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Food aid for Zimbabweans
11/02/2005 15:03 - (SA)
Harare - President Robert Mugabe's government has earmarked 12 billion Zimbabwe dollars ($1.9m) to buy food aid for needy Zimbabweans who are going to the polls next month, the state-run daily The Herald said on Friday.
About 1.5 million Zimbabweans are in need of food aid ahead of the next main harvest due in April, according to figures from the social welfare ministry quoted by the daily.
Mugabe's government plans to buy 15 000 tonnes of the staple maize grain for distribution, the report said.
Zimbabweans are to cast ballots on March 31 in parliamentary elections that are expected to consolidate Mugabe's ruling Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) stranglehold on power.
Maintaining that the country had enjoyed a 'bumper' harvest in 2004, the government last year said it required no food aid from outside the country.
The state-run Grain Marketing Board (GMB), the country's sole grain handling agency, said in September that it was expecting to receive 750 000 tonnes of maize this season, much less than the country's needs.
Regional food security grouping, Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET) originally estimated that 2.2 million people would need food aid, but in November it said the figure was likely to go up during the peak hunger season between January and March.
A parliamentary committee on agriculture in November also warned that the country was likely to face a food "stock-out before the next harvest" due around April.
Zimbabwe has faced food shortages over the past few years that have been partly attributed to droughts and the government's land reform policy launched in 2000 that saw the seizure of white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to blacks.
Once the bread basket of southern Africa, the land seizures coupled with ongoing economic and political crises in Zimbabwe over elections in 2000 in 2002 that were marred by violence and claims of fraud.
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