The Sunday Mail
Mrs Silunde Kuzowana, a grandmother of six, trudges along the rocky terrain of rural Mashava balancing a huge rock on her head before plunking it into a large crater in the middle of a road leading to Bere Cemetery.
Out of breath, she struggles to recover and looks jaded.
She fills her lungs and rests uncomfortably in the scorching heat before taking massive gulps of water from a five-litre plastic container.
She barks a few orders to a group of women who have huddled, engrossed in animated conversation, ordering them to return to work.
The women scurry in different directions.
Mrs Kuzowana is the local co-ordinator of Government’s Drought Relief Public Works Programme, commonly known as the Food for Work Programme.
Today, she is leading from the front, supervising a group of close to 60 people – mainly aged women – from the Ward 5 community of Mashava in reconstructing a road.
Only a few weeks ago, the road leading to Bere Cemetery was impassable owing to years of neglect – a common predicament affecting much of the community’s physical infrastructure. Much of the roads are a mess, schools are in decrepit conditions and clinics are run down.
“This road had become a burden for the society,” she says. “Hearses were unable to navigate through this road during burials and we were forced to physically carry the coffins for hundreds of metres to the burial place.
We have, however, been reconstructing the road over the last few weeks and the results are quite impressive. Vehicles can now pass through without any hindrance and this has gone some way in helping the community.”
The gravel road has undergone a dramatic transformation owing to the reconstructive work by Mrs Kuzowana and her team of community servants.
In exchange for their service to community, the team, individually, receives a monthly ration of a 50kg bag of grain through the programme being co-ordinated by the Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Ministry.
The Food for Work programme seeks to engender community infrastructural development through provision of food relief to vulnerable households.
The programme is meant to shield vulnerable communities from the El Nino-induced drought, which decimated much of the crop from the 2015-16 summer cropping season across the country.
Currently, hundreds of thousands of food-insecure Zimbabweans across the eight rural provinces are receiving food aid for rehabilitating critical community infrastructure.
The Mashava community has one of the most vibrant Food for Work programmes in the country. Already, Bere Primary School has been rehabilitated, Bere Clinic has also been refurbished while work on the cemetery road is underway.
Clean-up campaigns have also been conducted while grass has also been slashed. Reconstruction of the community’s main road, the one linking Mashava and Temeraire Mine has also begun. The road is a major conduit for travel and local trade.
Mrs Kuzowana’s team has over the last five months dedicated 15 days of each month, working three days a week between 7am and 10 am. She says the programme has helped stave off hunger in a community that is one of the most affected by last season’s drought.
“The programme has come as a god-send and we are grateful to Government for introducing such an initiative.”
Ward 5 Councillor, Mrs Elizabeth Ncube, who is responsible for compiling the list of beneficiaries for the programme, painted a gloomy picture of the food situation.
“The programme has been very helpful,” she said.
“Lives of some families have been changed. Evidence shows that nearly all households in this community are, in one way or the other affected by food insecurity.
The only gainfully employed people here are either teachers or policemen. The rest are pensioners, illegal gold panners or unemployed.”
In a community of over 5 000 households, her ward was only allocated 160 posts for the programme, a situation she says complicates the vetting process.
Her contention is that Government should increase the allocation on the basis of the biting food insecurity stalking her community.
According to the latest ZimVAC report, Matabeleland North, Masvingo and Midlands provinces have the highest proportions of food-insecure households. An estimated 738 291 households are reportedly food-insecure in Masvingo alone. This figure is only second to Manicaland, where 761 084 face food insecurity.
The Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee report notes that around 42 percent of Zimbabwe’s rural population face food insecurity during the peak hunger period – the highest since 2009.
Nationwide, around over four million have inadequate food.
In Mashava, agriculture is virtually impossible owing to the notoriously dry conditions and poor soils.
As a result, communities there depended on opportunities offered by mining companies. But this has all since changed.
In what now seems like a generation ago, Mashava was a vibrant mining community where Gath’s Mine, King Mine and Temeraire Mine provided employment for locals and many others from far afield.
Back then food insecurity was uncommon, unless in cases of serious droughts. But today, the community resembles a pale shadow of its former self. It has been brought to its knees by the drought.
The downsizing of Gaths mine and closure of the rest of the mining companies has dissipated any hope of economic vibrancy.
Now without the opportunities offered by mining and no hope of productive agriculture the community is at a crossroads.
Ezira Ruvai, the National Assembly representative for Masvingo West constituency, under which Mashava falls, said Government needed to act fast to arrest food insecurity.
“Our communities are in a very difficult place.
The drought has really affected everyone here,” he said. “While programmes such as the food-for-work initiative are helping in some way, there is need for more such initiatives otherwise the situation will only get worse. As a community we are also doing our bit to ensure that no one starves and also to compliment what our Government is doing.
Already our focus is now on the forthcoming cropping season where we intend to take advantage of initiatives such as the command agriculture programme.”
Zimbabwe is experiencing one of its worst droughts in recent years, which has been exacerbated by the El Nino phenomenon.
President Mugabe has declared the drought a national disaster and Government has launched an international drought relief appeal for US$1,6 billion. The appeal seeks to build resilience through food importation, safe water supply, and micro-nutrient/under-five and school children feeding.
It is also focusing on irrigation infrastructure rehabilitation and production, livestock support and de-stocking, and wildlife relief.
