By MacDonald Dzirutwe
SIYAGIJIMA, Zimbabwe – Even in the best of times, life is harsh in Siyagijima, a desolate village in southwest Zimbabwe. After the worst regional drought in nearly a decade and the failure of nearby crops, it is likely to be even harsher.
For 31-year-old Mejury Tererai, whose maize and cotton crops have been decimated, that means feeding her children nothing but scarce maize and groundnuts.
She would be lucky to get 50 kilos of maize this year – enough for just over a month. Her cotton is a write-off and she owes $27 to the firm that provided her with chemicals. If she fails to pay, they will sell her single goat or chickens or rip the corrugated iron roof from her two-roomed house, she said.
She hopes President Robert Mugabe’s government can provide basic support, but it is far from clear that it has the means.
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“Our request is that we need help with food so that our children are able to go to school and concentrate,” she said in the village, 400 km (250 miles) southwest of the capital.
“Last year we had a good harvest but this year we got very little. It was too hot and we received little rain,” she added, as her two-year-old son slept on her bosom.
The drought is likely to damage harvests across southern Africa – from southern Angola to Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique and Namibia, the World Food Programme (WFP) says.
The impact is looking particularly serious for Zimbabwe, where the economy has been struggling for five years to recover from a catastrophic recession that was marked by billion percent hyperinflation and widespread food shortages.
(Reuters)
