ZIMBABWE-ENVIRONMENT: Enlisting God’s Help as Rains Stay Away

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

GURUVE, ZIMBABWE, Oct 19 1995 (IPS) - The herds of cattle grazing along the main road that cuts this country town 150 km north of the Zimbabwean capital look pathetically malnourished as they munch away at the parched, dirt brown grass.

The ground they walk on is cracked by the piercing summer heat.

“We used to have the first rains in early October,” explains Joe Tawanda, a small farmer from a village near Guruve. “Now the pattern is changing and all we have is drought.”

Tawanda, who is 41, cannot recall the number of droughts which have hit the area. “There are too many to count,” he says, waving his hands in desperation.

This Southern African nation has been plagued by chronic droughts in the past 15 years. Local meteorologists say those that occurred in 1981/82 and 1991/92 were the most severe in living memory.

“In between we have less severe droughts but which had the same negative impact on government strategy to uplift the standards of living of the communal areas where the majority of Zimbabweans live,” Nathan Shamuyarira, minister of public service, labour and social welfare, said in a recent press statement.

The recurrent droughts have turned many small farmers into recipients of handouts. So far this year, says President Robert Mugabe said, some five million people, about half Zimbabwe’s population, have registered for food aid.

Feeding them is expected to cost his government 527 million Zimbabwe dollars (about 63 million US dollars).

The government introduced a Drought Relief Programme (DRP) in 1981. Initially, free food was distributed to all those who qualified but in 1983, a food-for-work programme for the able- bodied was introduced while the elderly, disabled and chronically ill have continued to receive free food handouts.

Almost 1.28 million metric tonnes of maize (the staple here) have been distributed under the DRP since its inception.

“It has been difficult for government to wean people off relief and there are strong fears that a dependency syndrome may have been inadvertently created,” said Shamuyarira.

The drought is most severe in the Zambezi Valley — on the border with Zambia — and in Masvingo and Matabeleland South, two semi-arid provinces bordering on South Africa.

“At least 40 children have died in Binga district (Zambezi Valley) as a result of malnutrition, while others are reported ill as a result of inadequate food,” ‘The Herald’, a semi-official daily, reported recently.

The paper said it feared that the cattle losses in Matebeleland South were likely to be as high as 50 percent of the total herd of 500,000.

“Unless Zimbabwe is blessed with a normal rainy season, the consequences could be horrific,” it warned.

To offset a maize shortfall this year, the government has made contingency plans for the importation of 500,000 tonnes of the staple. It has also suspended its maize exports, according to the Food Security Bulletin, a publication of the 11-nation Southern Africa Development Community (SADC).

“Despite the poor maize harvest, the country had maize export commitments of 66,000 tonnes carried forward from the previous marketing year out of which 22,000 tonnes have already been shipped,” reported the Bulletin. “However, no further exports will be undertaken.”

This year, Zimbabwe also plans to import 165,000 tonnes of wheat, of which about 60,000 tonnes had been brought in by the end of July,

Zimbabwe is not the only member of the SADC, which also includes Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zambia, affected by the current drought, which has lasted for more than a year.

Drought-related crop failure has been reported in Swaziland, southern Zambia and South Africa and this has reduced the regional cereal production by almost 32 percent to 16.40 million tonnes.

Not only people have been suffering. Around Guruve, wild animals from nearby game parks have been invading farm lands in search of water.

“Elephants are all over here looking for water and food,” says Tom Bloemfield whose sculpture gallery at Tengenenge, about 35 km from Guruve, is surrounded by commercial farms which — unlike most small farms — have dams and boreholes. “One of the elephants has a bucket stuck to its leg and the people are scared of it,” he says.

Wildlife officials tried flushing the pachyderms out of the fields by helicopter, but eventually gave up. “When the elephants saw the helicopter they became so excited that they started throwing whatever they could lay their trunks on, killing three ostriches”, Bloemfield recalls.

But Fr Oskar Wermter of the Harare-based Catholic Council of Churches has not given up hope. He is organising special inter- church services throughout Zimbabwe to pray for rain during the month of October.

“The current drought is a strong reminder to Christians that as people created by God we depend for our life and all our needs entirely on our creator,” Fr Wermter said.

ZIMBABWE-ENVIRONMENT: Enlisting God’s Help as Rains Stay Away

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

GURUVE, ZIMBABWE, Oct 19 1995 (IPS) - The herds of cattle grazing along the main road that cuts this country town 150 km north of the Zimbabwean capital look pathetically malnourished as they munch away at the parched, dirt brown grass.
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