Posted on 11/30/2002 5:26:02 AM PST by Clive
THE first rains which have fallen countrywide have not stirred resettled farmers into land preparation and planting, raising fears of another serious famine next year.
The government has been upbeat about the resettlement programme, calling it a success of unparalleled proportions. But evidence on the ground suggests otherwise.
The Zimbabwe Independent this week visited Mashonaland West, the country's prime farming area where in normal years the early irrigated maize crop is knee-high and the dryland crop would be at germination stage. But there is no such evidence this year.
Weather experts have indicated that the El-Niño threat and the continuing rainfall deficit this season are getting stronger but there does not appear to be a plan by the government to mitigate the effects of the drought by putting a large maize crop under irrigation. Such a crop should mature with or without good rains.
Crop experts this week said the absence of a large irrigated crop was telling insofar as it revealed the government's lack of planning.
"It does not make sense for the government to give farmers in dry areas bags of seed and fertiliser when there is a real threat of a drought," said an agronomist with a seed company.
"The government should instead have moved in around September to ensure that a large maize crop was planted under irrigation.
"There has been talk of a large maize crop to be harvested in February and then dried in kilns but where is the action?" he asked.
Areas which normally produce an early maize crop such as Makonde, Mazowe Valley and Enterprise do not have any crop in the ground as this has either been looted or removed by farmers for safe keeping.
The area between Mapinga and Chinhoyi along the Chirundu highway does not have any meaningful maize crop as vast stretches of land are either overgrown with weeds or have been ploughed but not planted.
Last week, Mashonaland West provincial governor Peter Chanetsa was quoted in a local daily pleading with those allocated land to move in quickly and begin ploughing.
Land experts say about 40% of acquired land would be put to productive agricultural use while the rest was being held for speculative purposes.
The total area that has been planted with maize from seed acquired by the government and donor agencies and that sold directly by seed houses to date will provide for about 1,2 million hectares. The initial production estimate at a yield of 0,6 to 0,8 tonnes/hectare would yield between 720 000 and 960 000 tonnes of maize.
This falls far below the national requirement of about 1,8 million tonnes, excluding the strategic grain reserve requirements.
l Meanwhile, the United Nations World Food Programme yesterday said the humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe was "deteriorating at a dangerously rapid pace".
The WFP said reports of children dropping out of school and families resorting to ever more desperate coping mechanisms were increasing alarmingly. At the same time, there is a growing concern that food imports by both the government and aid agencies are falling far short of the amount required to feed people up until March.
"We are approaching the very worst period of the crisis, when 6,7 million Zimbabweans will need food aid and yet WFP does not even have the resources to meet our target of three million beneficiaries in November. It is an extremely serious situation and it is only going to get worse," said Kevin Farrell, WFP representative in Zimbabwe.
Then maybe you should have gotten your UN buddies and fellow African governments to do something about the butcher Mugabe, instead of treating him as a hero.
}:-)4
Starve, Zimbabwe, and never forget the cause.
Jimmy's saving it for the Nobel Peace Prize committee. You know, the bunch that gave Jimmy the peace prize as a slap in the face to Dubya. Same group that gave Yasser the peace prize. They need a lot of sucking up.
So what does this have to do with Jimmy Carter? The head of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee is also the head of the Norwegian Oil Export Council or some such thing.
Yes, Africa is a pit, and yes, Africa will probably fall backward into a true nightmare for much of the next century.
Yes, "the dynamism known as Western culture..." far outstrips the competition.
But,
(1) don't count out the Chinese, absent their long tradition of Mandarin rule the Chinese are not to be ignored.
(2) Both Africa and the Middle East (Islam) suffer from localism and tribalism rather than over-control from the center. They remain rooted (again, no pun) in spite of ideologies or clear means to move ahead.
(3) The causes are not in anyone's genes but in the history of the place - where would western culture be today had the elites of its nation states not been inter-twined by marriage and trade and had their religeous differences not been taken from the same set of books?
Even in Latin America (my personal worst nightmare), as in the rest of the third world, efforts to educate a few and to 'influence' governments toward reform have failed almost totally. Those South American states with large european populations have done well but they generally share a religeous basis with the west and, I expect, that made the transition much easier. ('Though it was pretty tough on the original population when first encountered.)
I'd say that history and relegion have far more to do with the current disasters than any other cause - after all, Jews and Arabs are both semetic and black Americans fit into the bell curve no matter how you want to interpret it.
Ideologies converge only where it is convenient; Bill Clinton, Kofi Anan, Jimmy Carter, and Robert Mugabe DO come together when they need to justify grasping for power. I expect they would all get along quite well with Stalin, Hitler, Amin, or Peron.
None of this could possibly offer hope to Africa, Indonesia, or to the average Saudi, but it should give a hint as to what the actual enemy is.
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