For the first time in more than 100 years the vast stone
edifice of St Francis Xavier Catholic Church, deep in the bush of Matabeleland,
Zimbabwe's most arid region, can no longer offer sanctuary to pilgrims.
"We have nothing left, no food, nothing," Fr Thomas Tshabalala
said from the cool of Empandeni mission station's cloistered corridors.
"If people arrive we have nothing for them. Starvation is the main
problem for all the people from this community and many are on the point
of dying."
The people of Matabeleland have often suffered food shortages
but, in most years, the fertile areas of Zimbabwe have grown more than
enough maize to tide them over. The country often did even better and exported
food to the rest of southern Africa.The invasion of white-owned farms by
militant supporters of President Mugabe and their wholesale seizure by
his government has ended all this.
For the first time since a devastating drought 10 years ago, Zimbabwe has
been forced to seek help from the World Food Programme, which estimates
that the country has a maize deficit of around 500,000 tons and more than
550,000 people need emergency supplies.
St Francis Xavier, Zimbabwe's oldest Catholic church, towers like a beacon
in the bush, and can be reached only by a dusty, rutted track reaching
18 miles from the nearest tarred road. Before he began his career, Mr Mugabe
taught at Empandeni mission school in the 1950s, and it still attracts
1,100 immaculately turned-out pupils, who trudge for miles through the
bush to receive an education begun by the first Jesuit missionaries in
1887.
But the mission's brick-built bakery, powered by rusty, riveted boilers,
has been forced to cut production. The mission's farm manager said the
water in the nearby reservoir was a fraction of what was needed to stop
maize fields from turning into arid wastelands. "Our livestock is
dying and so will we soon," the manager said.
At a nearby hamlet Anton, a toothless shepherd, sat outside two shops where
the shelves were empty. "We are hungry, we are hungry," he lamented,
seeking solace in a plastic container of strong African beer.
Back at Empandeni, some of the schoolchildren, wearing green, starched
uniforms, sat in puddles of shade yesterday singing harmonies to while
away the scorching midday hours.
Other schools in the area have had to cancel afternoon sport because children
have begun fainting through lack of food. "In the surrounding area,
I would say that 90 per cent of families have been left by at least one
family member going to look for work or money in Botswana or South Africa,"
Fr Thomas said.
"They have nothing to keep them here and they know that if they stay
they will die." In the run-up to next month's presidential election,
Fr Thomas's beloved Church is all too aware that, under famine conditions,
food has become a sensitive political issue.
Catholic aid agencies have agreed to pay for food to be distributed but
Mr Mugabe's regime has attacked them for being "lackeys of the white"
and "agents of MI6".
Despite being educated by the Jesuits and spending years as a teacher in
mission schools, Mr Mugabe has fallen out with the Church. This week, the
Jesuits accused the president of acting as brutally as Hitler.
"We do not have enough food for everyone and in those circumstances
we cannot deliver food where we would have to say 'yes' to some people
and 'no' to others," Fr Thomas said. His predecessor fled for his
life from Empandeni before the 2000 general election when Mr Mugabe's militant
supporters stormed the church.
They accused him of supporting the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
after he pinned up posters advising local people on election procedure.
"So far they have left me alone but it is only a matter of time,"
the priest said.
The scale of the food crisis in Zimbabwe can be seen all over the country.
At the Grain Marketing Board depot in the second city, Bulawayo, where
the socialist planners of Mr Mugabe's government try to control the meagre
flow of maize meal, hundreds of woman have begun a daily picket.
They sit hour after hour, day after day, hoping to somehow glean a bag
of maize from the lorries that now deliver only a fraction of the city's
daily requirement.
One local black farmer said he had been advised not to send a lorry to
pick up a supply of stock-feed maize from the plant because of the danger
of a riot.
But as millions go hungry, Mr Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party has launched
a risky political strategy, rationing maize shipments only to those villages
and headmen who promise to vote for him in the election.
"This a high-risk strategy because in a time of hunger do you really
want to be seen to be denying food to some and giving it to others?"
one observer said.
At a recent campaign rally, a wizened, elderly tribal chief who had sat
through a long tirade from Mr Mugabe dared to stand up and ask him where
the food was coming from. "If you do not come here with food then
we are not interested in anything else you have to say," the tribal
chief said.
Outside the Empandeni mission station there was a sign proudly recognising
the community for giving more blood donations than any other in south Matabeleland
in 1999.
With the threat of starvation and political violence hanging over the area,
there is a risk that in 2002 the area may see blood spilled less innocently.
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