admingoals.
An election, any election is mediated by a full or empty belly, whether you (yes, you) like it or not, agree or disagree. Thus a steaming dish of a staple on the dinner table is where people’s hearts are, as the first port of call before any other interests come into focus.
No small wonder then that the politics of the stomach boast a niche even in international relations with donors or food aid attaching political strings with which to put recipients in harness. The use of political food as a subtle coercive — some will say persuasive — lever has been very much germane closer to home and the chagrin of some political gurus.
Just recently Labour and Social Services Minister Paurina Mpariwa headed to Masvingo firing volleys at Governor Titus Maluleke, for suspending the activities of some non-governmental organisations there accused of using food aid as a political ballgame that they played with members of a certain political party.
In her fulmination the minister said only she, not the Governor, was vested with the prerogative to register or de-register NGOs operating in the country.
While that may be the minister’s first line of responsibility, it does not follow that provincial governors and other administrative arms of government should allow political mischief makers to run riot by using food to campaign for a political organisation of their own foreign government’s choice.
Zimbabweans who follow the activities of NGOs should know that some of those foreign bodies masquerading as good Samaritans in this country have proved to be notorious by working against government policies as tools of their anti-Zanu-PF, anti-President Mugabe governments. If such politically divisive activities are allowed to ramify themselves across the country there is no telling the ghastly boomerang effects that might result in terms of political violence.
It is for the reason that food — the economy — occupies the centre stage in the lives of all nations that, its scarcity, as one that now looms large in Zimbabwe, should be managed well enough so that unscrupulous political organisations and their backers do not manipulate it for their own political aggrandisement.
At any rate, Zimbabwe’s land reform, meant to fill bellows, put smiles on people’s faces and restore confidence in the Government and with that achievable durable peace and stability is already under siege with sanctions unleashed on the country by Western imperialism to try to cause food shortage in hopes that the resultant political disaffection will cause riots or similar mayhem making the country ungovernable and therefore ripe for regime change.
And is it not tragically ironic that some Zimbabweans support the efforts by foreigners to take food out of their own mouths as well as out of those of their kith and kin, just because they want foreign powers to draw them into power by the nose? Indeed, even those who ought to manage our agriculture in such a way as to make land reform succeed to put the country’s detractors to shame do not seem to put all their hearts into the agrarian revolution to make it defy obstacles places in its path by Zimbabwe’s enemies.
Why, for instance, did those charged with the responsibility to ensure efficient food production sit on their laurels while farmers ran hither and thither searching for inputs until it was late? Agriculture is one of those activities where timeliness is so essential that to miss it is tantamount to missing a bountiful harvest.
Incidentally, complaints by farmers about delays in securing requisites inputs such as seed and fertilisers have almost become a proverb and this against fiery rhetoric by political high-ups for food self-sufficiency to avoid dependency on international food aid which might come with strings attached to strangle us.
Right now there is some subdued hoo-ha by farmers over an inadequate and late distribution of ammonium nitrate that farmers badly needed for top dressing their crops while time was still ripe. Some farmers in Mashonaland provinces say they were somewhat relieved when informed on the eve of Christmas that urea was available and farmers could access it at the Grain Marketing Board.
However, the farmers discovered after Christmas that some so-called chefs collected as much as 60 tonnes each or more for themselves with a “chef” in Manicaland grabbing as much as 120 tonnes for his own use, some farmers in Mashonaland complained.
They claimed that from what was left, they were then allocated a bag each for use by the GMB — something about which the farmers still feel very sore. That disparity would appear to have affected some farmers elsewhere in the country, with a potential for dampening spirits in future.
What is obvious indicted here is a serious paucity in contingency planning which has the capacity to forestall obvious lapses in agriculture as in any other activities.
l Stephen Mpofu is the former editor of Chronicle.
Online Reporter