Millions of Zimbabweans face a food crisis this year due to the government’s refusal to ask for assistance to meet drastic shortages, a leading human rights watchdog said on Thursday.

Zimbabwe suspended international food aid in May, predicting a bumper harvest in the coming year – a claim disputed by crop analysts and some of Zimbabwe’s commercial farmers.

President Robert Mugabe has boasted of a 2,3 million ton maize crop this year, but international aid organisations say the southern African country could instead suffer a massive shortfall of up to 900 000 tons on national demand of 1,8 million tons.

‘Mugabe has boasted of a 2,3 million ton maize crop’
Human Rights Watch said on Thursday the absence of international aid would endanger millions, and mean the state Grain Marketing Board would be the only source of food for many – leaving the way open for discrimination against government opponents ahead of parliamentary polls next March.

“The Zimbabwean government’s lack of transparency on grain availability could jeopardise access to food for millions of Zimbabweans in the coming months,” the group said in a statement. “In recent years, the grain board has been widely accused of discriminating against supporters of the political opposition.”

Human Rights Watch added that the government’s decision not to request food aid was hampering the ability of the World Food Programme (WFP) to limit the crisis.

The WFP said in June the government had asked it to continue feeding 650 000 vulnerable Zimbabweans, including orphans of HIV and Aids victims and the elderly, but it was difficult to expand these efforts without state approval and could take months to scale up assistance if the situation required it.

Around 2,5 million rural Zimbabweans will require food aid by the end of this year until March next year, the Famine Early Warning Systems (FEWS) warned in the past week.

‘Around 2,5 million rural Zimbabweans will require food aid’
FEWS said even though basic food supplies were stable in most urban areas, food access will still be a major problem for the poorest Zimbabweans, already straining under soaring inflation and unemployment.

Zimbabwe this week again rejected the gloomy predictions, saying the country was looking forward to “an above-average national harvest” this year.

Zimbabwe has won scorn from Western countries for its chaotic redistribution of white-owned land to landless blacks and they accuse the government of rights abuses against opponents and rigging a 2002 poll.

Mugabe denies the charge, and says his government is being targeted for retribution and economic sabotage by foreign forces opposed to the land reform programme.

Once Africa’s “bread basket” and an exporter in the region, Zimbabwe’s agricultural production has dropped off in recent years, which aid groups say is partly to blame on its controversial land reforms.

Source: Independent Online (IOL)
URL: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click…/p>