WHEN Buhera South MP Joseph Chinotimba gave his maiden speech in Parliament last month, he spoke of hunger in his area in words laced with exuberant effervescence of a novice.
REPORT BY PHILLIP CHIDAVAENZI
The real tragedy unfolding in Buhera South was perhaps lost in the comic relief wrought by his narrative.
In the MP’s quest to entertain, he did not tell Parliament that his people are surviving on wild fruits.
Electoral promises of food aid from the State have become a mirage in this hot, dusty and desolate communal farming area where people have long-forgotten how to celebrate a good harvest.
“We plant maize every year, but when the crops are waist-high, the rains stop,” Salime Munoenda said.
But, they do harvest the maize stocks which are neatly stacked on stockades close to cattle pens.
The dry maize stocks are fed to the cattle and goats in tiny rations to augment the animals’ meagre pickings of dry mopani leaves.
- Chamisa under fire over US$120K donation
- Mavhunga puts DeMbare into Chibuku quarterfinals
- Pension funds bet on Cabora Bassa oilfields
- Councils defy govt fire tender directive
Keep Reading
The terrain, dotted with picturesque castle kopjes, belies the great tragedy unfolding in the homesteads spread on the dry veld.
Here, people have learnt to survive on fruit from baobab trees. The hard shells of the fruit contain hard pods encased with white and sour powder.
It is this substance that is slowly becoming staple food for poor families that cannot afford to buy mealie meal in Chivhu, about 150km away.
Enterprising merchants are selling maize for $8 for a 15kg bucket. That is over $500 a tonne!
The situation is replicated in Nyanyadzi where temperatures, soaring to as high as 40°C, seem to speak of the arid conditions of this area in which crop failure is the rule rather than the exception.
Police officers manning roadblocks along the road that leads to Chiadzwa diamond fields from Mutare could be seen seeking shelter from the blazing sun under trees dotted along the road.
Many here — and in other areas including Hotsprings and Nyanyadzi and as far as Murambinda and Birchenough Bridge — decry the widespread hunger spawned by the heat.
Israel Bvumbura, an elderly villager at Hotsprings says it will get much hotter.
He is sitting under a tree, watching some young men repair a dilapidated borehole.
Hundreds of goats are loitering in the vicinity to quench their thirst with the precious liquid.
“They will not go away until the borehole is functional,” Bvumbura remarked.
This scenario simply captures the strife in areas visited by NewsDay where villagers are bemoaning the dry conditions.
Among the men wrestling with the borehole, which serves about a hundred families, to get it going again is Crispen Mahumbira from Nemaramba Village.
He says locals are going as far as Chimanimani, 120km away, in desperate search for food.
“Hunger has become a serious problem in this area. Most of us are now going to buy grain in Chimanimani,” he said.
Although some villagers have vegetable gardens, Mahumbira said they were facing serious water challenges and accused mining companies of polluting the Odzi dam, making the water unsafe for cattle to drink.
“We have lost over 50 cattle, but the companies polluting the rivers are not willing to pay compensation, although we have raised this issue with them,” he said.
“The water is now poisonous so we can no longer use it for drinking or bathing.”
Listen to the villagers speak below:
Driving past Nyanyadzi shopping centre, election campaign posters bearing the face of President Robert Mugabe lifting up his fist are still emblazoned on the walls of otherwise dilapidated shops.
Villagers here can only wonder if Mugabe’s Zanu PF party, which romped to victory in the July 31 harmonised polls, is going to implement policies that will inject life in this otherwise lifeless outpost.
Many doubt.
For too long, even under the Government of National Unity in which Zanu PF partnered the two MDC formations, the fate of the people here did not change.
Almost all the irrigation schemes in the area, from which many have drawn sustenance over the past years, have gone bust.
It is a sorry tale of how thousands living in the heart of Zimbabwe’s diamonds heartland continue to scrap for a living.
Paul Manyange, also of Nemaramba Village, is among the daring who have been surviving through panning diamonds.
“Crops don’t do well here because of poor rainfall, so we are forced into diamond panning. If you’re lucky you can get something and sell it to the buyers who come here. A small piece can go for $200 or $300, but the pricing is unfair,” he said.
Venturing into the diamond fields, however, is a risky enterprise, he admits.
“It’s not easy to get into the fields because if you are caught, the dogs will maul you,” he said.
“It’s just poaching because we have no other means of survival.”
His appeal to the government is that irrigation schemes in the area, which have been long abandoned, should be resuscitated because crops such as maize, groundnuts and rapoko flourish in the area.
Bvumbura bemoans that the mining companies extracting the gemstones have not opened up employment opportunities for young men in the surrounding villages.
He says most of them spend time loitering in the villages.
“What is needed here,” he said, “are projects. We need water pumps because irrigation is the only way out.”
Villagers said it was difficult to sell cattle and get money to buy food, although goats cost between $20 and $25.
Bvumbura said one cannot survive without domestic animals such as chickens, goats or cattle.
The cattle survive on dry leaves until the rainy season returns and grass begins to sprout again.
The same problem is prevalent in Buhera South where Tichakura Munyira of Nehumambi Village says they stock pile dry maize stalks after harvest to ensure that the cattle have something to eat when the pastures dry up.
“Our cattle survive on dry leaves,” he says.
“So we gather the maize stalks together to feed them when the rainy season is gone and usually the fodder lasts until the next rainy season when the pastures begin to flourish.”
The problem of food, however, has not only affected the animals, but people as well, said Munyira’s wife, Regina Majeje.
“Usually, I feed the children on porridge made from mealie meal and baobab fruit (mauyu) in the afternoon, and in the evening we prepare some sadza with wild vegetables,” she said.
The poor rainfall patterns have not only affected cropping, but have had a negative impact on other self-help projects such as reed crafts done by Ndakamudini Mazungunye.
She and her colleagues strip off bark from the baobab trees that flourish in the area and use them to weave differently styled mats.
Mazungunye said she had been in this business for almost a decade, but this year was bad for business as they have watched their fortunes plummet.
“These days things are difficult because we don’t have markets. I have been doing this for the last seven years and I used to pay school fees from my handiwork,” she said.
Then, she recalled, she could even afford to provide her children with “bread and butter” for breakfast, but what is left of that now are just memories of the good old days gone by.
Back then, tourists were the major customers who bought mats while some locals purchased them for resale in countries such as South Africa.
The food shortages in the area, stretching as far as Jakaza township, have had a negative impact on millers.
A miller at the township, James Chishamba, told NewsDay that although it costs $1 to have a 20kg bucket of maize milled, they have since slashed the price by half as business is now very low.
Poverty hits rural areas hardest
ACCORDING to the 2013 Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee (Zimvac) report about 3% of rural households are estimated to have insufficient means to meet their basic food requirements between April and June 2013.
This proportion is projected to increase to 25% of the rural households in Zimbabwe by January 2014.
Resources need to be urgently mobilised to address the immediate food insecurity problem while preparations to deal with the increased problem later in the consumption year are stepped up.
Zimvac said given that the highest prevalence of food insecurity was recorded in Masvingo, Matabeleland South and Matabeleland North, these provinces should be prioritised in interventions to improve household food and nutrition security.
About 60% of the people will have to rely on the market to meet their food needs, it is, therefore, imperative to ensure that the markets have adequate food for those with sufficient incomes to purchase.
It is worrying that 42 % of children under five were consuming two or fewer meals per day and therefore unlikely to access adequate nutrients necessary for their optimum growth.
Therefore, nutrition programming for children should promote appropriate complementary feeding practices, especially within the window of opportunity “6-23 months”.
Generally, foods consumed by rural households are of low diversity and largely unbalanced with a clear dominance of carbohydrates at the expense of protein rich foods, hence there is need to advocate and promote for the consumption of a balanced diet.
