5 Brigade soldiers

In the 21st century when the Zimbabwe government uses food deprivation as a means of silencing dissent, it is reviving an established practice of political control. Zimbabwe is a drought-prone country, and drought strikes most frequently in the western provinces of Matabeleland. The years 1982, 83 and 84 produced typically poor harvests or no harvests at all, and the rural population learned to depend on drought relief in the form of food aid from relatives in town or from distribution networks established by the Social Welfare Department and the churches. But in Matabeleland North, from January to April 1983 and in Matabeleland South, from February to April 1984, a curfew imposed by government blocked the movement of people and goods, including food. It is not a coincidence that these months were chosen - they are the months before the harvest, when granaries in Matabeleland villages are almost always empty, and the people would suffer the most.

The curfew was a deliberate and calculated policy to starve the people of Matabeleland into submission, at a time when government claimed to be fighting a dissident rebellion. The fiction that people were supporting "dissidents" was an excuse to punish them for daring to vote for ZAPU and terrorise them into abandoning their traditional support for the party led by Joshua Nkomo,

Control of food was not new in Zimbabwe. In 1896, the British had tried to quell Ndebele resistance in the Matopos by starving them out; Smith's army and police had tried something similar and for the same reasons. However, the massacres and starvation of rural people in Matabeleland in the 1980's far surpassed anything of its kind perpetrated by Smith. While these atrocities failed to induce the people to vote for ZANU PF in the elections of 1985, in the end the ZAPU leadership capitulated and joined with ZANU at the end of 1987 in order to stop the punishment of their people.

A government that is capable of massacring and starving their own people once can certainly do it again. So we should not have been surprised when, feeling its back against the wall and its position threatened after the 2000 parliamentary elections, ZANU PF again resorted to the use of starvation to secure its political position.

In the 1980's, artificial food shortages were created in rural Matabeleland by prohibiting distribution. In the period leading up to the 2002 Presidential election, genuine food shortages resulted from government policies. First, production was seriously reduced by the fast-track land "reform", secondly a black market was created by uneconomic price controls, and thirdly, illegal exports were encouraged by artificial foreign exchange rates. It is doubtful whether government deliberately induced these food shortages, but once they were there, they seized the opportunity to exploit them for their own political gain.

Since 2002 Zimbabwe has depended on foreign food aid, as chaos on the land combined with drought caused repeated declines in food production. Each election, whether for local government, for the President, or for parliamentary by-elections, has seen ZANU PF trying to control the supply of food to those who have none. Different tactics have been used: only those with ZANU PF cards are allowed to buy; food is supplied to ZANU PF functionaries for sale; shops or grinding mills owned by opposition supporters are closed; or the maize is stacked by a polling station and handed to voters with threats of what will happen if the results do not show a ZANU PF victory. As we approach the 2005 election, the campaign is already in full swing. Rural people are being told that their votes will be known and a community that votes for the opposition will not receive food supplies.

Manipulation of food supplies has now become a major tool for controlling the population, for wearing down their resistance to ZANU PF. From temporary aberrations during time of war or civil disturbance, the political use of food has become a permanent condition of rural life in much of Zimbabwe. Failed land and agricultural policies ensure that there will be food shortages for the foreseeable future, and as we lurch from one election to the next ZANU PF uses control of food as a desperate means to cling to power. What had been a frightful but fading memory from the past has now become a permanent recurring condition of life in ZANU PF's Zimbabwe. Unless there is change soon, it will also become a constant fear for the future

Day 3: 28th December 2004
Tomorrow's article focuses on Belinda and her grandmother. Belinda's grandmother faced enormous challenges in the fight to keep Belinda alive.