UNLIKE other years, Zimbabwe is expecting a bumper harvest in many parts of the country.
In places where the rain has been abundant and where people could afford fertiliser and seeds, the food will be plenty.
However, at this time of the year, before the harvest, there is hunger in some parts of Zimbabwe.
On the World Food Programme (WFP) website, it noted that: “The 2013 Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee (ZimVAC) rural livelihoods report, which estimates food insecurity levels, predicts that 2,2 million Zimbabweans will be unable to access sufficient food during the peak hunger period, January – March 2014.
“The rising food insecurity levels are due to a combination of factors, including weather conditions, the high cost or lack of availability of fertilisers and seeds, and rising food prices due to another poor harvest.”
The report goes on to say that two million Zimbabweans are desperately in need of food and WFP planned to provide food to 1,8 million of the most vulnerable people.
However, due to lack of money, WFP can only feed 1,2 million people by giving food rations.
This report is based on research and in many ways, it is factual.
We are suffering from food insecurity in many parts of Zimbabwe.
However, the report does not tell readers why some of the people in Zimbabwe are hungry.
At the same time, the report ignores the history of the country and how that has affected our current food production.
A report such as that of the WFP should at least include a paragraph that looks back to the past to at least explain why the Africans in Zimbabwe are in need of food.
The Zimbabwe situation is unique among African former colonies of the British Empire.
Unlike other nations, Zimbabwe had a settler white community.
The people of Zimbabwe never used to wait in line for food from donors.
There is a whole history of hunger in Zimbabwe which the WFP and many other donors do not mention.
A picture of hungry Zimbabweans invokes once again negative perceptions of Africans as being poor and powerless.
These problems have roots in the way land was unequally distributed by the colonial authorities.
Food insecurity has been caused by a history of in equality and poverty.
Cecil John Rhodes’s British South Africa Company (BSAC), seized land and cattle in 1890, forcing people off the land and shooting them.
In 1923, the colonialists had taken control of one sixth of the land in Rhodesia. This land was prime fertile land where rainfall was abundant.
The company demarcated African land, relegating Africans into reserves or Tribal Trust Lands which were less fertile.
In the north the land was infested with tsetse flies and in most areas people became overcrowded living on poor unproductive soil.
That was an indirect form of murder.
This white population comprised three percent and yet they controlled 75 percent of the economically viable land.
Meanwhile, the 97 percent black Africans controlled only 23 percent of poor overcrowded and drought prone land.
The company then took African cattle forcing Africans to work on the farms that had been pegged out by settlers, demanding tax in cash for hut tax, cattle, dog and even bicycle tax thus forcing the people to work under a slave like system called chibharo.
In 1930, the Southern Rhodesia government passed the Land Apportionment Act which legalised apartheid-like system whereby the black people were separated from the whites.
Historical statistics from the department of Agriculture note that, 50 000 white farmers received 49 million acres while the 1,1 million Africans were settled on 29 million acres of Native Reserve Areas.
As a result of losing their land, the Africans began to suffer from food shortages those who worked as labourers for almost nothing received food rations.
The term ‘Native Reserve’ was changed to the ‘Tribal Trust Lands’ in 1965.
The land issue and food insecurity was the main reason behind the liberation war. According to Tapiwa Mabaye of the Ethics of Development in Global Environment, “At independence in 1980, there were 33m hectares of arable farming land in Zimbabwe.
“Of this land, 6 000 white commercial farmers owned 45 percent of it, 11m Ha of the most prime land.
“8 500 mainly small black commercial farmers controlled five percent of the land in the drier regions.
“700 000 black families occupied the remaining 50 percent of the poorest unfertile land in the communal areas, the former reserves, from the colonial era.”
“Despite the current shortage of food in many parts of Zimbabwe, the country tried to overcome the problem of hunger with the land reform programme.
“In 2000 the government introduced the fast track Land Reform Programme.
“Then in 2002 the government passed the Land Acquisition Amendment Act and the fast track Land Reform Programme began.”
As such, Zimbabwe has moved many milestones in helping the people to feed themselves thought the Land Reform Programme.
With seeds and fertilisers, and the blessing of good rain, the harvest in many parts of Zimbabwe is plentiful.
Zimbabwe has supported small-scale farmers by giving them land.
Basically, Zimbabwe has taken back the land that has been stolen.
From an African perspective, the question of food remains a major problem facing the continent.
The African Union (AU) declared 2014 as the ‘Year of Agriculture’.
Commenting of this declaration, the AU spokesperson for agriculture and rural development, Rhoda Peace Tumusiine said Africa’s in ability to feed her people is a situation that is deplorable.
Speaking to the magazine, New African, Ms Tumisiine said: “It is unacceptable that a continent with so much potential for agricultural production could be home to the world’s largest number of the hungry and malnourished people.
“The paradox is worsened by the fact that while agriculture has been starved of financing, Africa has been spending nearly US40 bn annually importing food.
“This has to be reversed.”
In 2014, the cause of food shortage must be addressed and historical inequalities questioned, especially by the donor agencies who continue to perpetuate the stereotype of starving Africans.
Apart from feeding the masses, WFP and others should increase support for the small-scale farmer.
The African farmer, both man and woman also needs access to the global markets to much money from the land and feed the family.
Gone should be the days when Africans line up for food in a country where the soil is rich and in abundance.