Zimbabwe's political tool: food

Known MDC supporters are being turned away from grain depots, while party big men are buying up grain and selling it on the black market at a profit, say some observers. NGOs also report that MDC supporters are being discriminated against in government-run food-for-work programs.

The Food Security Network, a coalition of 54 local NGOs that has been monitoring the situation in Zimbabwe, says politicization of food aid has been reported in at least 33 of the country's 54 districts. They say many of the depots are being run by youth militia from Mugabe's ZANU-PF party or by intelligence officers, and that more food is being sent to ZANU strongholds than to MDC areas.

"We went to one depot that was being run by youth militia," says the director of one prominent NGO, who asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation from the government. "That in itself is outrageous. These are the same people who were beating and torturing people in the first four months of the year," referring to alleged violence around the March election, which most observers say was rigged in favor of Mugabe. The government has threatened to ban NGOs critical of the state and to seize the passports of their workers.

The WFP says that food is being distributed to all, not just to those in a particular party. But local NGOs and the MDC say that monitoring has been poor. They accuse aid agencies of looking the other way to avoid confrontation with the government, allowing it to influence who receives donated food.

"The lists of beneficiaries are all being drawn up by rural committees, which are relying on chiefs and headmen who are all in the pay of the government," says Eddie Cross, spokesman for the MDC on economic affairs. "On principle [the WFP and aid groups] will not act in a political manner, but they're allowing themselves to be manipulated."

The WFP and donors deny such allegations and say that they have thoroughly investigated all charges of political bias in the food-distribution process and found them untrue. The biggest problem, they say, is just that there's not enough food aid for everyone.

Since the ranks of the needy are so vast, it is nearly impossible to prove whether someone was left off a list because of political affiliation. Still, several cases of direct interference by ruling-party militants have been recorded.

In the town of Binga, near Lake Kariba, war veterans stopped food distribution by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace for almost two months, saying that the commission was a political organization that was using the food to foment antigovernment sentiment. In another district, a local NGO says its workers were beaten by war veterans who claimed that bags of cornmeal were being distributed with pro-opposition material inside.

The biggest challenge for the donors may be the next phase of the crisis – the recovery phase. Feeding the hungry is usually followed by long-term efforts to improve food security, but according to the WFP, donors will likely be hesitant to subsidize new farmers placed on land taken from white commercial farmers.

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