By Paul Olivier

Cross Roads - Bambani Ndlovo (not her real name) has been waiting in a food queue for three months, eating mopani worms and sharing scraps of food with her compatriots to stay alive. She is one of thousands of Matabeles who has been waiting for a consignment of mealie meal from the international food agency, World Vision, since November last year. Here at Cross Roads in the Mangwe district east of Bulawayo, the only maize mill belongs to Justice Malaba, a judge and staunch Zanu PF supporter, says Mangwe Edward Mkhosi, an Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) MP. The men in Malaba's employ have been accused of selling 5kg bags of mealie meal to young girls in the queue at a reduced price in return for sex - in effect, statutory rape. The food queue snakes across the barren open ground in sweltering heat for more than a kilometre. On Sunday everything is orderly. The hungry people sit in the little shade the few trees can provide, but last month four people died in a stampede when a few bags of mealie meal arrived on a private truck.

"We have been in this queue for three months but nothing comes," Bambani tells me through an interpreter. "We are being troubled by war veterans, government agents and the Green Bombers [Zanu-PF Youth Brigade] who force us to chant Zanu PF slogans and produce Zanu PF party cards. "We live 30km away but cannot leave and come back because then we have to join the queue from the back again. Is it worth it that our daughters get raped for a bucket of mealie meal?" Bambani asks. According to Michael Mary Roman, a Catholic sister at the nearby Brunnapeg mission hospital, people have become so hungry that they lose control when they see food. "The starvation is real and people will start dying of hunger soon. "There has been no food delivered for three months and the people eat mopani worms and grind motopi roots for porridge to survive. The worms, their only source of protein, are fast running out and the situation in Makorokoro on the Botswana border is even worse because it is further away from the normal food distribution points. Every one in two here in this community of 38 000 is HIV/Aids-infected. Without the necessary nourishment, deaths have become a daily occurrence," Sister Roman tells me later over a simple lunch of wheat porridge and sour milk at the mission hospital.

Figures show that the average life expectancy of Zimbabweans has declined from 59 years old in 1990 to 37 years old today as a result of HIV/Aids, poverty and inadequate social services. According to figures released by the MDC, only 9 percent of the population is employed, a third of girls of schoolgoing age attend school and more than half of the population of 11,5 million faces starvation. The MDC and aid workers say President Robert Mugabe is "deliberately starving millions of Matabeles for voting against Zanu PF" in a "new wave of genocide". They say the government's food aid programme has been highly politicised and that only highly placed Zanu PF officials have access to scarce food commodities, which they buy at state-controlled rates and sell at exorbitant prices. During the food crisis in 1983 and 1985, Mugabe's government also used food as a weapon against Matabeleland, which resisted his autocratic rule, resulting in starvation and death. That was before he unleashed the notorious Korean-trained Fifth Brigade to massacre about 20 000 people in Matabeleland. Now his government prevents the MDC from importing its own food to feed its people.

In one documented case, 130 000 tons of maize the MDC bought from Free State farmers in South Africa was impounded at Beitbridge and lies rotting in a customs warehouse. "Zanu PF's food programme has three facets," says Eddie Cross, the MDC economics spokesperson. "The first is to withhold food from the Matabele to punish them for voting against Zanu PF. The second is to provide finance for Zanu PF structures. The third is to reward Zanu PF supporters for remaining loyal to the party. The way they are deliberately starving the Matabele, and in fact all who do not support Zanu PF, is tantamount to genocide," Cross says. According to Mkhosi the government's food distribution programme stipulates that all occupants of a homestead in the villages are to be registered as a single entity. "But Zanu-PF officials and chiefs that support the party are allowed to register their homesteads as well as its occupants, thereby receiving double rations of food. "Kembo Mohadi, our home affairs minister, whose daughter attends school in Australia, is buying maize at Z$26/kg and reselling it to the hungry at Z$90/kg. In another case of Zanu-PF profiteering, Obed Mpofu, the Matabeleland North governor, owns a major maize-milling and selling operation and pockets the profits," Mkhosi says.

Deep in the Manjolo tribal trust land, at Kanywasulwe village, about 20km south of Lake Kariba, Joseph Mabiza (not his real name) tells of his struggle for survival against the drought, failing crops, wild animals and Zanu PF intimidators. "Our crops are failing because of the heat, and the rain stays away. "We have big problems with Zanu PF because we support the opposition. Green Bombers come into our villages and pillage and beat us. They beat us with sticks, prevent us from going to the food queues to buy mealie meal and force us to buy Zanu PF party cards. "We also have problems with the animals and the little we can salvage from our crops is destroyed by buffalo and elephant. The lions roam free here and catch our livestock. Several people have also become prey," Mbizi says. At the Mphisa in the Matobo district in Matabeleland South, where people have been queuing for food for weeks, people say they are being forced to pay bribes to Green Bombers and Central Intelligence Organisation agents to be allowed to buy food and fuel. Those who refuse are arrested on fabricated charges and could spend weeks in jail.

According to Lovemore Moyo, the Matobo MDC MP, only four organisations - the Grain Marketing Board, the World Food Programme, the Red Cross Society and the Catholic Development Campaign - are licensed by the government to import food into Zimbabwe. "The Grain Marketing Board is a politicised government-controlled body and is staffed with war vets and Zanu PF officials. Areas where the MDC is in control are being ignored and the people receive no food. The Food for Work Programme is no better and is also highly politicised, giving preference to those supporting Zanu PF. In many cases MDC supporters don't get paid although they have completed the work." Moyo said that although most of the international food aid organisations experience "chronic shortages and would never be able to adequately feed the starving masses", they remain neutral in the registration of people and the distribution of food.