Man-made food crisis grips Southern Africa

A few pumpkin leaves and a small bowl of peanuts are all Josam Tsumba could find or beg from neighbors. So once again he, his wife, and his five children will spend the day with empty bellies.

This should be a time of plenty in Malawi, when the year's ripened corn has been plucked and is laid out to dry for storage during the Southern Hemisphere's winter. But there are many here, like Mr. Tsumba, who had no crop to harvest this year.

At least six Southern African countries are experiencing severe food shortages brought on in part by a combination of flood and drought over the past several years. The United Nations estimates that some 5 million people regionally will require food aid.

But the severity of this crisis, particularly in Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, which are suffering their worst food crises in decades despite only minor weather changes, is due less to Mother Nature than to bad governance. Therein, say experts, lies both the tragedy and the hope for solution.

Locals are calling this the season of "Chinkukuzi," which means "everyone is dying."

"I call it the drought plus factor," says Michael Glantz, a political scientist who studies famine and food security issues in Africa for the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "It's usually drought plus some other major factor, like war. But climate gets the blame, because then it's 'God' doing it."

The situation in Zimbabwe, once one of Southern Africa's breadbaskets, better fits the classic model of a food crisis. There, the seizure of white-owned commercial farms has devastated agricultural production, and bad fiscal policy has caused a foreign-currency shortage that has made it difficult for the country to make up the shortfall.

In Malawi, the situation is more complicated. Although one of the world's least developed countries, this is not Ethiopia or Sudan, where crops yearly must be coaxed from barren, desert soil. It is lush and green, crisscrossed by rivers and bordered on the east by the spectacular Lake Malawi.

And yet, during the past several months, thousands – perhaps even tens of thousands – have died of hunger. With cornmeal, the staple food here, at sky-high prices, many people have resorted to foraging to survive, some even diving into crocodile-infested rivers to dig out water-lily bulbs.

Others, like Stafford Mpingu, have sold everything they own. In desperation, Mr. Mpingu even sold the roof of his home as firewood, making enough money for only a handful of corn.

The immediate causes of Malawi's current food crisis are a complicated tangle of government mismanagement, well-intentioned international advice gone wrong, and the failure of just about everyone to realize the extent of the problem until too late.

"One problem is that this has been a slow onset disaster. It doesn't have the photogenic aspect of the flood in Mozambique or famine in Ethiopia," says Tom McCormack, the deputy field office director for Save the Children US. "Malawi is a green, fertile place.... But that doesn't mean that people aren't starving."

One major cause of the current crisis is simply that last year many farmers had no seeds and fertilizer.

"I have a little piece of land and I tried to plant, but there was nothing to reap," says Mr. Tsumba, explaining how his corn withered and died. He says he could not afford fertilizer last year, without which corn will not grow on his dry and overused land.

Over the past several years, the international community has been pressuring the Malawian government to reduce agricultural subsidies in hopes of stimulating competition and a private market. But with a 56 percent interest rate, few here can afford to buy fertilizer or seeds on the private market.

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