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The World Food Program continues to feed hundreds
of thousands of people in Zimbabwe despite government claims that there is
enough food for everyone.
Earlier this year the World Food Program distributed food aid to close
to half of the 130,000 people of Mudzi district in northeastern
Zimbabwe.
Food distribution stopped for many after the government
declared that Zimbabwe has enough food and will not need assistance. That
claim is disputed by the donor agencies and even by a parliamentary
committee made up of members of the ruling ZANU PF and the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change.
The WFP is still helping to feed those considered vulnerable despite
government orders to stop food distribution.
Among those the WFP considers at risk are infants and school children
and those infected by HIV and AIDS.
One of those who receives food aid is 19-year-old orphan Elizabeth
Shoko who lives with her grandmother. She said stopping food aid would
make life very difficult for them.
"If it stops it kills us, we do not have anybody to give us food again
so if they stop we are going to suffer a lot," she said.
It is the rainy season in Zimbabwe and people in Mudzi are hoping for
good rains so they can harvest enough to feed themselves and maybe even
have crops to sell.
For most of the district's people agricultural production is the only
source of income. Bad harvests over the last four years has plunged many
of them into poverty.
Rudo Katsande says while the government has disbursed some free seed
corn to some families, it is not enough. She says if the farmers do not
get any fertilizer they won't
harvest much.
Zimbabwe is experiencing its worst economic troubles since independence
24 years ago. Its agriculture, once the source of foreign income, has
collapsed after several years of drought.
But donor agencies and analysts however also blame the drop in
production on the country's chaotic land reform program. Under that
program, white commercial farms have been expropriated and the land, which
was to be distributed to landless blacks, ended up mostly in the hands of
President Robert Mugabe's top officials. | 
