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'10 000 died in Zim in 2003'
10/01/2004 12:36 - (SA)
Harare - A Roman Catholic archbishop in Zimbabwe's western Matabeleland said on Friday that at least 10 000 people died of hunger and diseases hastened by malnutrition across the southern African country last year.
Mike Huggins, a spokesperson for the UN food agency, said he would be "highly surprised" if Archbishop Pius Ncube's estimate was correct.
But he said that scale of hunger was a "very real prospect for this year" in the drought-stricken country, also in the throws of political and economic turmoil.
Ncube, an outspoken critic of President Robert Mugabe's rule, said the figure was compiled from information collected by church groups and charities involved in distributing emergency food aid.
"The situation is very bad because there are people who sit four or five days without any food, and there is no rain in Matabeleland yet," Ncube said in a telephone interview from Bulawayo.
"Some people are only plowing now, and the normal time is November."
Malnutrition was exacerbating Aids-related diseases, which accounted for a third of the 10 000 deaths, Ncube said.
Up to a third of Zimbabwe's 12 million people are infected with HIV.
"I can't believe we wouldn't have know if that number of people had died," Huggins said. "And church groups should have come forward if that was the case."
The national government doesn't provide figures for hunger-related deaths, and the Health Ministry refused to comment on Ncube's allegations Friday.
Zim facing worst crisis
Zimbabwe is facing its worst political and economic crisis since independence from Britain in 1980, with record unemployment, rampant inflation and acute shortages of food, gasoline and other essentials.
The seizure of thousands of white-owned farms for redistribution to black people, coupled with erratic rains, have crippled the agriculture of a nation that was once a regional bread basket.
Foreign loans, development aid and investment have dried up in protest against human rights and civil liberties abuses.
The World Food Program cut its maize meal rations for 2.6 million hungry Zimbabweans by half at the end of last year because of insufficient donations.
Oil and pulses have been cut out altogether, Huggins said.
But the number of people requiring food aid is increasing as Zimbabwe enters its traditional "lean season" where rural granaries become depleted ahead of the March harvest period. - AP
- SAPA
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