Mugabe Government Has Done "Enormous" Damage to Food System

(USAID Natsios testifies before Congress) (880)
By Charles W. Corey
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- The ongoing repression of the Zimbabwean people by the
Mugabe government and the ill-advised land and agriculture polices
have done an "enormous amount of damage" to the country's food
security system, warned Andrew Natsios, administrator of the U.S.
Agency for International Development (USAID).

In testimony before the Committee on International Relations in the
U.S. House of Representatives April 1, Natsios said "the government
seems not to understand that the confiscation of the large farms by
the state and then the giving of those farms to members of the inner
circle of the ruling party and relatives of President Mugabe has done
an enormous amount of damage..." to the nation's food security.

The seizure of the farms, combined with bad management, has resulted
in an 80% reduction of food crops for this year, a "massive reduction
of food production in the country to a disastrous level," he warned.

The USAID administrator also told the lawmakers that in a relatively
prosperous country as Zimbabwe once was -- people can usually survive
one year of drought without suffering mass casualties. "They cannot do
it for two years," in a row, he warned, and the second year has begun.

The Zimbabwean people, Natsios told the committee, were among the best
educated in Africa with a 92% literacy rate along with an advanced
infrastructure and agricultural system. Mugabe "literally destroyed
that." Mugabe's Zimbabwe, he said, now stands as "one of the worst
examples in African history of gross mismanagement of predatory
government policy and of tyranny over its own people."

Natsios also accused the Mugabe regime of using food as a weapon as
has been the case in Matebeleland.

"Matebeleland is a region of the country that has traditionally been
in opposition to Dr. Mugabe and his party. They have never liked him
and never voted for him." The government, he said, has "attempted to
shut off all food distributions in those areas and prevents reporters
from going in to see what the consequence is. We are not seeing mass
starvation yet," he said, "but with the second year of reduced
harvests, we are going to face famine conditions."

Malnutrition rates are rising, he warned, "We have examples in some
provinces...of children whose parents are of the opposition being
pulled out of feeding lines and told they will not eat because their
parents supported the opposition candidates in the last election.

"There is a politicization" of food distribution going on but, he
stressed, the Mugabe government has not been able to use U.S. food aid
as a weapon. U.S. food aid, Natsios told the lawmakers, "has gone
through NGOs and the World Food Programme, and none of it has gone
through the government, nor will it go through the government. "

Underlying the Zimbabwe crisis is the general African problem of
agricultural development. Natsios stressed the importance of helping
African nations wean themselves from emergency food aid and break the
constant cycles of famine through consistent agricultural development.
Although he cited recent increases in U.S. funding for agricultural
development, Natsios characterized them as woefully short of what is
truly needed.

In 2001, USAID spent $113 million (on agricultural development); there
has been a $50 million increase this year to $163 million, he said,
but that is still not enough. And there are other competing interests
for funding such as HIV/AIDS or environmental issues that rely on
their stronger constituencies to siphon money from agricultural
development.

"If you ask African heads of state, prime ministers, finance ministers
-- not the agricultural ministers who have a vested interest -- and
other ministers where we should be putting money in Africa, they will
all tell you agriculture because 80% of poor people in Africa live on
the farms.

"If you want to reduce poverty, you have to invest in agriculture," he
stressed. AS an example, Natsios cited three things that need to be
institutionalized to help Africa and especially Ethiopia survive its
current crisis:

-- Greater use of irrigation on a small-scale. Citing India as an
example, he said that country has not had a famine since its
independence, largely because it practices widespread agricultural
irrigation.

-- The utilization of new varieties of drought-resistant wheat and
maize now being developed through biotechnology in South Africa that
are specifically targeted to the African markets;

-- The education of the next generation of African scientists to
conduct appropriate research focused on what is needed in Africa.

One of the key factors in the last item, Natsios said, are the USAID
agricultural scholarships that once played so large a role in
improving agriculture in Africa and around the world. "In 1980, the
United States funded 20,000 scholarships a year in agriculture. Today,
that number has shrunk to 900," he lamented.

"I think it is scandalous that there has been such a dramatic
reduction in the number of scholarships to people from the Third World
in American universities -- to take that technology back to their own
countries and use it for their own benefit. So we are putting a new
investment into [agriculture] scholarships in the United States."

(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International
Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site:
http://usinfo.state.gov)