily News (Zim) ^ | December 6, 2002 | Staff Reporter

[Clive]

COMMODITY shortages, high market prices and accelerating inflation “are a formula for disaster” in Zimbabwe, says James Morris, the director of the World Food Programme (WFP).

Officially, inflation is pegged at 139 percent but most industrialists have put it at 500 percent.Morris was addressing the United Nations Security Council in New York on Monday.According to The Washington File, Morris said Africa was facing an unprecedented hunger crisis which the international community had not yet fully grasped.

“The situation calls for an unprecedented response. An exceptional effort is urgently needed if a major catastrophe is to be averted. Business as usual will not do,” Morris said.

In September, Morris was the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for humanitarian needs in southern Africa and visited six countries affected by the worsening food crisis where nearly 14 million people are affected.

He visited Mashonaland Central where he witnessed how people in Musana communal lands were surviving on shakata, an indigenous wild fruit, usually a staple food for donkeys.

Later, he urged the government and relief agencies to urgently address the condition of children suffering from malnutrition. On Monday, Morris said: “The severity of the current food crises is certainly on a scale that threatens political stability and security in the region.

“In southern Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique, over 14 million people need food aid with the most critical period beginning now through to March 2003.

“The greatest sense of alarm is in Zimbabwe, traditionally a strong food exporter, where over half of its 12 million people are facing the threat of starvation.” he said.

In the 1980s, the WFP bought up to half million tonnes of food a year from Zimbabwe for emergencies elsewhere in Africa. Morris said politics, bureaucracy, and bad economics had conspired to damage food output and worse yet, slow down the aid response from the international community.

Morris, who met President Mugabe during his visit to Zimbabwe, said the government’s land distribution and ownership scheme was “damaging”.

He said thousands of productive farms were not operating, adding that restrictions on private sector food marketing and a monopoly on food imports by the Grain Marketing Board, were turning a drought that might have been managed into a “humanitarian nightmare”.

Speaking at the same meeting, Richard Williamson, the United States ambassador to the UN, criticised Zimbabwe’s land use and economic policies and the politicisation of food aid.

He said: “The government’s violent and chaotic land seizures from commercial farmers have decimated the most productive component of Zimbabwe’s agricultural sectors, reducing agricultural production by nearly 70 percent in the last two years as well as crippling its ability to feed not only its own population but neighbouring countries.”

The food situation in Zimbabwe has attracted international attention following media reports that Zanu PF was withholding food aid in areas where the opposition had a strong support base.

In Kuwadzana, Highfield, Hatfield in Harare and most urban and rural centres across the country, Zanu PF militants from the Border Gezi training camps have been seen controlling food queues, determining who should get it and what had to be done to get it.

Mostly, Zanu PF party cards, known in food queues as “chikwambo cheZanu PF” have been the major requirement for one to buy food, particularly maize-meal, which has become scarce.

Nathan Shamuyarira, the Zanu PF secretary for information and publicity, has consistently denied that the party supporters were politicising food distribution, insisting everyone had access to food, irrespective of their political affiliation.

[Clive]

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[xJones]

He said: "The government's violent and chaotic land seizures from commercial farmers have decimated the most productive component of Zimbabwe's agricultural sectors, reducing agricultural production by nearly 70 percent in the last two years as well as crippling its ability to feed not only its own population but neighbouring countries.?

Yes, but Nepad is expected to take up the slack. They do make squawking sounds about "responsible" government but that is a bad joke. Africa will be allowed to slide, because colonialism is over and the thug - but native - black dictators have taken over. The collective lot of them couldn't feed a pidgeon, but no matter, the hated West will be expected to prop them up.

[albee]

"He said thousands of productive farms were not operating, adding that restrictions on private sector food marketing and a monopoly on food imports by the Grain Marketing Board, were turning a drought that might have been managed into a “humanitarian nightmare”."

Gee, I wonder whose fault that it is? Couldn't be that the Tin Horn Dicatator, Mugabe, who kicked all the productive white , farmers off their land and gave thriving farms to his incompetant friends and relatives, could it?

Sorry gang...you created your own problem... now you solve it... without whining to get more of my hard-earned tax dollars.