A Bounty of Food Relief Sits Unused In Zimbabwe

U.N. figures show Zimbabwe produced 2.1 million metric tons of corn in 2000, but less than 500,000 in 2002.

Yields improved to 800,000 last year, and some Zimbabweans say that better rains are making for a bigger harvest this year. Corn cobs almost fill the storage bins at some farms outside Bulawayo. But many other farms throughout the country appear overgrown and untended, the fields all but reclaimed by nature.

Official government estimates are that this year's corn harvest will be nearly triple the size of last year's, which would make it the best since 1996, when the country was still considered the breadbasket of southern Africa.

Mugabe told Britain's Sky News in May that those days were returning and the need for food aid had ended. "We are not hungry. It should go to hungrier people, hungrier countries than ourselves," Mugabe said. "Why foist this food upon us? We don't want to be choked. We have enough."

Controlling the food supply has long been used as a political tactic by Mugabe's party, according to observers and human rights activists, who say that as elections approach, the governing party rewards supporters with 50-kilogram, or about 110-pound, bags of cornmeal and withholds them from opponents.

Independent news reports indicate that Mugabe's camp is buying cornmeal from neighboring countries and storing it in warehouses ahead of national parliamentary elections in March.

As the election season nears, the Christian aid group World Vision also finds itself caught in the nation's political dynamics. World Vision announced two weeks ago that it was ending its general feeding program in Zimbabwe, which at its height delivered food to 1.5 million people a month.

"The government has made it clear to all agencies . . . that they do not expect a food aid operation," said Rudo Kwaramba, the top World Vision official in the country. "One has to be wise, if I may use that term, in the prevailing socioeconomic-political environment in Zimbabwe. You try the best that you can to maintain your operations."

Instead of feeding centers open to all hungry people, the United Nations and World Vision have shifted their focus to targeted programs at schools, orphanages and medical clinics.

The government has not yet sought to curtail those efforts, and if they continue, much of the food in the Bulawayo warehouse may be distributed over the course of coming months.

One recent morning at the Deli Primary School in Umguza, a rural area about 45 miles northwest of Bulawayo, students lined up with empty bowls in their hands. Awaiting them were steaming pots of an enriched corn and soy porridge, courtesy of the United Nations.

It was nearly 11 a.m., and for most of these children, it was their first meal of the day. They sat on brown grass, not far from dried cow dung left by cattle sharing the school's field, and scooped food into their mouths in the traditional way, with two fingers.

Through such targeted programs, the United Nations still hopes to provide food to 550,000 Zimbabweans next year.

But unless the government changes its mind, the United Nations does not intend to restart the general feeding centers that once fed 10 times that number.

"The government will want to be the one giving out food," said John Makumbe, a political science professor at the University of Zimbabwe in the capital, Harare. "You have your party card, you get your food. You don't get your party card . . . you don't get your food."