Job cuts, HIV add to southern Africa food woes
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Late drought has devastated crops in much of southern Africa and may threaten the worst food shortages in more than a decade, but in parts of the region residents say the real problems are AIDS and job losses.
Poor rains in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi and parts of Mozambique have all but destroyed the staple maize harvest, aid workers say. But further south in the mountain kingdoms of Swaziland and Lesotho, the weather is less to blame.
“The drought is not as bad as last year,” resident Mothibeli Seala told Reuters in a village in southern Lesotho. “But the food will not be enough. The HIV scourge is very bad. It is hitting production at village level, killing the strongest.”
This year’s regional harvest will likely be worse than in 2002, when some 10 million people went short of food, aid workers say.
The U.N. World Food Programme says the coming crop may be the worst since 1992.
U.N. assessments of needs are still under way, with a major fund-raising campaign for aid likely to begin in late May or early June. Other agencies are also planning responses.
“We haven’t made a decision on what we will do yet,” said Ann Witteveen, coordinator for development group Oxfam.
“It’s still very early to say how bad things will be. But we’re in a better situation than we were three years ago. There’s more capacity. We’ve got a better understanding.”
The drought has bypassed South Africa, where traders expect a maize crop of at least 12 million tonnes, the best in more than 10 years and a likely source of food for those in need.
But within reach of full silos and healthy fields in South Africa’s Free State, Lesotho has seen food shortages become endemic in the past decade, with the country only producing 30 percent of its food needs even in a good year.
REDUNDANCIES BITE
Aid workers say poor agricultural techniques and bad irrigation are partly to blame, as well as the deaths of farmworkers and loss of family farming knowledge due to AIDS in a country with a 30 percent adult HIV infection rate.
That may explain successive crop failures. But in Lesotho and Swaziland, countries where textile jobs and mining work in South Africa have kept families afloat, recent job losses mean many are unable to buy food to cope with bad harvests.
The end of global textile quotas has led to clothing jobs moving to China, and the strong South African rand has hit South Africa’s mining sector, leading to thousands losing their jobs.
“Each worker is maybe supporting five or six others,” said Seala, about to return to South Africa’s mines to send back money to feed his family. “Many people are losing their jobs now. It is hurting families.”
Agencies worry that many families in countries such as Lesotho, Swaziland and Zimbabwe, which have suffered wider economic decline, have few ways to cope, pulling children from school and selling cattle and property to survive.
MAJORITY FACE HARDSHIPS
“For the vast majority of people in southern Africa this year is going to be extremely difficult as most will have already exhausted their meagre coping strategies over the last three years,” WFP spokesman Mike Huggins said.
Aid workers and others say forced land seizures of white owned commercial farms are to blame for the collapse of farming in Zimbabwe, which may be the region’s worst hit country. The government denies this.
But this year few doubt that drought is the key factor and, after playing down tales of shortages in recent years, Zimbabwe’s state media has reported the country will need to import some 1.2 million tonnes of food.
The drought has also raised the possibility of shortages in Zambia, recently praised for its support programmes for subsistence farmers.
While Zambia has said it will shelve a plan to import 300,000 tonnes of maize, hoping to rely on supplements from cassava instead, nearby Malawi says it will likely import half a million tonnes. Mozambique is also seen needing food and aid.
Although regional purchases are likely to be almost exclusively from South Africa, traders say that will do little to mop up an expected surplus of more than 6 million tonnes, although it may boost prices.
“It’s not going to make a huge difference but it will impact on sentiment,” said one South African maize trader. “A lot of the road hauliers say they expect to be busy from June.”
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