DEVELOPMENT: Swaziland Copes with Famine Threat

By James Hall Reprint | | Print |

James Hall

MBABANE, Jun 6 2002 (IPS) - The smallest country in the Southern Hemisphere is rarely in the news, but reports aired this week included the little dot of a kingdom at Africa’s southern extremity on a map of locations deemed by the United Nations to be in danger of widespread famine.

In a joint statement, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) reported, “Two successive years of poor harvests caused by natural calamities, coupled with economic crises _ have slashed food production _ resulting in one of southern Africa’s worst agricultural disasters in a decade.”

Swaziland stands to suffer disproportionately more than other nations in the region due to its small population. About 150,000 people, one sixth of the population, are affected by food shortages.

Last year, heavy rains inhibited the growth of maize, the Swazi staple food that is raised by all rural farmers and many suburban and urban residents in backyard plots.

This year, at the critical stage when maize plants begin to mature and grow tassels in mid-summer, the rains stopped entirely for over a month, stunting younger plants and causing more mature plants to wither under an unrelenting sun.

“What interests me as a sociologist is how the disaster is affecting traditional society, by showing some negative change,” says James Shongwe of William Pitcher College in Manzini, the commercial capital of Swaziland. “The reaction to food shortages today is different than what it was in previous generations.”

“In the old days, famine was considered a part of life,” he says. “Today, people will do what it takes to survive, even if this means disrupting the community, which is the worst thing you can do in a tribal society.”

News reports this month have told stories of rural families stealing maize from their neighbours’ fields. Worse, they sell the maize at the market.

“Stealing so your family won’t starve is one thing, but selling and making a profit from food you steal from your neighbour, so they starve, that is very unSwazi,” says Chief Malunge of rural Nyankeni in central Swaziland.

In her seminal study of traditional Swazi ways, anthropologist Hilda Kuper wrote how Swazis were inured to a lack of food during the early summer months when food supplies harvested the previous year were depleted, and new crops were yet to ripen. “The Swazis know (these months) as a time of great want,” she wrote.

Since WWII, first with development brought by British colonial authorities, and later with international donor assistance following Independence, widespread starvation became a thing of the past in Swaziland. However, the threat that some segments of the populations will go hungry, particularly among rural poor, is an annual problem.

“We have set up the Emergency Disaster Task Force as a permanent office,” says task force director Ben Nsibandze, who is both a traditional leader and a long-serving government official. “We monitor areas where crops are poor, and long before people suffer we alert aid organisations of our needs.”

This year’s massive crop failure was unexpected even in areas where traditional farming techniques often fail. Rivers and their tributaries thread some areas of the dry lowland, but peasant farmers make no effort to tap into these bodies for irrigation water. They rely solely on rainfall.

“When the rains do not come, people know the aid organisations will bring in food,” says a field officer from the agriculture ministry who does not wish his name to be used. “Aid is almost a disincentive for progress, because the recipients don’t bother learning modern farming techniques,” he says.

Nevertheless, aid is coming, and in a big way. 188,000 metric tones of maize will be imported into Swaziland, and distributed to endangered individuals over the next sixth months.

The joint report of the World Food Programme and the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation found that maize production this cropping season was down 37 percent below the average of the past five years. The report suggests government action to subsidise tractors and fertiliser, but does not address the matter of agricultural reform.

Critics of current land use policies say reform is essential to wean Swazis from traditional but non-productive methods of traditional agriculture, and fully utilise available agricultural land, bringing national food self-sufficiency.

It is also beyond the food donor agencies’ agendas to address social concerns. But how some Swazis have responded to the current food crisis is causing some introspection about the way one of Africa’s most traditional societies is changing.

“We are a long way from being a consumer society, but the essence of consumerism, greed, is taking over the people,” laments Reverend Jabulani Dlamini of rural Luve, where some people are stealing their neighbours’ maize crops.

“But there are still many good Swazis, the majority I think, who still follow the commandment to love their neighbour,” he says.

“You see them honouring this in today’s food crisis. It may not be reported like the theft of maize from people’s fields, but people do look after their neighbours and extended families,” he says. “That is why even with the food shortage problem there has not been a single report of a person starving to death in Swaziland.”