Dateline ACT

Southern Africa 0802

"Almost every family in need of food"

Gutu Province, Zimbabwe, November 18, 2002
By Rainer Lang

It is early in the morning and Jacob and Patricia Magarire with their ten-month-old baby still have eight kilometres to go. They are heading for the business centre in Basera to register their names for food distribution.

Hundreds of people have gathered in Basera, a village in southern Zimbabwe's Gutu province. Here, a local aid organisation, Christian Care (CC), is in the process of registering villagers for food distribution. (CC is a member of ACT- a global alliance of churches and related agencies working in the field of humanitarian relief.)

The distribution is targeted at 40,000 beneficiaries for general feeding and 13,500 for children under five year old for supplementary feeding. People are registered and vetted according to their needs."The level of poverty is the main criteria we use," says Courage Chirobe, a CC program officer. "Also female or child-headed-households are considered first."

The vetting process is explained to the villagers by Mugove Chakurira, another CC programme officer- first to the village leaders and then to all the people who have come. He emphasises that Christian Care is neutral when it comes to food distribution and that regardless of political affiliation, gender or beliefs, anyone who qualifies according to the needs assessment is entitled to food.

For Jacob Magarire and the hundreds of other villagers, their hope of food now lies with Christian Care. The drought that has gripped this part of the country for months has seen to it that jobs are no longer easy to come by. "Nobody needs my services at the moment," says the 29-year blacksmith. They harvested nothing during last year's harvest and all the maize, groundnuts and sorghum that he and his wife had planted on their piece of land was lost, he explains.

Anna Zindonga, who is also standing in the registration queue, did some dry planting a day before. "I am just trying anything," says Anna, who has four children. Her husband works in Bulawayo. During the good rainy seasons, she usually harvested two bags of maize, which saw her through to the next season. Now she has to ask her neighbours for food.

Another couple Sokai and Janet Shoko say they have no more food left to eat. Until recently they could buy food from the shops, "if there was anything", says Sokai. But now they have run out of money and they have had nothing to eat for the last two days.

A group of women who have come back from registrating for food relief in a nearby village expressed their relief by chanting and singing as they walked home. They showed us the wild fruits that they now survive on, (which they grind into porridge.) "People are very happy that Christian Care is distributing food," says Rev. R.D Mavinga from Basera, who is also assisting in the registration process which was finalised at the end of October. Food distribution started early November.

Programme officer Courage Chisobe hopes that they will receive more funding as "this would allow us to extend the number of people, who will benefit from food relief," says Chisobe.

However, Joseph Goko, Christian Care area manager for Masvingo South, says that it has now become difficult to define the needy ones. "Almost every family here is in need of food," says Goko adding that even if they have the money, there is often no place where to buy the food. "The only solution is food aid."

He emphasises that the food crisis in Zimbabwe will deteriorate rapidly without rain and then says, although the crisis is not as visible as in other countries like Ethiopia for instance, it will be too late for many people when the world finally realises the extent of the emergency.