By Takura Zhangazha*
At the beginning of the year 2025, there is now some rain that covers broader parts of Zimbabwe. Our metrological experts had anticipated, via their own public pronouncements that it would rain significantly in early 2024 December.
The reality of the matter is that no matter the science, the weather
in Southern Africa is not as predictable as popularly anticipated. We are only receiving
major rains now.
And we are still not sure of their significance for our
annual agricultural season.
Moreso if we are looking at long standing peasant farmers or those that were resettled after the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP).
With or without the latter’s conundrum
of the new land tenure system that was recently introduced by the current government
around title deeds. As well as the compensation of former white farmers for
their infrastructural land developments. (A matter that is historically and
politically complicated and in my personal view, wrong and I have referred to this as "Replacement Capitalism")
What is apparent is that the arrival of our annual rainfall
season for the year 2024-25 is no longer just about a natural seasonal event as
we have always anticipated.
A development that is increasingly felt in what we know to
be our communal areas and also our FTLRP resettlement areas. Not in an abstract way where you wait to be
told by the district agricultural extension officer that there will be a drought.
But more in a sense that when the rain does not fall as
expected per calendar it affects your family’s livelihood regardless of whether
you are an A1/2 or communal farmer.
In the south of the country early crops planted in November
2024 have been reported as wilting and there are very serious problems with
pastures for livestock.
Particularly in communal areas. The late rain that we are experiencing has
also meant that the rural political economy has shifted to one that either
relies on government/donor handouts for food aid or an individual family’s capacity
to either have stored enough grain to wait for the next harvest.
It has also meant key disruptions to everyday rural communal
livelihoods not only for grain supply relief but also for the fact of paying
for school fees, health care and other accessories that come with living in a
rural area (soap, cooking oil, tomatoes, vegetables and even toilet paper).
What is most apparent is the fact that ‘rain is political’ in Zimbabwe. And I will explain this a bit lightly. One of the most prominent anthropologists who has studied the history of our country, Professor Joost Fontein in his book on “The Silence of Great Zimbabwe, Contested Landscapes and the Power of Heritage” shocked me with an assertion in the book that announcing the next seasons rainfall patterns was largely considered some sort of crime in Zimbabwe.
The announcement had to come from officially sanctioned
central government predictions.
This essentially meant, given our own traditions, we were
always expecting a good harvest after a drought. Especially if we consulted our
ancestors and spirit mediums at the end of a previous drought.
Well, we have a previous drought and what appears to be a current one. Hence our current government is publicly stating that we have enough staple grain stock to feed the country.
Including the wheat we got from Russia.
With the intention of giving the impression that
the country’s worst affected provinces (mainly in the south and the west) by
this late rain will be covered by government food aid.
For Zimbabweans that experienced the 1992-93 drought where
we ate what was referred to as ‘yellow maize meal’ this is a nostalgic experience
of uncertainty and fear. Neither should
it be re-lived. But it should be
re-thought.
Especially when the global north narrative is about climate
change, global wars (Ukraine, Palestine, Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo ((DRC))) and
all of their impact on sustainable food/nutrition livelihoods in relation to global
financialised climate and mining capital.
In the contemporary, what should be apparent for us in
Zimbabwe is that the rains have not fallen as expected this season. Unless you are on irrigated land and have the
material capital (never mind financial) to demonstrate your uniqueness at farming
like our current president, you are bound not to have a good harvest to sustain
your family. And this is the reality for
many a number of communal and resettled farmers.
And also unless you have a plan-B for your livestock such as buying hay and molasses, your herds will dissipate with relative ease.
And when this happens you will not be able
to use that material capital to pay school fees, buy clothes and other amenities
for your children.
A situation which leads one to either rely on your immediate
or extended family for financial support or borrow in perpetuity.
I am writing this based on not only personal experience but
also the view that our central government has not changed its approach to how
we deal with what are no longer predictable planting seasons. Moreso after the FTLRP.
We are in a dilemma in which we rely on the science to tell
us what will happen about ‘rain’ and then if it does not happen as planned we
then make it political.
Especially if you are a ruling government where the argument
is we do not control nature or argue that the ‘ancestors are angry’ (midzimu
yakatsamwa).
With a veneer of optimism that in some areas the rains fall
well and that they will be able, with government assistance, be able to feed
those in dire need of food aid. As long
as they are of the clear understanding of the politics that they must
support.
All we can do as Zimbabweans is no matter our religious/spiritual affiliations is pray for the rains. And to think beyond our political preferences, hard as that may be for the next distribution of maize or wheat programmes.
The only problem is that we tend to shrug our shoulders and
think about ourselves, our both urban and urban individualistic families for
what we consider our survival.
But the much vaunted government ‘trickle down’ economics of
beneficiation of either land redistribution or urban housing and entrepreneurship
are directly affected by a drought. Particularly this undeclared one. Even if we cannot always be allowed to argue
about its occurrence without risk of arrest.
*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity
(takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com takurazhangazha.com)
