A Photo Essay by Cont Mhlanga 

Zimbabwe is five days away from celebrating 28 years of independence on the
18th of April in a tension filled period just after the historic 2008
harmonized elections on the 29th of March where for the first time in the
history of the country people went to the polls to elect a councilor,
member of parliament, senator and President at ward level. All results
have been announced except for the presidential candidates where the
battle was between Mugabe, Tswangirai, Makone with the fourth not worth
mentioning.

Having been in rural ward Matshiya of Lupane district in Matebeleland
North where I contested and won a council seat as an independent for the
past three months going door to door holding meetings with villagers it
has always been clear that in Lupane district the Presidential contest was
going to be between Dr Makoni and Mr. Tswangirai. In this district
president Mugabe is as good as not being in the race. Even if Zanu PF
presses for what the villagers feel is an unnecessary run off as provided
for by the election law of Zimbabwe Mugabe will never be able to turn the
tide in his favor in this district even if he uses what ever violence
methods or trickery at his disposal. The people simply do not want him as
president of Zimbabwe one more hour and the delay to announce the result
is nothing to them but a scheme to cook the people’s voice.

Except a few spots next to the Zanu PF provincial office situated in
Lupane Town were one saw Mugabe’s posters, in the deep paths of the
villages it was Tswangirai and Makoni posters dominating the village
waterholes.

In this only poster that was put next to the Dakiwe Village Head’s
homestead a day before the President came to Lupane to address his star
rally some village head boys  pulled off his eyes to show how much this
man is not welcome in their village anymore.

Rural Stronghold

It is no longer true that Mugabe’s strong hold is the uninformed rural
population. He is not wanted there just as he is not wanted in urban
cities. You have to visit the villages to know this as urban based
government media will always give a false impression of the rural
political landscape in favor of Mugabe.

It is true that he was popular till 2005 when something that I just
learned by being in the villages started turning the rural people against
Mugabe. The two issues that have turned the rural people against Mugabe is
Food and Land.

Zanu PF's local government officials and party members are the worst
enemies of Mugabe and his government. By their unjust and corrupt
political use of food and land they have quickly turned away the rural
population against Mugabe and his government. Mugabe can shout ‘illegal
sanctions’ as much as he wants on TV, Radio and print media, but rural
people do not access TV, Radio or print media. They only believe what they
see before their own eyes- hunger, corruption, unaffordable commodities
and the ugly parallel market fueled by Mugabe’s own local leaders. That is
what they see and they are responding to that with their vote.

Food

People in the rural district of Lupane are starving to dearth. This is not
a political statement, it is a fact on the ground. Not even Mugabe is
aware of this fact as his officials lie to him. The little food that his
government imports is stolen by his party officials and sold back in
cities of Hwange, Victoria Falls and Bulawayo. Some of it is sold back in
Zambia were it is imported from. All this is done in front of the
villagers who are left starving while they are being accused of being
members of the opposition as an escape goat by party officials who just
want to steal from a government that has over politicized almost
everything in the country paving way for corruption.

My ward needs 2 150 bags of maize of 50kgs per months to satisfy its
population. It only got 500 bags since October 2007! The population of my
ward is about 19 500. The district has 28 wards with an estimated
population of 350 000. It is worse for wards that are away from Lupane
Town. Food is politically distributed in the district by a Drought Relief
Committee.

‘Mhlanga every district has a drought relief committee whose chairperson
was the District Administrator but now it’s the police Officer In Charge,’
said a provincial officer for the Grain Marketing Board a government
company that has the monopoly by law to handle all grain in the country.
Police distributing food and then you say things are normal in the country!
‘Grain is now a security matter in the country Mhlanga that is why we the
police are in charge of its distribution’, said Zondo the Officer In
Charge Of Lupane who is also the Chairman of the Committee.

True, food is a security issue in Zimbabwe because villagers die of hunger
while our liberation war politicians cling to power by any means possible.

If you speak out that people die of hunger they quickly label you a stooge
and sell out of the western countries. If it were not for the World Vision
food aid program that they ran in the district till February 2008 more
people in my ward would have died of hunger than of HIV/AIDS and Malaria!
Since World Vision stopped its food intervention program in February in
its annual shut down the food crises in my ward has escalated. If nothing
is done by some one in the next few weeks I fail to imagine what will
happen.

‘Who elected this committee? What are its terms of reference? Who
supervises it?’

‘Ask the Governor of Matebeleland North’, said the Grain Marketing Board
official. The governor is a political appointee by Mugabe. In all this the
people are not involved. All they see are trucks offloading maize that
they are not able to access to buy.

I caught the truck in the picture off loading maize just after close of
business at the local depot of the Grain Marketing Board in Lupane at
about 17:30  When I returned the following day at the start of business at
about 08:30 the grain was all gone. Villagers were in the queue to buy
maize as early as 06:00 and left for home with no grain at 18:00 being
told to come back and check the following day. Most of them in the queue
had traveled over 60km to this depot. What happened to the maize
overnight? Remember it’s  Zondo the Officer In Charge who is in charge!

‘What if it’s the police stealing the maize?’ I asked the Grain Marketing
Board official.

‘Villagers should report him to the police”

I just laughed.

‘You see Mhlanga, I can’t do anything from here about that. My job is to
dispatch trucks to Lupane.’

‘You don’t care if it gets to the villagers or not?’

‘That is the responsibility of the Draught Relief Committee at the district.’

 I put the question to Zondo, ‘Have you ever gone out as a committee to
evaluate if imported grain ever gets to the villagers?

‘No we have never done that. You see Mhlanga we need a car to go to the
villages and find out if the maize gets to the people’. Said Zondo

The fact remains that villagers are starving and they are aware that it is
for political reasons that they are living in this difficult situation.

They are ready to use their political voice at the ballot box to deal with
the cause and to them it means voting out Mugabe and his party. In the 28
local government seats in the council Mugabe’s Zanu PF only got three
seats.

It is for the food reason that Mugabe in this district will never win.

Land

Next to my ward is two large farms Zikungwa One and Two. The Forest
Commission a government forest monopoly company owns the rest of the
remaining commercial land in the district. The large farms were both run
buy white farmers before 2000 a situation that was not acceptable to
Zimbabweans. They fought a war to benefit from this land but they were
not.

In 2000 Mugabe kicked out the two white farmers and gave the land to his
party officials. It was change that villagers were willing and ready to
give a chance. They waited to see how this change would benefit them and
their community.

It was how ever clear by 2005 to villagers that this land redistribution
program was just a greedy exercise for Mugabe’s party chefs. The farms
were vandalized. Those that got the farms never even stayed there. The
white farmers lost all their investment. The party chefs ran a few hunting
quarters and paid nothing to the state. They did not implement any benefit
community programs for the community. Villagers started comparing them to
the white farmers who owned the farms before the Zanu PF chefs. These
white farmers had amazing community programs such as feeding and clothing
orphans in the ward; paying school fees for close to 400 kids; supporting
schools development programs; buying text books; supporting women’s clubs;
supporting local farming by giving seeds to villagers and many other such
programs. The Zanu PF chefs give nothing to the ward and community. They
even went on to neglect managing the movement of game animals that are now
a big problem to villagers with hyenas and lions eating their live stock
and others destroying their crops. The chefs now are masters of poaching
and taking the meat for sale to Bulawayo.

‘They gave each other productive farms but they are failing to produce
anything on the land and that is why we are starving’, said 43 year old
MaNkomo. ‘How can a government with empty silos feed its people’, she
continued.

The chefs even use the peoples suffering to get implements for themselves.
They tell Mugabe that villagers need agricultural equipment to grow their
own food. The Reserve bank is ordered to print money and give Mugabe’s
chefs contracts to manufacture these tools and they share it among
themselves giving nothing to the villagers and giving Mugabe false
reports.

No family is growing food in my ward! They have no farming implements! No
seeds! No fertilizer! They have nothing! They can’t buy anything from the
shops to support their own food production. But the media is awash with
government giving all these to the people. Which people? My ward does not
even have one tractor to assist the villagers in preparing their fields
for planting, but about six Zanu Pf chefs who stay in Lupane town and have
no fields in the district recently got tractors. It’s the same chefs who
access the imported maize and deviate it to the parallel market! Nothing
gets to the villagers. Mugabe’s own propaganda is now eating up his
popularity among the rural population as his own party members use it
against him. It is no longer his strong hold for these reasons. Rural
people hate him. Period. They go to his star rallies for entertainment and
to see what the evil leader who has caused them so much hunger and
suffering looks like.

Election Re-Run

It is public knowledge in the district that he lost the elections. He came
a distant third in this district. Even Makoni beat him for second position.

Are villagers ready for a re-run?

‘If they force us, but we see no reason why. He lost the election. The
people don’t want him any more. They want another president who will come
here and remove all his corrupt officials who are causing us this
suffering’, said 70 year old Nyathi a Matshiya ward villager.

‘Gogo MaMoyo you and this village are celebrating 28 years of independence
in the next five days; any word of advice to the government?, I asked the
81 year old woman.

‘Tell government that we are hungry. The whole village is hungry. They can
celebrate their independence alone up there in Harare because they have
enough to eat. This independence is for the chefs not for us. We are worse
off than before independence when it was a white person governing us.’’

These are words of anger and frustration as a result of bad governance
that the old lady sees before her on a daily basis. Zimbabwe 28 years on,
where to with Mugabe in charge?

Cont Mhlanga
Amakhosi Director
Councilor Ward 15 Lupane District