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The mysterious grain drain | |||||||||
 There is a new crime in Zimbabwe: driving with food. Not eating a takeaway at the wheel, but travelling from one part of the country to another with maize on your back seat.
Three bags is OK but more is not, as our undercover team discovered this autumn. An official from the Grain Marketing Board wrote them out a ticket at a roadblock. Thankfully unaware of the hidden camera, he let slip the reason. "There's nothing in the villages. Even in the town there is hunger." The truth was out of the bag. This fertile and once well farmed country is no longer producing enough food to feed its people, despite Robert Mugabe's boasts to the contrary.
In May he told aid agencies to go elsewhere as his people were in danger of choking on what they already had. This came as a surprise to the World Food Programme which was feeding over five million people earlier this year. Once it used to buy grain in Harare to feed neighbouring countries. Now it is the other way round. Seeking proof
The Famine Early Warning System which monitors hunger across the world now labels Zimbabwe with emergency status alongside Chad and Ethiopia. Zimbabwean journalist Farai Sevenzo set out to discover the truth about the lack of food in his country. His aim was not just to take the word of opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) politicians but to find out and film evidence for himself. Hence the bags of grain. It was not an easy task in a country where the independent journalism has been crushed and the BBC is not welcome. One of his first encounters was a demonstration against the NGO bill which would control foreign charities and organisations, including those working for better democracy. He secretly filmed as the police violently broke it up. Next stop was a hospital in a region run by the ruling Zanu PF where the local governor had been brave enough to ask for food assistance.
"These children are all malnourished," the ward nurse told him in a whisper. She was not able to speak out in public but the Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube, can. He explains how children die of malnutrition in his area. "I know people who have committed suicide, pensioners, because they can't live - some of them white. People are suffering. It is impossible to live in Zimbabwe, honestly," he says, frustrated that anyone might think he would exaggerate the truth. Poachers and politics In the countryside Farai finds plenty of evidence that Mugabe's land reforms have contributed to the food shortages. Fields which were once productive now lie fallow or support straggling shoots.
Farmers complain of lack of water, seed crop and fertiliser. Most of those with the expertise in running big farms, as opposed to small holdings, have gone. Some to Zambia. Others are on their way to Nigeria at the invitation of the government there. We do hear from successful cash croppers and a local Zanu PF commander with a herd of cattle and dreams of striking it rich. "When the people know that in the soil there is money, they start to work hard," he says. He may be right but the land on which he has settled - and divided up among new farmers - is a nature conservancy: Buffalo Range, home to rhino, zebra and other game. A sad spinoff of the hunger story is that the new settlers on land once devoted to wildlife, are trapping and killing the animals. Game that was once carefully culled is now being slaughtered wholesale. "We have lost 95% of our game," says one game warder. "Whatever comes along they will take it. Meat is meat to them."
Next March there are elections and cynics predict that food shortage will suddenly come to an end. Food impounded by the Grain Marketing Board and clandestinely imported from South Africa is expected to be made available to those intending to vote Zanu PF. Sure enough, Farai witnesses trains from South Africa in sidings at the Grain Marketing Board in Harare. Food supply is no accident here, say the opposition, but a means to prolong power. "The government wants to be the only one with food," says Ransen Gasela, the shadow agriculture minister. "We cannot play with people's lives." | |||||||||
It is impossible to live in Zimbabwe, honestly 
