The Sunday Mail
DEMOCRACY can indeed breed strange political creatures.
In 2018, among the constellation of candidates competing for the highest job in the land in our teapot-shaped Republic was a chap called Tendai Peter Munyanduri, who was president of the New Patriotic Front (NPF).
Well, he caused a stir when the Nomination Court sat on June 14, 2018, as he delayed proceedings after his cellphone ran out of battery before he could pay his nomination fees through his EcoCash account. Kikikiki.
He had to be spared the blushes by an alert journalist, who offered him a power bank to recharge his device.
The late Kenneth Kaunda
He eventually successfully filed his nomination papers and was soon on the campaign trail.
Bishop Lazi would hazard to say of all candidates in the opposition who were trying to wrest power from ED in 2018, his manifesto was probably the most compelling.
“If NPF manages to come into power,” he promised, “it will strive to provide . . . food on the table for every Zimbabwean, at least an egg, bacon and milk for every breakfast.”
The three magic words in his manifesto were egg, bacon and milk.
While it might sound pedestrian, inane even, this was essentially a loaded political promise that reduces, synthesises and crystallises aspirations to a relatable goal of every human being — nay, of every living thing.
So potent is this political message that Kenneth Kaunda (KK), the founding father of independent Zambia, used to promise the electorate that his administration’s ultimate goal was to ensure that every Zambian has an egg and pint of milk on their table for breakfast each morning.
But there was no happy ending for Munyanduri, who was an electrical engineer with ZESA, as he was swept away by the strong tide in the rough-and-tumble world of politics.
It later seemed to take a toll on him.
Sometime in March 2020, he reportedly had a mental breakdown at an internal wellness programme facilitated by his employer and was committed to a psychiatric ward at Chinhoyi Provincial Hospital.
Thank God, he is now well and probably fancying his chances in the upcoming polls. Kikikiki.
Food is life
But to his credit, Engineer Munyanduri, just like KK, or any other politician for that matter, stumbled on the secret of politics.
In a largely transactional world, where relations are increasingly fickle, a rumbling stomach knows no allegiance.
In fact, allegiances can simply be traded for food, or cash.
On their journey to the Promised Land, the starving Israelites nearly rebelled against Moses and Aaron.
In their diminished reasoning, the slavery and tyranny they experienced in Egypt was relatively better than the privation they were now subjected to in the desert.
Exodus 16: 1-3 recounts: “The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. In the desert, the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, ‘If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.’”
The Lord, however, responds in Exodus 16:11-12.
He tells Moses: “I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them, ‘At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God.’”
They often say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.
You see, food sustains life; in fact, food is life.
There is no greater measure of a people’s wellbeing and standard of life than the quality of food they eat, that is, if they have enough food at all.
This is precisely what Amilcar Cabral, the Guinea-Bissau revolutionary, meant when he said: “Always remember that the people are not fighting for ideas, nor for what is in men’s minds.
“The people fight and accept the sacrifices demanded by the struggle in order to gain material advantages, to live better and in peace, to benefit from progress, and for the better future of their children. National liberation, the struggle against colonialism, the construction of peace, progress and independence are hollow words devoid of any significance unless they can be translated into a real improvement of living conditions.”
Clearly, poverty and hunger hollow out political slogans; conversely, the ability to put food on the table unavoidably becomes a measure of political success.
It even defines the will of the people and their sovereignty.
At the First National Conference of the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution on April 4, 1986, Thomas Sankara, that famous Burkina Faso leader, made a very critical observation.
“Our country produces enough food to feed ourselves. We can even exceed our level of production. Unfortunately, due to lack of organisation, we are still forced to hold out our hand to ask for food aid,” he said.
“Through massive production, we must do away with this food aid, which is an obstacle in our path, creating and instilling this habit in our minds, these instincts of beggars and welfare recipients. We must succeed in producing more — producing more because it is natural that he who feeds you also imposes his will . . . He who does not feed you can demand nothing of you. Here, however, we are being fed every day, every year, and we say: Down with imperialism! Well, your stomach knows what is what.”
It is, therefore, unsurprising that upon assuming power, ED set out to focus on agriculture as a critical sector that could lift people out of poverty — which is both his motivation and obsession — and to reindustrialise and grow the economy.
And, to all intents and purposes, he has managed to make Zimbabwe food-secure, despite the vicissitudes of the worst drought in 40 years in the 2019/2020 cropping season (eclipsing the calamitous 1991/1992 drought), as well as Cyclone Idai in March 2019, which was considered the worst-ever weather-related disaster in the Southern Hemisphere.
We now know that our maize haul for the just-ended cropping season will likely top 2,2 million tonnes — the second-highest output in the past 28 years, after the 2,7 million tonnes produced in 2021.
Also, our total cereal production, at 2,6 million tonnes, is more than the national requirement that presently stands at 1,8 million.
In layman’s terms, it simply means we will be able to feed ourselves and our animals, and still remain with more than 290 000 tonnes in our granary.
Most encouragingly, production of chickens (up 32 percent), milk (15 percent), pigs (12 percent) and the national beef herd (2 percent) continues to grow.
Look at differently, it also means Zimbabweans’ maize meal, meat, milk and, of course, bacon needs will largely be met.
That we are one of the two countries on the continent to be wheat self-sufficient is enough evidence of the incredible milestones we have achieved.
For Bishop Lazarus, whichever way one would like to look at it, this is an impressive feat, considering that somewhere across our borders, there are people frantically scrambling for mealie meal.
But our success in sustainably and progressively increasing output in our agriculture sector, through timeous preparations and continued targeted subsidies, holds different meanings to different people.
For ordinary wananchi, it guarantees food on the table and happiness.
For the industrialist, it means access to cheaper and readily available raw materials to increase production, which, in turn, also translates to more jobs for wananchi.
For the farmer, it simply means more money. All these elements drive economic growth.Last week, Government said it now expects the economy to grow by 6 percent this year, up from the 4 percent that was initially forecast at the beginning of the year.
This trend is likely to continue.
Every other month, the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development is commissioning rehabilitated or new irrigation schemes in various parts of the country, particularly in communal areas, thus expanding the hectarage weaned from reliance on rain-fed agriculture.
This is all part of ED’s grand plan to put 350 000ha under irrigation by 2025.
About 190 000ha have already been covered and an additional 100 000ha will be done by year-end.
War continues
The battle might have been won but the war — to lift our people out of poverty and create a happy and prosperous society that we all want — continues.
You see, our farmers, who are part of the critical infantry in this struggle, have to compete in a market where prices continue to be rigged by the Global North, whose own farmers are lavished with gratuitous subsidies that insulate them from low prices on the international market.
This year, for example, the 27-member European Union began implementing subsidies worth more than US$430 billion (or €386, 6 billion), of which US$299 billion will be paid in direct payments to farmers “as a reward for their performance”.
After its exit from the bloc, the United Kingdom is also doing likewise.
It is no different in the United States, where the federal government provided farms with US$28,5 million in direct payments for various farm programmes in 2021.
All this money shields their farmers from prices on the international market, which are obviously inadequate for farmers in this part of the world to sustain their operations.
As Bishop Lazi told you before, former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere was at pains to put this point across while addressing National Resistance Movement leaders in Uganda on July 17, 1988.
He said: “The Americans spend billions of dollars supporting the American farmer — not through the open market; not through the free market.
The American producer of maize or wheat or soya bean in the open market will not be getting that price he is getting now. He is getting that price through a government subsidy — a huge government subsidy — because the government of the United States realises that if they do not do that, the farmer of the United States will not get a share, a sufficient share of the economy of that country. So the government has to interfere and actually give them money, so it is not a free market . . . So we have got to do something.”
You might have wondered why there once was so much furore sponsored by MDC-CCC on the purported abuse of Command Agriculture, a subsidy scheme to support our own farmers. It was meant to arm-twist Government to abandon it, which could have been catastrophic. Soon, and very soon, we will be a net food exporter.
We are fixing our politics and economics.
Bishop out!
