Right times to sink plough shares

Stephen Mpofu

In these times of global warming which spurs recurrent droughts that wipe out food crops resulting in Zimbabwe and other affected countries holding out the begging bowl, do weather forecasts lack the expertise to advise food growers out there in the country to sink plough shares in the early or latter rains of the cropping season for better yields?

This is no doubt the unmasked question lodged up in the minds of many peasants in Southern Zimbabwe, and probably elsewhere in the country as well, who delayed planting maize at the onset of the rainy season last year afraid that the spell would be brief and drought would again wipe off their labour as in previous years.

However, the peasants made a cardinal blunder that they now live to regret as they rushed to work their fields in the latter, intensified rains and their crops were washed away or waterlogged and now face hunger, this communicologist discovered recently during visits to Mberengwa and Mwenezi districts.

A villager in Chief Matarutse’s area in Mberengwa district and who declined to be named said: “We planted our crops late and these were washed away by heavy rainfall and we will now seek food relief to survive hunger.”

Mr Bonga Gandi of Mwenezi who grows cotton in addition to maize and sorghum also said he planted too late and reaped next to nothing as grass taller than the average human height grew in his field, and that snakes driven from their habitats, caves and holes, took refuge in the tall grass in fields, as well as in other fields elsewhere in the district, and he and his family were scared to venture out into the fields for planting purposes.

The same story of heavy deluges ruining food crops was told to this writer elsewhere in the Pambe area in Mwenezi district with those who put their seed down early smiling at their yield which will however not likely go round to feed those who planted late elsewhere in the district.

This means that the powers-that-be need to carry out a survey of people who harvested next to nothing after their crops were ruined by rainstorms to discover what help can be rendered to them and their families to prevent malnutrition, particularly among children.

No immediate comment could be obtained yesterday from the meteorological office on whether weather experts could more accurately foretell rain patterns for farmers to prepare adequately for the cropping season.

Heavy rains dug pits in parts of access roads that cars, bicycles, ox-drawn carts that villagers use to transport goods around making many areas and communities difficult to access.

An emergency programme to repair roads and salient infrastructure is now underway, thanks to President Emmerson Mnangagwa for an emergency rehabilitation programme for roads and other communication infrastructures in the country to help speed up national development programmes.

In the circumstances, and in this writer’s humble opinion, community leaders such as chiefs and their subordinates and political operatives in rural areas should not just fold their arms and wait for people deployed by the Government to repair damaged roads and other infrastructure which ironically these same rural people use most.

Villagers should be mobilised in communities where roads and bridges need attention to use ox or donkey drawn carts, sledges and wheel barrows, et cetera to deliver various materials for repair work under the supervision of say, people from the relevant government ministry.

With the next onset of the rains just months away, various communities may become virtually inaccessible if the damaged roads and bridges are not repaired as quick as possible and devolution, introduced to uplift the rural poor, might become stranded.

Then in comes this other problematic issue of thieves vandalising railway line cables in the same Mwenezi district for sale in South Africa.

Villagers told this writer during a recent visit to Mwenezi that thieves dug up copper cables in Sarawuro siding, stripped them of rubber cladding in readiness of the smuggling of the cables across the Limpopo, reportedly under the supervision of a buyer waiting on the other side of the Limpopo River.

A National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) magazine confirmed that eight people were arrested by members of the NRZ security branch after a tipoff for stealing copper cables at the Sarawuro and recovered 524kgs of copper cable. These culprits appeared at Rutenga Magistrates Court and were convicted and given sentences ranging between eight and twelve months’ imprisonment.

Railway infrastructure as well as Zesa electricity copper cables being stolen in various areas including Bulawayo are national assets and as such it behoves on every patriotic Zimbabwean to police these assets which benefit each and every one of us, by providing tip-offs, as did the villagers in Sarahuro about the criminals vandalising them so that the long arm of the law can do what it knows best to reduce lawlessness in our nation.

If criminals of every stripe realise that Big Brother – the law – is watching them then the war against these outlaws would have come to an end and a lawless Zimbabwean society, or any other society elsewhere for that matter, will be immortalised in the Guinness Book of Records and cause our Almighty Creator to smile at people, His creatures, who bear an anatomy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and fear evil.