The main opposition party in Zimbabwe today blamed President Robert Mugabe of worsening food shortages by importing too little maize.
The government said it is importing maize at the rate of 22,000 tonnes a week into the country, where up to eight million out of a total population of 11.6 million are threatened by famine.
In an address last month, Mr Mugabe said the government was stepping up grain purchases and that more than 600,000 tonnes of grain had been delivered to "all our people".
His government has consistently denied it is involved in partisan food distribution to members of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party.
But Mr Renson Gasela, shadow agriculture minister in the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), claimed "there will continue to be acute shortages of maize meal as the regime has admitted its desire to punish the people by supplying maize in such small quantities as to force people to buy ZANU-PF cards".
He predicted that food shortages gripping the country will last well into 2004 due to poor harvests.
The MDC, aid agencies and western nations say that a government land-reform programme that has redistributed former white-owned commercial farms to new black farmers is also to blame.
Poor rains have devastated crops and grazing in this southern African country, once hailed as the breadbasket of southern Africa.
AFP