The Sunday Mail
Godfrey Mutizwa
At 15, Amanda Muzenda already has the experience of women twice her age.
Apart from successfully raising her daughter in the first three months of her life, Amanda has also been looking after her three siblings for the past three months after their mother deserted the family household in Mwenezi, Masvingo, in southern Zimbabwe.
“We have just been taking each day as it comes,” Amanda said as she nursed her baby at the family homestead in Chief Neshuro’s area, in Mwenezi, one of Zimbabwe’s top 10 food-insecure districts after the rains failed for a second season.
“We think she went away because we had no food here,” she said, crediting a neighbour and social welfare intervention for their survival to-date.
Zimbabwe’s worst drought in
35 years has left close to three million people facing food shortages, resulting in the Government appealing for US$1,6 billion for food assistance.
In Mwenezi, near the country’s southern border, officials say the drought has driven young people from the rural areas mainly to South Africa and nearby towns like Masvingo and Beitbridge.
It has put pressure on an economy suffering de-industrialisation and increasing informalisation. The World Bank forecasts growth at 1,5 percent this year, hobbled by the drought and lower commodity prices. Government is targeting 2,7 percent.
In Southern Africa, neighbours Malawi and South Africa, the traditional bread basket of the region, have also been affected after warmer than usual ocean and sea temperatures made for an exceptionally strong El Nino resulting in 2015 being the hottest year on record, according to the World Meteorological Organisation.
Nicholas Shiri, the headmaster of Chikadzi Primary School, near Neshuro Business Centre, said the school had a number of children now in the care of relatives after the parents moved to South Africa.
Usually the school came to know when pupils dropped out of school or when fees or other contributions weren’t paid on time.
“Our enrolment is down to around 380 from over 400 before the drought,” said Shiri who has headed the school for the past 15 years.
“We have a lot of kids now in this situation. And a lot of parents think it’s better to get the children working than attending school on an empty stomach.”
Mwenezi lies in Zimbabwe’s natural region five, the driest of the country’s five agro-ecological regions where crop yields are low and the risk of crop failure is one in every three years, according to a study done by Mandivamba Rukuni and Carl K Eicher in 1994.
Cattle and goat rearing are the main sources of income while maize and millet are the dominant crops with a sprinkling of groundnuts and rapoko.
Emmanuel Zinungwa, who teaches fifth grade at Chikadzi said average attendances have dropped by about 10 percent per day while attention in classes was also flagging because of hunger. A water shortage even after recent rains was exacerbating the situation, he said.
“You see the evidence everywhere,” said Zinungwa who has taught at the school for a decade.
“We have even had cases of our athletes fainting in addition to the usual complaints of headaches and stomach pains. It’s an extremely tough environment for children to learn.”
More than half-a-million children are threatened by hunger, according to the latest Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee survey. The United Nations and its partners have so far helped a million people after raising US$76 million. But the UN said last month a revised humanitarian plan requires US$350 million for the 12 months through to March 2017.
China has committed a further US$24,6 million while the United States has added US$40 million and says more funds will be mobilised in the months ahead, a commitment also made by the European Union and the United Kingdom.
But the UN says the long-term solution lies in attracting private money.
“While we should scale-up our immediate humanitarian response to save lives and ring-fence the gains made in the social sector over the past years, we should aim at re-doubling public and private investments as well as lure foreign direct investment and maintain official development assistance to build a resilient, inclusive and sustainable economy as the recurrent natural disasters could be the new normal,” the UN resident co-ordinator Bishow Parajuli said in a statement last month.
Government says its focus is on food importation and related logistics, social protection, emergency safe water supply, a school meal programme, emergency irrigation rehabilitation and production and livestock support and de-stocking.
Mwenezi, home to 175 000 people, had a food insecurity incidence of 50 percent, the fifth highest among the country’s 33 districts, according to the Zimvac report.
That reading, coming ahead of winter and the dry months of August, September and October, has led Government officials and donors to warn that hunger will worsen in the third quarter when depleted food reserves run out.
While recent rains have greened the countryside, they mask food shortages across the district where many are already eating into reserves and what little they harvested from this year’s crop, said Veronica Muchechetere, chairperson of the district food and nutrition committee.
On average, families had a month’s food supplies, she said.
Most parts of the district received very little rain in November with the average dropping to 15 millimetres versus 49 millimetres.
“The dry spell and heatwave led to a write-off of the November crop and many people had to re-plant in January,” Muchechetere said.
“But then we had a 31-day dry spell before the rains came back in March.’’
As a result, the average yield is expected to drop to 0,29 tonnes per hectare compared to the traditional 0,48 tonnes per hectare.
“There has to be help,’’ she said.
“I don’t want to think there won’t be any help.”
