Drought and destructive government policies are pushing a once-plentiful country to the verge of starvation, writes Declan Walsh in Chadereka
International food aid has not yet come to Chadereka, a sleepy village in the Zambezi valley, so people are starting to go hungry. Maize meal is the staple food, but this year neither God nor the government has provided.
"We should be eating twice, maybe three times a day," said Dzidzai Musinyare, a 22-year- old mother of four who was munching on a bunch of wild berries. "Now it is barely once."
Last week Ms Musinyare went to the government grain store, some 60 kilometres away on the edge of the valley floor, in search of food. There was none, so she waited "one day, then two, then three".
"Five days, for just one bag of maize," she said with disgust. Absurdly, the return bus fare cost her more than did the bag of precious grain.
Across Zimbabwe it is the same. A chronic shortage of maize, exacerbated by stubbornly destructive government policies, is pushing a once-plentiful country to the verge of famine.
According to aid agencies, over half of Zimbabwe's 12.5 million people are going to need urgent food assistance in the coming months. The United Nations is appealing for $285 million to stave off what it calls the "largest food crisis in 50 years".
President Robert Mugabe is not entirely to blame for the crisis. A severe drought at the start of the year decimated the country's maize crop. A bad situation has been made worse by the scourge of HIV/AIDS. An estimated one in three Zimbabwean adults is infected with HIV; a swelling orphan population of 600,000 bears testimony to those who died.
But the ageing autocrat is responsible for making a manageable crisis into a full-blown disaster. President Mugabe is accused of, at best, doing nothing and, at worst, manipulating the food crisis as a tool of political power.
The seizure of white-owned commercial farms has thrown the vital agriculture sector into disarray when Zimbabweans need it most.
Commercial farming accounted for almost half of national maize requirements. Now that is gone and, coupled with the drought, has reduced maize production by 70 per cent.
The farm seizures also hit the tobacco business, a key foreign currency earner. As the government struggles to import food stocks, it is discovering it has precious little hard cash to buy them.
Aid agencies say it is not too late to prevent a famine, but the early signs of starvation are already starting to show.
In thousands of villages such as Chadereka, people have been reduced to one meal a day. In schools, hungry pupils have started to faint in class and absentee rates have soared as parents despatch their children to search for food, often wild berries and fruits. Some have died after eating poisonous roots.
Theft is on the rise in previously peaceful rural areas. Prostitution is also growing: young women are flocking to the southern border town of Beitbridge to make money for food from passing truckers. People are competing with wild animals for food. Two men lie in hospital near Chadereka, one close to death. One was attacked by an elephant, the other gored by a buffalo, while picking wild fruit off trees.
Some international aid is on the way, but not enough. The World Food Programme says that 43 per cent of its $285 million appeal has been funded. That is enough to last until Christmas, maybe longer. However the bulk of Zimbabwe's food requirements will have to come through the government, and President Mugabe appears to be rapidly running out of ideas and money.
Peasants like Dzidzai Musinyare are obliged to buy their food from the Grain Marketing Board (GMB), a government agency with depots around the country that has a monopoly on grain sales. But because President Mugabe has killed off both domestic production of maize and his main source of foreign currency - tobacco - he cannot afford to supply the state stores.
The result is long queues and empty shelves in GMB stores around the country. Foreign donors have tried to persuade Mr Mugabe to liberalise the market, to allow private traders to bring in food from abroad.
But so far he has stubbornly refused. Instead, government employees have been accused of playing dirty politics with food aid.
The local Standard newspaper recently reported that the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Abednico Ncube, told villagers in Matabeleland that maize "will be available only to those who dump the opposition and work with Zanu-PF". The party would "start feeding its children before turning to those of the MDC [opposition party]".
IN THE western Binga area, war veterans closed down a food project run by the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission. They said the project, which fed 40,000 people and is part-funded by Trócaire, was being run by MDC supporters.
Following negotiation with the local governor, the project re-started last month under a different Catholic body.
The United Nations has warned President Mugabe about such obstruction. Last month the head of the World Food Programme, James Morris, told reporters: "I made it very clear to him that the WFP will not tolerate the politicising of food distribution."
However, international aid agencies say they are being painstakingly careful to make sure local interests do not influence their lists of aid recipients.
And they say that the accusations often have more to do with starvation than favouritism.
"There have been many complaints but in most cases it turns out to be just people desperately in need of food," said Makena Walker of the World Food Programme. "If your children started going to bed hungry, you would say whatever it takes to get them fed."
Despite the swelling crisis, which is expected to peak by Christmas, President Mugabe has been only coolly receptive towards international aid agencies. He recently spoke against "sinister interests" that use the "cover of humanitarian involvement". Nevertheless, aid is arriving fast. Britain is giving £32 million this year; the EU recently pledged €32 million.
One frustrated diplomat said: "Things are getting worse and worse, yet it appears he is more interested in power politics than helping his own people."