by LUKE ZUNGA
HARARE, (CAJ News) – ZIMBABWE grapples with food security despite the lauded land reform programme which started in 2001.
According to an A1 overview, in April 2024 food inflation rose to 105.1% compared to 121% the previous year, the highest in the world. Food inflation is an indicator of social and economic stability, and speaks to food insufficiency.
According to the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe (CCZ) the food basket for a family of six costs ZWL3,6 million in a population of 90% unemployment, and retailers demand payment in United States dollars.
Most of the food is imported, amid a continually depreciating and unstable currency. Zimbabwe, and the rest of Africa, battle to produce enough food. In April 2024 Zimbabwe declared a state of Disaster, to seek food donors as 57% of rural homes faced starvation.
The food situation exacerbated migration into South Africa, and neighbouring countries.
Zimbabwe is made up of 40 million hectares of which 33 million are arable, wet in the north and dry in the south. The population is 16 million.
These 33 million hectares can produce enough food to feed 16 million citizens but fails to do so due to droughts and lack of planning. The country relies on food imports and food donations.
The main sources of Zimbabwe’s food imports are South Africa, Zambia, Malawi, Egypt, among others.
What happened to the breadbasket? Zambia poached exiled Rhodesia farmers to grow enough food and sell back to Zimbabwe.
The main meal in Zimbabwe is ‘sadza’, a thick porridge made of ground white maize or brown sorghum meal, served with chicken, meat, fish or vegetables.
In Matabeleland a delicacy is seasonal Mopane worms, fried in oil and crispy. Zimbabwe cannot produce enough of these that the plate changes to yellow maize, donated from the United States of America (USA).
Zimbabweans are not proud of this. Zimbabwe also imports wheat for bread and rice.
The history of Zimbabwe has not been fully documented. Aeneas Chigwedere, who became Minister of Education, wrote the “Origin of the Bantu” and “Kalanga Empire”, among others, giving an impressive expose of early migratory patterns.
The diminution of Zimbabwe seems to have started with Matabeleland in 900AD, from the excavations at Leopard’s Kopje, which crossed to Mapungubwe in the Limpopo Valley, then anchored at the Zimbabwe Kingdom shrine near Masvingo (1075AD to 1220AD) and the Batwa gold Kingdom (1220AD to 1450 AD) in Midlands.
The great Munhumutapa Empire from 11450 to 1760, swallowed the beliefs of Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia and Malawi. It was broken by Soshangana into Mangwende, Maungwe, Manyika, Kalanga, the Rozvi, Batwa and Mthwakazi in the Matabeleland upon which Mzilikazi ka Mtshobana a product of Nongoma, South Africa arrived and conquered in 1840, settling at kwa Bulawayo.
Colonial Rhodesia was marked by the arrival, on horses and wagons, of Charles Rudd, James Rochfort Maguire and Francis Thompson, who negotiated and signed the Rudd Concession on 30 October 1888 with King Lobengula, the successor and son of King Mzilikazi.
The mining concession ushered a new era into colonization.
In 1891 there were 1,500 white farmers in Zimbabwe, who peaked at 300,000 in 1975 and declined thereafter due to Chimurenga war and post 2001 displacement, to the current 24,888 in 2022.
There were periods of food shortages in between, punctuated by persistent droughts. After 2001 food production plummeted and remained a challenge despite all the good will of land distribution. With climate change a closer look at the way of ensuring food security is required for Zimbabwe.
The Zimbabwe Minister of Finance, Mthuli Ncube, recently announced that Zimbabwe will compensate white commercial farmers, who lost their land in the land takeover period.
To him this will increase food production. The key to food security and growth is increased production, not paying people who are off the land. Zimbabwe has drought cycles.
By now the country should have grasped the art of growing enough food during rainy years and storing in silos for drought periods or developing irrigation to produce enough all year.
I moved away from blaming politicians. The Minister of finance is a renowned economist and a brilliant mind. If he advises the President what to do, the President will do it.
Zimbabwe’s problem is low production of everything. Low production led to devaluation of the currency and higher cost of imported food and all imported inputs.
The Minister’s first target must have been to increase production by making capital available to a cohort of commercial farmers to produce enough food and industrial growth.
Economics is the science of production and distribution of wealth. Wealth is abundance. Science means the method, the evaluations, technicalities and explanations, which must lead to production.
So, economics is Production and Distribution. Production needs capital. So, economics means raising or organising capital.
The Minister is in charge of those finances. What our economists do, including this renowned Minister, is to bog down on science and never raise or organize the capital to reach the production stage.
Ncube should have ploughed the funds he intends paying white commercial farmers with, into food production, then use the income or profits for the settlement.
One feels that the Minister is looking to appease the US, World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is too late because Zimbabwe has already suffered the global wrath.
The key to growth, I argue in my book, What Economists Are Missing, is providing capital in an organized manner to black citizens for industrialization, commercial agricultural and mining.
In 2018, South African Development Foundation and myself submitted a proposed program on how Zimbabwe can grow enough food and how to industrialize starting at 10 sites, but the politicians never saw the proposals, as the documents are tucked under the desks of some bureaucrats.
We cannot blame politicians for lack of development in Zimbabwe, South Africa and the rest of the continent.
It is our own technocrats who are sitting on their laurels and pandering to His Masters Voice.
NB: The views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author, Luke Zunga, and not those of CAJ News Africa.
– CAJ News