So it is now official. Zimbabwe is faced with a national state of disaster because, like a significant number of countries in Southern Africa we will have an El Nino induced drought. The current President ED Mnangagwa made an executive announcement this week to the same effect.
Essentially outlining that this is no small matter and assuring us of his government's commitment to enabling hunger and food shortage mitigation measures that will not only involve the state but also reach out to the private sector and international food aid donors.
His state of the nation address may be taken lightly by some but it is an extremely serious one. Especially for those that experienced previously devastating droughts such as the one when some of us were teenagers in 1992-93 agricultural season and we learnt one or two things about what ‘food for work’ meant in the Chishawasha valley of Mashonaland East while at boarding school.
We did not have social media or mobile phones but the national mood was somber because it was both experienced at our young ages and also real when we had to eat what we referred to as ‘Kenya’ maize meal that we were told was donated from the Global West.
We were also told that it was normally fed to farm animals such as cattle and horses.
But we were too hungry to ask too many questions about it. We ate it in boarding school, we ate it at home (urban or rural) and other comrades ate it in supplementary charitable or state sponsored feeding schemes. But we learnt very quickly what a national drought was.
Now we have another major one that is correctly a major national and regional concern. I cannot speak or write for comrades in Malawi or Zambia where national state of disasters have already been declared.
It is however clear that this is a nationally important matter that must be looked at beyond what the state president has announced and what the international aid agencies or the media will argue about how to handle the emergent humanitarian climate change induced challenge that is the national drought.
There is however a political economy to the drought. One that we cannot allow ourselves to evade.
And it is in three parts. The first being that of the directly political and its impact on national politics. The sitting government and the ruling party are obliged, at least democratically, to lead the country through this national state of disaster induced by the drought. While what remains of the national political opposition (official and unofficial) are expected to hold the latter to political account on the same important national matter.
This means that the political dynamics of our already existent drought, as announced by the state president, are also essentially about political capital. Which ever way you want to look at it. They are now keenly about what in political science is referred to as ‘performance legitimacy’. That is, “Who can feed the people?’
The second element is the fact of what is also referred to as ‘disaster capitalism’. There will be private capital players (businesses) who will deliberately seek to profit from this national drought disaster. And there are many. From grain millers, to what I now refer to as ‘water hawkers’ in both urban and rural areas. Some of them linked to the state. Others are just basically private opportunists who for example sell bread, maize and other subsistence commodities. And they will also speculate on stock exchanges about what will happen next either with currencies or minerals because of the drought and an officially declared state of disaster.
The third and final strand is what has been referred to in the Global North as the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. These are players that will trade on the international philanthropic sentiment to show us how bad the drought situation can become, or is. They will raise money, purchase the relevant subsistence commodities but at the same time retain within their same said Global North capitals, the majority of the funds raised.
In the final analysis, we are faced with a monumental task to feed the people of Zimbabwe. Indeed while it may be sensationalized on social media or alternatively fit into a given but incorrect narrative about Zimbabwe being a failed state , the drought is a serious national matter for the country. It is not abstract. But sadly, it now means Zimbabwe’s 2024 political economy and planning around it at state, private capital and individual levels has significantly shifted.
Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com )
No comments:
Post a Comment