The Sunday Mail
Having spent the past week in my rural home in Zaka (kwaBenzi), I am not going to try to be clever and pretend as if I know what has been happening around the capital.
I don’t know nothing.
Perhaps some of y’all city boys and uptown girls can sync this cowboy’s curious ears on what has been unfolding in my absence.
A week, as Harold Wilson said in 1964, is a long time in politics.
I guess the rule applies in other facets, too, reason why even the Bible says that a day is like a thousand years.
So, I left town a day after the National Budget presentation, and was glad to get a pull-out copy in The Herald.
I had to endure a lot of courage and “cruelty” to keep the document from my village uncle who thought I had brought him cigarette paper.
At one point, I caught him after he had carefully torn a piece of paper from this document, despite prior “threats” of all manner against such an act.
He then populated the small paper with madhirihora, rolled it into a pen barrel-size cigarette, set its tip ablaze before my regretting eyes and puffed it several times only to stop when he started coughing.
Watching him pump this quantum of smoke into his lungs and release it like vehicle exhaust provoked me to understand why the very budget he was smoking thought it wise to increase the excise duty on cigarettes.
“The current excise duty rate . . . does not reflect the social cost associated with consumption of harzadous substances,” argued the budget.
Some of these toxic substances found in this de-merit good include cyanide (which was being used to poison our elephants), tar, and others.
What boggled my mind, though, is why, when it comes to alcohol, the reasoning of the need to ameliorate the social cost in the consumption of this hazardous substance didn’t take precedence.
Alcohol, like its manufacturers always remind us, can be hazardous to health.
The budget, however, saw it fit to rationalise the excise duty of this addictive and de-merit product to encourage its consumption.
The irony is quite remarkable.
What, however, moved me from my continuous conversation with my uncle was his bitterness with the national silo, the Grain Marketing Board.
How the rains have started falling and others have started to bury their seeds under, while his hands remain folded.
He hasn’t any to bury because “tani rakainda kuGMB”.
He sold a tonne of his maize to GMB in mid-August, and has not been paid to date. So he won’t be able to buy inputs.
It got me thinking just how many more small-scale farmers were affected by this. And how it frustrates early planting.
It appears that farmers like my uncle, who have no irrigation facilities, have to make the most of early planting in this first half of the summer season.
The 2015 National Budget cited “likelihood of mid-season dry spell in the second half of the season”, as the number one downside to potentially militate against the envisaged growth and budget targets.
It, therefore, is important that Government urgently provides resources to GMB to pay farmers who have not yet received payments for the grain they have sold.
The National Budget statement said Treasury intends to pay the outstanding grain delivery obligations through the mobilisation of an additional US$50 million through the issuance of Agricultural Marketing Authority Agro Bills.
The time this may take to bring results ought to be reconciled with the Budget’s number one downside alluded to earlier, lest we compromise agricultural production for the 2014/15 season.
This is not just my uncle’s problem, it apparently is a national food security issue that is in line with Zim-Asset!
Enough of my poor uncle’s woes.
Believe you, me, I was appalled by the wastage of food by folks in the village, thanks to lack of robust post-harvest strategies.
It reminded me of one agricultural economist who pointed out that the problem of Africa is really not food underproduction, but overproduction.
Of course, this is non-mistakably true.
Many folks in my rural area put a lot of pressure on the staple: maize. Visit any home at any given time and zimukonde resadza is what you are greeted with.
Yet, there are many crops and plants which they can preserve to eat throughout the year and reduce pressure on maize.
Walking through the village, I saw plenty of makwakwa fallen under the tree and rotting. Yet these can be dried to make hwakwa, a snack that can be eaten in between meals to reduce sadza intake.
Mauyu (baobab fruit), too, just rot in the bush, yet these are nutritious and – again – can be stored and consumed throughout the year.
Little, I bet, do my rural folks know that mauyu actually have more iron than red meat, with 150 grammes of the delicacy containing more calcium than two glasses of milk.
With effective post-harvest preservation strategies, hunger can be a thing of the past in the country.
Many crops rot because of poor post-harvest strategies. Usual casualties are manhanga, mapudzi, ipwa, magaka, mango, watermelons, and vegetables.
Government should support dynamic and innovative food preservation and post-harvest strategies to avert hunger and ensure food security, especially in the countryside – my visit to kwaBenzi strongly compelled this thinking.
We can pick a leaf from China.
At the moment, Government is not prioritising this important issue as it is left for donors to deal with.
The 2015 National Budget, for instance, is relying on the Food and Agricultural Organisation’s US$208 000 to reduce post-harvest handling losses.
FAO will in 2015 capacitate 3 000 farmers in Mbire and Hwedza on post-harvest handling.
However, this is just a drop in the ocean considering how this ought to be rolled out at national scale.
Zaka also bears true testimony of the tight liquidity conditions prevailing in the country. The few banks at Jerera had no cash, with one of the banks indicating that their coffers had been dry for one solid week. Barter trade is lively for most food produce. Cash is largely used to buy goods in shops, with high incidences of counterfeit notes being experienced, and small tuckshops in remote parts bearing the brunt.
This is happening at a time when Government wants to embark on campaigns to educate people on the features of the new special coins to circulate as soon as 2015 touches down.
The motive is, of course, to increase awareness and reduce incidences of the coins being counterfeited. But then, who counterfeits coins?
The real education should be on the security features of the foreign notes in circulation so that my rural neighbour, Mbuya vaDhenhera (who runs a small tuckshop at Matavanda) will not be duped with another fake US$100 note.
Not again, please.
And still on special coins, I hear some folks are suspecting Government wants to use this as a subtle way of sneaking back the local currency into circulation, although Government’s voice is now hoarse from making assurances against its return in the short-term.
Be that as it may, it would, of course, not have surprised me even if Government had announced that it is introducing the minted coins as a gradual passageway for the introduction of the local currency.
Eventually, we shall have our local currency after meeting the known targets outlined by Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa – one can’t deny that.
It won’t take 10 years to meet them. And we know that the lifespan of coins is 50 years.
So, to me, the coins are really in preparation for introduction of local currency, as we can’t just throw them away when that time comes.
Again, these coins are very likely not going to be eroded in value, as they are pegged to the US dollar.
I wouldn’t have done justice to conclude without talking about the plight of Zaka folk in accessing medical treatment for dog and snake bites.
Not a day goes by without news of someone having been bitten by a snake while fetching firewood, or getting bitten by chimbwamupengo.
Unfortunately, the local clinics and hospitals are said not to have the medicine most of the time.
Mainini Mai Melo, who was bitten by chimbwamupengo a fortnight ago, had to go as far as Chiredzi to get treatment.
A couple of years back, my mother, too, had to travel as far as Harare to get treated for a dog-bite after failing to get treatment at local hospitals such as Mashoko and St Antony.
Meanwhile, some local folks risk getting the deadly rabbies disease as they don’t seek the proper medical attention after being bitten by dogs.
Medical accessibility is a constitutional right whose realisation must be given priority, especially to poor folks in rural areas.
The trip to Zaka that saw me treading from kwaBenzi to Zibwowa to Dabwa to Sengejira to Bvukururu to Muroyi brought insights that led to the penning of this piece.
And so I return from kwaBenzi with much love despite the very hot sun and the few issues mentioned above.
