ZIMBABWE: President Robert Mugabe's government is underplaying Zimbabwe's food crisis and may again use hunger to punish political foes before next year's parliamentary elections, a human rights group charged yesterday.
Harare has curtailed foreign food aid since May, forecasting a good harvest in the coming year. But some aid agencies say the southern African country could face further shortages.
"The government's claims have been widely discredited, and there is compelling evidence that serious food insecurity and hunger persist in Zimbabwe," British-based rights group Amnesty International said in a damning new report.
Amnesty said the cessation of most international food aid since mid-2004 had left millions of people dependent on grain distributed by the state-run Grain Marketing Board.
The United Nations World Food Programme says food prices in Zimbabwe have soared, but exports of some crops such as sugar continue largely unaffected and supermarket chains operating in the country say they are still well stocked with food.
Amnesty says supplies may run out by the next harvest in April 2005, and the Grain Marketing Board has a history of depriving government opponents of grain.
"Local and international human rights groups, as well as organisations involved in monitoring food security in Zimbabwe, believe the government's claims are part of a strategy to manipulate people through fear of hunger ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for March 2005," Amnesty said.
In its report "Zimbabwe: Power and Hunger - Violations of the right to food", Amnesty said tens of thousands had gone hungry in recent years due to "discrimination and corruption".
"The government's response to the increasingly severe food shortages which Zimbabwe has experienced since 2001 has been inadequate. . . The government has used the food shortages for political purposes and to punish political opponents."
Amnesty said children as young as one had suffered from officials denying grain to supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change but giving it to those who back Mr Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party.
Once Africa's bread basket and an exporter in the region, Zimbabwe's agricultural production has dropped in recent years.
Neighbouring countries have also suffered food shortages and aid agencies say millions of people across the region will need food aid in early 2005.
The former British colony has won scorn from Western countries for its chaotic redistribution of white-owned land to landless blacks.
The government is accused of rights abuses against opponents and rigging a 2002 poll.
Mr Mugabe denies the charges, and says his government is being targeted for retribution and economic sabotage by foreign "neocolonial" forces opposed to the land reform programme.
Aid groups said that in addition to Mr Mugabes land reforms, which have frequently put untrained farmers in charge of prime farmland, weather and the AIDS epidemic have also hit Zimbabwe's ability to grow crops.