ODUM, INNOCENT CHIKE

PG/M.Sc./08/49483

POLITICS OF FOOD AID AND FOOD CRISES IN

AFRICA: THE ZIMBABWEAN EXPERIENCE

DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE,

UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA, NSUKKA

A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE,, FACULTY

OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES,, UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA, NSUKKA

Webmaster

Digitally Signed by Webmaster‘s Name

DN : CN = Webmaster‘s name O= University of Nigeria, Nsukka

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FEBRUARY 2010

ii

POLITICS OF FOOD AID AND FOOD CRISES IN AFRICA: THE

ZIMBABWEAN EXPERIENCE

BY

ODUM, INNOCENT CHIKE

PG/M.Sc./08/49483

PRESENTED TO

DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA, NSUKKA

PROF. MIRIAM IKEJIANI-CLARK

FEBRUARY, 2010

iii

POLITICS OF FOOD AID AND FOOD CRISES IN AFRICA: THE

ZIMBABWEAN EXPERIENCE

PROJECT REPORT PRESENTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL

SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA, NSUKKA

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

AWARD OF MASTERS OF SCIENCE DEGREE IN

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (M.Sc.)

BY

ODUM, INNOCENT CHIKE.

PG/M.SC./08/49483

FEBRUARY, 2010

iv

APPROVAL PAGE

This Project report has been approved for the Department of Political Science, University of Nigeria,

Nsukka.

By

…………………………………… …………………………………… PROF. MIRIAM IKEJIANI-CLARK PROF. E. O. EZEANI

PROJECT SUPERVISOR HEAD OF DEPARTMENT

………………………….. EXTERNAL EXAMINER

v

DEDICATION

This work is dedicated to Robert Mugabe, the True African patriot who corrected a

historical imbalance through the land reform which led Zimbabwe to gain its rightful

heritage against colonial power acting on the behalf of the white community to

protect their interest.

vi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The Journey was not a smooth sail. However tortuous the journey may have been, I am immeasurably

thankful to God Almighty with whose guidance and protection I was able to attain this academic height.

I,m sincerely grateful to my supervisor, Prof. Miriam Ikejiani-Clerk for her motherly advice and

encouragement. Without her critical supervision and painstaking reading, the material contained in this

work could not have been well utilised. I am indeed very grateful to her.

Credit also goes to the Head of Department of Political Science, Prof. Emmanuel Onyebuchi

Ezeani and all my wonderful, able and resourceful lecturers. I‘m profoundly grateful to all who helped

in seeing this research work through; my loving parents Chief and Mrs. Damien Odum (Ichie Chibueze)

my brothers and sisters and my friends. I thank most especially, Mr. Ohiaegbu P.C, for his astute

devotion to the success of this research work. I appreciate the friendship and encouragement of some of

my colleagues in this Master of Science (M.Sc.) programme and my friends who have created a

conducive environment for me in the course of this work, some of whom are; Ogbogho Blessing, Okeke

Nonso, Ilozue Cosmas, Ikeanyi Joseph, Anyanwu Placid, Obieze Uchenna, Obinna, and Arinze. Finally,

my utmost thanks go to God Almighty for His gift of life, good health, encouragement and bountiful

blessings. As always, may all the glory remain his.

vii

TABLE OFCONTENTS

Title page…………………………………………………………………………………………ii

Approval page …………………………………………………………………………………...iii

Dedication ……………………………………………………………………………………….iv

Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………v

Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………………...vi

List of Abbreviations ……. …………………………………………………………………………….viii

List of Tables…………………………………………………………………………………...viii

List of Figure……………………………………………………………………………………x

Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………..xi

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study………………………………………………………………….1

1.2 Statement of Problem……………………………………………………………………..3

1.3 Objective of the Study……………………………………………………………………6

1.4 Significance of the Study…………………………………………………………………6

1.5 Literature Review…………………………………………………………………………7

1.6 Theoretical Framework…………………………………………………………………..38

1.7 Hypotheses……………………………………………………………………………….43

1.8 Scope of the Study……………………………………………………………………….44

1.9 Method of data collection………………………………………………………………..44

1.10 Operataionalization of Concepts…………………………………………………………47

CHAPTER TWO: CONTRADICTIONS OF POLITICAL GOVERNANCE AND THE

ZIMBABWEAN FOOD CRISES

2.1 Leadership Crisis and National Development Crisis in Zimbabwe ……………………………..48

2.2 Militarization of Politics and Governance in Zimbabwe…………………………………...……55

2.3 The Politicization of the Military……………………………………………………………...…58

viii

CHAPTER THREE: HUNGER AND POLITICS, ECONOMIC REFORM,

ZIMBABWEAN NATIONAL ECONOMIC REVIVAL PROGRAMME

AND CRISIS OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN ZIMBABWE

3.1 Zimbabwe‘s Inheritance: Hunger and Politics…………………………………………...………67

3.2 The Politicisation of Land, and Land Reform in Zimbabwe, and Root Cause of Hunger ………69

3.3 National Economic Reform Programme, and the Zimbabwean Crisis…………………………..73

3.4 The Economic Sanctions On Zimbabwe‘s Economy, and Its Contribution to the Food Crisis …78

3.5 The First Millennium Development Goal and Food Security in Zimbabwe ……………………89

CHAPTER FOUR: CHARACTERISTICS OF FOOD AID, AND EFFORTS OF

GOVERNMENTS. TOWARDS FOOD CRISIS

4.1 Characteristics of Food Aid and Its Implication for Recipient Nations …………………………87

4.2 Food Crisis and Social Unrest in Developing Countries…………………………………….…..92

4.3 Actions by governments Toward the Global Food Crisis………………………………………..99

4.4 The internal/External Dimension of the national Food Crisis in Africa……………………..…100

CHAPTER FIVE: SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

5.1 Summary ……………………………………………………………………………………..107

5.2 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………….107

5.3 findings of study………………………………………………………………………………109

5.4 Recommendation ……………………………………………………………………………..110

Bibliography

ix

List of Abbreviations

AIPPA Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act

AU African Union

BSA Broadcasting Services Act,

CGIAR Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research Development

FAO UN Food and Agriculture Organisation

FIVIMS Food Security and Vulnerability Information and Mapping System

HFSC High Food Sufficient Countries

IAASTD International Assessment on Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for

Development

ICTSD International Center for Technology and Sustainable Development

IFPRI International Food Policy Research Institute

IOM International Organisation for Migration

LFDCS Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries

MDC Movement for Democratic Change

NAGG National Alliance for Good Governance

NAMA Non-Agricultural Market Access

NCA National Constitutional Assembly

POSA Public Order and Security Act

PUMA Patriotic Union of MaNdebeleland

SEED Sustainable Energy and Environmental Division

UNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

WFP World Food Programme

WFS World Food Summit

ZANU-PF Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front

ZAPU Zimbabwe African People's Union

ZIDERA Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act

ZIMRIGHTS Zimbabwe Human Rights Association

ZNLWVA Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans‘ Association (the War Vets)

x

List of Tables

Table 1.1 Decision Table……………………………………………………………………………..47

Table 2.1 The Economist Intelligence Unit‘s Index of Democracy 2008………………………….53

Appendix I List of political parties – in Zimbabwe………………………………………………..120

Appendix II Government Domestic Debt, 5 November 1999 to 31 January 2003: Z$‘m…………...121

Appendix III Retail Fuel Prices, January 1997 to April 2003………………………………………...122

Appendix IV Electrical energy produced and distributed………………………………………….....123

Appendix V Manufacturing: All Groups Annual Indices……………………………………………124

Appendix VI Manufacturing: 2001 and 2002 compared (Percentage Change)……………………....125

Appendix VII Metal and mineral production: 2001 and 2002…………………………………………126

xi

List of Figure

Fig 1.1 The Mechanism of Food Aid Recycling…………………………………………………41

xii

Abstract

The study sets itself the task of examining politics of food aid and food crises in Africa focusing on the

Zimbabwean experience. In Addition to problematizing the economic and political imperatives of food

aid for the developing nations, the study, also explain how the character of political leadership have

contributed to the national development crisis in Zimbabwe, and; explore the organic interconnections

between the character of the governance of the global food system, the flow of food aid , and food

insecurity in Zimbabwe; and, based on the findings, proffer policy solutions to the identified problems.

To explore root causes of the global food crisis, and the Zimbabwean food crisis in particular the

following questions will be addressed in the present study: Has the character of political leadership

contributed to the national development crisis in Zimbabwe?; and, Is there an organic interconnection

between food insecurity in Zimbabwe and food aid, and as well as the character of the governance of the

global food system?. The study was undertaken within the theoretical assumption of the Marxists

political economy paradigm, which was developed, by Karl Marx, Fredrick Engel‘s, and V.I Lenin as a

critique of capitalism which is a radical critique of the humanitarian strategy adopted by the developed

nations in their relations with the developing countries. The theory was adapted to the objective nature

and character of the governance of the global food system, the flow of food aid, and political leadership,

as well as food insecurity in Zimbabwe. The above theoretical insight provides both conceptual and

analytical framework through which the paradox ,and political economy of foreign food aid can be

understood, in such a way that the reader sees both food not only as an economic tool but also a more

fundamental tool of foreign policy, and economic diplomacy. Our method of data collection was

through the secondary source of data collection. Frequency tables, and charts, were used to organize the

quantitative information gathered in concise and ordered form to clarify the relationship between the

character of the character of political leadership in Zimbabwe, the character of the governance of the

global food system, food aid and food insecurity in Zimbabwe. The findings of the study confirmed the

two hypotheses. Against the above background, the study concludes that the political and economic

crisis in Zimbabwe is a mixture of contradictions in both the domestic and international political system,

both of which does not encourage achievement of the objective of the First Millennium Development

Goal of eradicating extreme hunger and poverty. Finally, against the background of the productivist

agricultural policy driven by the logic of commodity production and exchange, the study recommends a

shift back the traditional concept of self-sufficiency through sustainable agriculture. However, this is

dependent on the political situation of ensuring peace and security.

xiii

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

The humanitarian strategy adopted by the developed nations in their relations with the

developing countries, is such that the former exploits the later, through foreign aid, especially, when the

terms of the aid are set by the donor nations or group of nations, in a manner that is entirely

disadvantageous to one nation.(Alasina et al. 2002:37). Understood this way, food aid is an intersection

of foreign policy, government power and business deals, not only because, of its centrality to national

power, but also, because, states that do not have food sovereignty depend on other nations, not just for

food, but also for other agricultural inputs.

The correlates that have pushed up food shortage are a mixture of factors: climatic, economic

and/or political. For Zimbabwe, specifically, there are at least three deeply-rooted interrelated long-term

factors and one additional proximate which converge to explain the socio-political-cum food crisis.

These three interrelated long-term factors have both internal-structural dimension (Zimbabwe‘s

incendiary combination of economic decline, social dislocation, and, most importantly, a politicized

military), and external institutional dimension. These have converged in causing the looming socio-

political-cum food crisis. Put differently, one way of understanding the political and economic trends

that has characterized the state of the Zimbabwean nation without an inevitable sense of detraction from

its political economy, is by focusing the analysis on both the character and the contradictions in both the

domestic and international political system, and on the place which Zimbabwean nation occupy in the

international division of labour, production and exchange.

In the domestic context, the vertical division of labour among the white and black Zimbabwean

farmers, and the land reform had a two way effect. First, about 4,000 commercial farmers mostly white

were displaced. Second, an estimated 350,000 black farm workers and their families were disgorged,

both of which led to a 50 percent reduction in overall agricultural output, and chronic shortages in key

staples, such as maize (Julian 2008:17). The implication of this abound: lost of productive capacity

which directly contributed to the Zimbabwean macroeconomic decline. Also, Zimbabwe, which was a

major exporter of commercial crops, and self-sufficient in food production, today has only managed to

produce 500 000 tones of maize against a requirement of 2.4 million tones, a sign that the country would

import grain through emergency food aid.(Ndlovu, 2007:5 in Global Politician Magazine).

xiv

While the above exposition foregrounds the internal and structural dimension of the socio-economic

cum political crisis in Zimbabwe, yet there are external and structural dimension from which, it can be

argued that, the on-going political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe are linked to rising pressures from

the international financial institutions ( IFIs ) the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Bank

which forced the Zimbabwean government down the road of structural adjustment programmes.The

imposed structural adjustment programme in Zimbabwe known as the ESAP, was part of the problem,

as several historically strong sectors in Zimbabwe could not compete in the liberalized trade

environment prescribed by the IFIs and donors, who had to, out of necessity bail them out of the

economic quagmire. To this must, also be added, Mugabenomics: the unprecedented collapse and

3,700% inflation (Ndlovu, 2007:7).

After seven years of experimentation, and eight years of recession, Zimbabwe‘s economy shrunk

by more than one third since 1999.More recently, GDP declines have still average d a staggering 6

percent per year between 2002-2006, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, this ―slower‖ pace

results only from the fact that the economy is running out of ways to contract. Zimbabwe's annual

inflation further increased to 1513.7 percentage points from 2200.2 percent in March to 3713.9 percent.

This is the highest in the world, in a country where the majority lives below $1 a day. On a month on

month basis CSO said that prices had risen by 100.7 percent last month (February) after a 50.5 percent

rise in March.

Apart from policy-induced problems, there are also misgovernance (political) cause of Zimbabwe‘s

economic shrunk, and food crisis is the long term dissatisfaction among military and proto-military

elements in society (Kriger,2003:9),and lack of accountability that characterized the ZANU regime

from its inception. Beginning in 1980, when ZANU won the vast majority of contested seats in

Zimbabwe‘s first-ever democratic elections, the party under the leadership of prime minister, later

president, Mugabe became increasingly dominant. After 1987, Zimbabwe had established a de facto

one-party state, and maintained its hierarchical structure, with power concentrated in the president and a

handful of executive-level and party institutions, such as the politburo, Central Committee and, perhaps

a distant third, the cabinet (Bauer and Taylor, 2005 :2).

It has become convenient, if not fashionable, among many observers to locate much of the

responsibility for Zimbabwe‘s democratic decline in the person of President Mugabe. From this follows

somewhat facile assertions that competitive multiparty politics, or even civilian order, will be restored

upon his demise. However, the environment of politicized military and militarized politics has

xv

succeeded in making Robert Mugabe essential to Zimbabwe‘s stability in the medium term. Over the

longer term, the keys to a political, and economic, ―soft landing‖ in Zimbabwe lie, not in the country‘s

fractured civilian opposition groups, but in the most unlikely quarter, that is, cronies of the ZANU-PF

regime, a group that now prominently includes the military apparatus itself and its representatives. All

these have combined in making the political, economic and social infrastructures of Zimbabwe, as the

world‘s fastest-shrinking economy with GDP declining on an average of 6 percent per year between

2002-2006 (the Economist Intelligence Unit, 2008).

Once the crisis has involved balance of payments (BOP) deficit, as Zimbabwe is in arrears with

its repayment commitments to the IMF and World Bank, and dependent on international food markets

for the suppliers of a variety of essential imports, it is only a moot point, if Zimbabwe‘s food

dependence would not be politicized for various political reasons, leading to contracting further foreign

aid.

1.2 Statement of Problem

The political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe is a mixture of three interrelated long-term

factors that have both internal-structural dimension (Zimbabwe‘s incendiary combination of economic

decline, social dislocation, and, a politicized military), and external institutional dimension. These

factors have converged in contributing to the current looming socio-political-cum food crisis in

Zimbabwe. For instance, in 1997, the Zimbabwean government faced rising pressures from the

International Financial Institutions (IFIs) to reduce government spending, accelerate privatization, and

renew the economic structural adjustment program (ESAP), and the International monetary fund (IMF)

specifically withheld an essential balance of payments facility (Ndlovu,2007:2). Thus, the political and

economic environment in the country was particularly fragile.

Faced with this problems, the destruction of Zimbabwe‘s once impressive urban-industrial

infrastructure and industries in the 1960s and seventies, was indisputably damaged by the effects of

economic structural adjustment in the 1990s (Bond, 2002:17).This collapse is not simply of physical

infrastructure, as institutional and organizational networks have also suffered, and trust has dwindled.

Formal economic activity became nearly impossible amidst Zimbabwe‘s capricious policy environment.

This lead to mass exodus of skilled labour, managers and capital, and rampant inflation, which some

estimates suggest a staggering 100,000 percent annually. The economic disintegration and deterioration

of political life and the steady erosion of remaining democratic practices lead to population

xvi

displacement, cross bother migration leading to ―Brain Drain‖, since, more than 30 percent of the

population, by some estimates currently live outside their home country- Zimbabwe(HRW, 2005a:11).

Among these exiles who now make their home in the U.K, the US, South Africa, Botswana and

elsewhere, are many of the country‘s best and brightest, including healthcare professionals, educators,

business owners and managers, farmers, and a significant portion of Zimbabwe‘s laborers, both skilled

and unskilled.

Many of these people left within the past decade, fleeing catastrophic economic decline and

political harassment (Bond & Manyanya, 2003:45; Raftopoulos, 2004:4). In other words, the majority of

Zimbabweans settling in African countries are economic refugees while, on a percentage basis, a larger

number of political refugees have settled in the UK: London is the home of 40,000, while Luton is

hosting 20,000, Slough 10,000, Leeds 20,000, Manchester 10,000, Birmingham 10,000, Glasgow 5,000,

Edinburgh 1,000, Coventry 3,000, Leicester 5,000, Sheffield 10,000, Milton Keynes 10,000, and

Wolverhampton 5000 (Bloch 2005:6). Between 1990 and 2005, 395,800 Zimbabweans entered the UK

,according to the London office of International Organisation for Migration (IOM).In percentage terms,

the largest proportion (36.8%) went to the United Kingdom (UK), while 34.5% went to Botswana, 6.9%

to the United States, 4.6% to South Africa%(1.2 million ), 3.4% to Canada and the remainder to various

countries around the world .What is even more worrisome is that , ninety percent (90%) of the subjects

in their survey lived below the official poverty line and many of those interviewed expressed that they

were experiencing critical levels of need(Sara, B. and Lloyd, S.,2006:9).

For those who could not go on exile, unemployment ranged from 75 to 85 percent, and poverty is

estimated as high as 90 percent (ICG, 2007:56).Cholera and other preventable diseases are becoming

commonplace as water treatment facilities, not to mention the country‘s once laudable health care

system, has collapsed. Average life expectancy has plummeted, down to 37 for men and just 34 for

women, the lowest in the world.

There was also a sudden acceleration in the decline of the Zimbabwe dollar parallel market

exchange rate in the last quarter of 2002, which saw the dollar drop from Z$730 to one US dollar to

Z$1,500, and then to Z$1,800 in the first week of November, 2002. The exchange rate movements

caused a month-on-month rates of increase in prices at an average of 14,3% a month from August to

December 2002. The year-on-year inflation recorded was 175,5%. This rose to 198,9% in December, to

208,1% in January 2003, to 220,9% in February and to 228% in March. As a result, payments arrears of

almost one billion US dollars had been accumulated in 2001 and rose to US$1, 3 billion by November

xvii

2002. As a result, Zimbabwe now appears to be a good investment option only to the most opportunistic

of speculators, who will concentrate on quick commercial returns and completely ignore productive

investment opportunities.

The expectation was that Zimbabwean government would adopt acceptable policies favourable

to the international donors who may bail them out on the principle of ―business as usual‖, since; it has

very few options on what to do. However, as Zimbabwe became one of the 22 countries, of which 16 are

in Africa, in which the undernourishment prevalence rate is over 35%, with up to a third of the

population in need of food aid since 2001, the Zimbabwean Government decided to nationalize nearly

all of the country‘s commercial farms.

Apart from the reasons which the government adduced for the land reform, some critics are of

the opinion that President Robert Mugabe used the nationalization of the Zimbabwean commercial

farms policy for political reasons against his two opposition candidates: Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC

candidate and former ZANU-PF minister Simba Makoni, who contested the presidential poll on March

29, 2008. For instance, with President Robert Mugabe‘s defeat of its constitutional referendum, in

February 2000, like all dictators with their ―fascist and authoritarian style of governance, the incumbent,

President Robert Mugabe through populist policy of land reform established a dictatorial position in

Zimbabwe boasting that no Zimbabwean can rule ―until I (am)he is a century old‖ ( Moore, 2006:9).

As a result, the MDC was unable to secure electoral victory in the 2000, 2002, and 2005, or in 2008.

By implication, the nationalization of the Zimbabwean commercial farms, affected productivity

negatively, and export earnings from food production declined. This led to devaluation of the

Zimbabwean currency by the Zimbabwean government, a reason for which the Zimbabwean Reserve

Bank paid Z$800 for every US dollar it receives, each US dollar exchanged for Z$848 Zimbabwean

dollar. This led to a loss of Z$745 it will incur on every dollar taken by the government. This translated

to a total loss of US$10 million every month, or Z$7, 45 billion a month. It has affected productivity.

Provisional figures for the final quarter of 2002 show that manufacturing output for the whole year

declined by 16,4% compared to the volume produced in 2001.On April 16 2003, fuel prices were

increased again, this time by much bigger margins:210% for leaded petrol and 67,5% for diesel. In

February, 2003, the petrol price had been increased by 95% and the diesel price by 80%, but these

adjustments fell a long way short of the amounts needed to close the gap (Bauer and Taylor, 2005:5).

Finally, all these made Zimbabwe a typical international pariah, at least vis-à-vis the OECD

countries and a serious threat to the stability of the whole Southern African region with an estimated

xviii

poverty rate of 80 percent (the IMF 2005:407).Seeing that the European Union has switched its food aid

policies toward cash for local purchases in developing countries in the mid-1990s, a policy also adopted

by Canada and Australia; the US, maintaining its policy of tying 100% of its food aid to purchases of US

products, seeing the inevitable of food aid for Zimbabwe, it is only a moot point whether, the terms food

aid would not be set by foreign donors in a manner that would be entirely disadvantageous, and

detrimental to Zimbabwe.

The broad question still remains what are the root causes of the Zimbabwean food crisis? To

explain the long-term factors and proximate factors that have influenced Zimbabwe‘s socio-political-

economic cum food crisis, the following questions will be addressed in the present study:

I. Has the character of political leadership contributed to the national development crisis in

Zimbabwe?

II. Is there an organic interconnection between food insecurity, food aid, and the character of the

governance in Zimbabwe?

1.3 Objective of the Study

The general and specific objectives of this study are essentially but not exclusive of the following:

The general objective of the present study is to determine the main cause of the developing

countries' precarious food crisis using Zimbabwe as a case study with a view to problematize the

economic and political imperatives of food aid for the developing nations.

In terms of the specific objectives, the study intends to:

I. To explain how the character of political leadership have contributed to the national

development crisis in Zimbabwe, and ;

II. To explore the organic interconnections between the flow of food aid , food insecurity and the

character of the governance in Zimbabwe; and,

III. Based on the findings, proffer policy solutions to the identified problems.

1.4 Significance of the Study

The usefulness of any study is measured by how much it will contribute to the already

existing body of knowledge. Over the years, there have been various symposia conferences and foreign

policy Summit and Round tables convened to address the issue under investigation. Ontologically, the

phenomenon has been presented, and treated as a mere humanitarian emergency, which made analysts to

believe that foreign aid is given to states for humanitarian or economic development intentions. Contrary

xix

to the above consensus, the study will problematize and seeks to explain how the donor‘s interest, rather

than needs of the recipient determines whom to give aid as well as how the monopolization, and control

over food supply and food distribution by multinational corporations creates national food crisis. It

therefore, advances the intellectual position of scholars on the debate of shift in food policies of

developing countries, from insistence on national self-sufficiency to market-based food security.

Using the Kantian Inside-Outside conceptual framework in theorization to the analysis, the study

will help ,the reader to see the international system and the domestic system as both dependent and

independent variables respectively as it uses both national food and global food crisis as constitutive

and generative variables (the explanatory factor), and ( national food security/insecurity) as what is

explained. Therefore, the study ostensibly, provides a critique of the implicit sharp distinction between

domestic food crisis and international food crisis. Thus, the theoretical significance of the study lies

essentially in the fact that it will provide a fair illumination of the concept of political economy of

foreign aid.

Added to this, the study becomes timely, as food aid and its pattern of administration has become a

heated political issue on the international stage in recent years, sparking debates over the economic and

political imperatives of food aid for the developing nations in terms of the question of whether the tying

of food aid to commodity purchases in the donor country (in-kind food aid) is the best way to deliver

food aid.

Finally, not only will the study be beneficial to policy makers and society for a more profound and

deeper appreciation of the linkages between ―Developments‖ of a nation (including its food security) has

become dependent on the market based policies, trade liberalization, and privatization of national farm

lands. The study will also serve as a convenient springboard for further inquiry in the area of ―soft

power diplomacy in international relations. If the study succeeds in clarifying issues, enhancing

understanding and is able to elicit and stimulate enlightening intellectual discourse, we believe, it will

have adequately served its purpose.

1.5 Literature Review

Literature in this study will be reviewed under the following sub-headings or sub-themes:

I. Character of Political Leadership and Development Crises in Zimbabwe

II. National Development Crisis in Zimbabwe

xx

III. Food Insecurity in Zimbabwe

IV. Governance of Global Food System

Character of Political Leadership and Development Crises in Zimbabwe

The contradictions of governance, and crisis of leadership, or the character of politics in

Zimbabwe is a major contributory factor to the national development crisis in Zimbabwe. It has become

convenient, if not fashionable, among many observers to locate much of the responsibility for

Zimbabwe‘s democratic decline in the person of President Mugabe. From this follows somewhat facile

assertions that competitive multiparty politics, or even civilian order, will be restored upon his demise.

However, the environment of politicized military and militarized politics has succeeded in making

Robert Mugabe essential to Zimbabwe‘s stability in the medium term. Over the longer term, the keys to

a political, and economic, ―soft landing‖ in Zimbabwe lie not in the country‘s fractured civilian

opposition groups, but in the most unlikely quarter – cronies of the ZANU-PF regime, a group that now

prominently includes the military apparatus itself and its representatives.

Kriger, (2003:5), noted that the origins of Zimbabwe‘s recent chaos are well known. The

underlying/long-term factors are deeply-rooted and stem from at least three interrelated long-term

factors and one additional proximate cause. The first centers on unresolved disparities over economy

and land. This ―incomplete liberation‖ meant that there was a reservoir of populist resentment, which,

though long dormant, could be tapped and mobilized by opportunistic politicians and other actors.

Indeed, this contributed to long term dissatisfaction among military and proto-military elements in the

society. Lack of accountability is also a key variable that characterized the ZANU regime from its

inception (see Kriger, 2003).

Bauer and Taylor, (2005:144) argues that beginning in 1980, when ZANU won the vast majority

of contested seats in Zimbabwe‘s first-ever democratic elections, the party under the leadership of prime

minister, later president, Mugabe became increasingly dominant. After 1987, Zimbabwe had established

a de facto one-party state. It maintained its hierarchical structure, with power concentrated in the

president and a handful of executive-level and party institutions, such as the politburo, Central

Committee and, perhaps a distant third, the cabinet. Sylvester, (1995:6) makes a case for the

incorporation of ZANU‘s rival and leading opposition party, ZAPU, through a merger in 1987 which

essentially foreclosed the prospect of any potent political competition in the country for the next dozen

years .By definition, power is not diffused in a single-party predominant system. This type of governing

xxi

structure renders the Zimbabwean state particularly susceptible to militarization. Although the ZANU-

led state displayed flashes of democratic governance in its first two decades; a closer inspection reveals

an astounding willingness by the regime to use various tools of repression to maintain its authority.

Indeed, ZANU had a history of using violence for political ends. The most severe example of this was

the infamous Gukurahundi campaign between 1982 and 1986, in which some 20,000 Zimbabweans,

mainly from Matabeleland, died at the hands of the regime. (Sylvester, 1995).

For instance, Robert Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since its independence from settler rule in

1980 till date. Although never a fully fledged democracy, in most conceptions of the term, during that

period, Zimbabwe has gone from multiparty state in the 1980s, to dominant one party state in the 1990s

to autocracy in the 2000s. Both scholarship and popular writing on democracy, and more specifically on

Zimbabwe, have accurately mapped Zimbabwe‘s descent into authoritarianism (The Economist,

2008:22).

In fact, not long after he began his fourth presidential term in 2002 – when the first serious

discussions of succession and ―will he/won‘t he‖ speculation began about the prospects of Mugabe

standing again in 2008 – the country has been sliding inexorably toward militarism. Research on African

regimes suggests that states displaying Zimbabwe‘s incendiary combination of economic decline, social

dislocation, and, most importantly, a politicized military, have experienced coups d‘état, and indeed,

Zimbabwe appears ripe for a coup, but one has not occurred.

According to Tawanda,(2009:45),the US introduced economic sanctions on Zimbabwe through

the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, 2001 (ZIDERA) According to him, through

this enactment Zimbabwe‘s access to finance and credit facilities was effectively incinerated, and

ZIDERA empowers the US to use its voting rights and influence (as the main donor) in multilateral

lending agencies, such as the IMF, World Bank, and the African Development Bank to veto any

applications by Zimbabwe for finance, credit facilities, loan rescheduling, and international debt

cancellation. The US cites Zimbabwe‘s human rights record, political intolerance and absence of rule of

law as the main reasons for the imposition of sanctions. The ZIDERA also suggests that if Zimbabwe

acts to correct these ills, then the sanctions will be removed and economic support measures are

suggested. Simply put, owing to the size of the US vote and influence in these institutions, neither the

IMF, World Bank nor the African Development Bank will lend to Zimbabwe, or offer it credit facilities.

Therefore, needless to say, as a direct result of the US 2001 Act, Zimbabwe‘s relationship with these

multilateral lending agencies was immediately and severely affected.

xxii

The political economy of land provided the central ideological theme for ZANU-PF which

employed to garner support and gain legitimacy from the rural populace, as evident in the ZANU PF‘s

campaign slogan ‗LAND IS THE ECONOMY AND THE ECONOMY IS LAND‖ during the whole

constitutional debate and thereafter the General elections held in June 2000 .The struggle for land

became the Third Chimurenga (The Third Revolution) in government circle

( http://www.afrika.no/noop/). Hence anyone who opposed the governments‘ view on the land issue was

viewed as an enemy and against nationalistic aspirations. As articulated by the ruling party newspaper:

their ties with ex-Rhodesians and Western powers who have been

working against the realization of our people‘s aspirations and

goals such as land reform is clear testimony that they are enemies

of our revolution. To be more precise, they are puppets of these

imperialists who want to re-colonize Zimbabweans

( http://www.afrika.no/noop/)

In view of the above, critics of government land reform argues that Zimbabwe‘s land reform was

market-oriented from the beginning. Land reform in post-independent in Zimbabwe can be separated

into three main periods: the early 1980s saw the government purchasing land on a ―willing buyer,

willing seller‖ basis with co-financing from the British government. Between 1980-1998, approximately

3.5 million hectares were redistributed in this manner. The government put a lot of effort in land

settlement, with the creation of the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement. The mid-1980s to mid-1990s,

land reform took a back seat due to government‘s preoccupation with economic revival under the

Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) and the mid-1990s and onwards saw the politicization of

land reform (http://www.afrika.no/noop/file).

According to Robert Mugabe, the government was justified because it was correcting historical

imbalances through the land reform as it was ―a struggle by Zimbabwe to gain its rightful heritage

against colonial power acting on behalf of the white community to protect their interest‖. He blamed the

whites for their refusal to cooperate with the government and attacked them for their ―entrenched

colonial attitudes‖ and their ―vestigial attitudes from the Rhodesian yesteryears- attitudes of master race,

master colour, master owner and master employer‖ (http://www.afrika.no/noop/file). Firmed in the

above believe, the international community, led by the United Kingdom and Britain‘s intransigence and

overt intervention in Zimbabwe‘s affairs did not change Mugabe‘s behaviour, but made him even more

xxiii

critical of external intervention and gave him the opportunity to dismiss and attack his critics as agents

of imperialism.

Tawanda, H.,( 2009:48) in his own contribution while noting that Mugabe‘s political

intolerance, electoral fraud and gross human rights abuses have contributed to the country‘s economic

malaise, argues that though, it was true that each one of these often cited factors has contributed, or

provides an explanation to Zimbabwe‘s current economic problems, however, western countries and

media almost collectively ignore one other significant factor responsible for the country‘s economic

collapse: economic sanctions imposed by the US, the EU, and Australia against Zimbabwe. He noted

further that, Zimbabwe‘s economic woes are the direct result of a concerted and systematic campaign to

effect regime change through an economic implosion. Hence, in his words, Zimbabwe‘s inability to

obtain finance or credit facilities from international lenders to inject into the economy is a direct

consequence of a sanctions regime imposed against the Zimbabwe by particularly the US, and the EU.

Similarly, according to ZimEye (2009:2), the suggestion that Zimbabwe‘s economy is what it is because

of mismanagement is partly true but misleading. He noted that what Mugabe has done is to mismanage

the endemic crisis caused by the country‘s inability to access capital, which in turn are the result of a raft

of economic sanctions in place against the country. There are no doubt other reasons why Zimbabwe‘s

economy is in the doldrums; chief of which are myopic, ill-advised ZANU PF government policies and

corruption. But one cannot ignore the damaging effect the sanctions have had on the economy and how

the country and its economy are being slowly asphyxiated by the blockade on access to international

capital markets.

In fact, according to (ICG, 2007:144), economic disintegration is inextricably tied to the

deterioration of political life and the steady erosion of remaining democratic practices. Notwithstanding

various qualifications about Zimbabwe‘s democracy in previous decades, the country once enjoyed

vibrant institutions of political and civil society, a surprisingly autonomous judiciary, a briefly ascendant

political opposition. These institutions have been severely undermined, aided by draconian legislation –

among them Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), LOMA, and Public Order

and Security Act (POSA) – limiting or preventing assembly, protest and grassroots organizing. The IMF

has estimated poverty at 80 percent (IMF, 2005:405), but the point is clear. The independent media has

been banned, proscribed and even bombed into submission – and sometimes all three – so that

opposition voices are either not heard, or are audible to such a small percentage of the populace that they

are deemed inconsequential. Electoral institutions have been wholly penetrated by ruling party and

xxiv

military officials. Perhaps not surprisingly, the prevailing economic and political conditions have

contributed directly to an estimated 3.4m Zimbabweans now living abroad. This number could be as

high as 4 million exiles – or more than 30 percent of the population, by some estimates.

In 2007, several amendments were made to the POSA, AIPPA and the Broadcasting Services

Act (BSA), but these have been deemed ―piecemeal reforms‖ and unlikely to affect the climate of

repression (ICG, 2008:3). Certainly, President Robert Mugabe poised to begin his 29th year in office –

bears considerable blame for the myriad problems facing his country. Yet it is equally apparent that the

complexity of those problems means that they cannot simply be fixed with the demise of the 84-year old

head of state. Even under the best case scenario, the damage to population, economy, and infrastructure

will require decades to rectify. Mugabe‘s death, or departure from office by other means, is a necessary,

but hardly sufficient step to precipitate positive change in Zimbabwe.

Clapham,(1985:18) argues that the military as the ―armed wing of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie is

another faction of the ruling elite, which seeks to protect its own interests (When these interests are

materially threatened, the military has a clear incentive for intervention in politics via a coup d‘état.

Moore, (2006:5) noted that, in Zimbabwe today, military interests are so diversified and so bound up

with factors completely outside the ordinary military sphere, that the armed forces would appear to have

ample incentive to intervene to protect those interest, and that ,on the surface, it appears that these

interests are seriously threatened in Zimbabwe, commensurate with the collapse of the economy,

political uncertainty and infighting, a restive political opposition, and the occasional pledge of President

Mugabe to remain in office, in his words, ―until I am a century old‖ (Moore, 2006:6). Indeed, according

to Maroleng, (2005:52), over the long term, militarized politics itself contains the seeds for an economic

and political revitalization in the country.

In addition, Zimbabwe‘s 1998-2004 misadventure in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

certainly fits the model, described by Belkin and Schofer (2005:2), of giving your troops something else

to shoot at it provided rich patronage opportunities especially for the officer ranks. Moreover, arguably,

the regular army was so broken upon its return that coup risk was doubly diminished. Although it seems

unlikely that this was the leading cause of Zimbabwe‘s Congo intervention, it was, for the regime, a

positive spin off. [The DRC conflict thus served multiple functions: distract and possibly divide the rank

and file and enrich the brass]. Although other factors are also relevant; Mugabe and his party have

certainly put many of the above coup-proofing strategies into practice. For example, the creation of

parallel forces and the proliferation of militias have characterized the Zimbabwean polity for most of

xxv

this decade. (Belkin and Schofer, 2005:2). Further, although ethnic balancing was always imperfect in

Zimbabwe, the promotion of the president‘s co-ethnics from the Zezuru sub-group of the Shona, has

become the modus operandi particularly in regard to military and military-connected positions.

In terms of outright repression, Mugabe and ZANU-PF have effectively imposed legislation that

includes various restrictions on civil society and political opposition. Coupled with a disastrous

economic regime, this political repression has contributed to the emigration of millions of

Zimbabweans; many of those now abroad make up Zimbabwe‘s intelligentsia, and, as such include the

likely architects of a civilian effort to wrest power from ZANU-PF.

Furthermore, Belkin and Schofer (2005:8), added that, at least two indicators suggested currently

shows, a weakened civil society and regime that is increasingly considered illegitimate (only the absence

of a history of coups plays in Zimbabwe‘s favour). Using the second edition of the Economist

Intelligence Unit‘s democracy index, which used 60 indicators grouped in five categories: electoral

process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political

culture on a 0 to 10 scale, we can demonstrate that the character of governance and leadership influences

the stability of a state. For instance, Zimbabwe scored 149,2.53;0.83;4.29,1.67 4.38,and 1.47 as overall

score on electoral process and pluralism; functioning of government, political participation ,political

culture, and civil liberties respectively.

Ralph, R., (2007:1), in his article captioned, ―How Mugabe is Destroying The Zimbabwean

Economy " provided a perfect illustration of how the "fatal conceit" of government can turn a difficulty

into a catastrophe and shows how "Robert G. Mugabe has ruled over this battered nation, his every wish

endorsed by Parliament and enforced by the police and soldiers, for more than 27 years. It appears,

however, that not even an unchallenged autocrat can repeal the laws of supply and demand. With prices

doubling weekly, Mugabe's attempt to revoke the laws of economics came via an anti-inflationary order,

"Operation Slash Prices," on June 25, ordering merchants to cut their prices by 50 percent. One month

after Mr. Mugabe decreed just that, commanding merchants nationwide to counter 10,000-percent-a-

year hyperinflation by slashing prices in half and more, Zimbabwe's economy is at a halt. Wines in

(Ralph, 2007:4).

Ostensibly, the Gukurahundi was directed at renegade members of ZANU‘s former rival army

ZIPRA, under the pretext that they were seeking to overthrow the ZANU-led government. Vast numbers

of non-combatants, mainly of the Ndebele minority, were also killed in the campaign. Somewhat

paradoxically, the mid-late 1990s were also a time of modest political opening in Zimbabwe. Labor

xxvi

leaders, represented in the umbrella body ZCTU, were increasingly emboldened. Organizations of civil

society, including various campaigns such as the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) and

the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) were increasingly vibrant; opposition parties, though small

and fragmented, were quite outspoken. Indeed, although such groups and their predecessors had scant

impact on the results of the elections in 1995 and 1996 for parliament and the presidency, respectively,

opposition voices were represented quite forcefully. This revealed growing credibility problems for the

ruling party, particularly in the urban centers. Nonetheless, as a formidable actor, the ZANU-PF

government was able to effectively parry the demands and pressures from each of these groups (Ralph,

2007).

Yet another entity whose organizational and political strength grew immensely during this period

of relative social opening was the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans‘ Association

(ZNLWVA). When they marched in mid-1997 demanding that they receive pensions, land and health

care for their sacrifices to the nation years earlier, President Mugabe capitulated, granting lump-sum

payments and guaranteeing lifetime pensions costing the treasury Z$4.5 billion (then about $440 mm

US). At the same time, incendiary rhetoric about seizures of white-owned land and land reform – long a

regular feature of Zimbabwean election cycles, but prior to 2000 without any foundation or follow-up –

formed an expedient corollary to the regime‘s new found commitment to its War Veterans (Ralph,

2007:7).

According to Sylvester,(1995:3), each time a modest move toward greater political liberalism

occurred in Zimbabwe, it appears to suffer a severe authoritarian backlash. Thereafter, a backlash was

seen in 1997, in which fears of ZCTU-War Vets collaboration led to anti-white an anti-democratic

reaction, and in 2000, which marked the most competitive election in Zimbabwean history. This bodes

poorly for 2008, and suggests that any relaxation that results in an advance by ―pro-democracy‖ forces

will be met with a similarly authoritarian response from ZANU-PF and its military allies. The

ZNLWVA was itself notoriously corrupt, and numerous recipients of the payouts were not actual

veterans. Timothy Scarnecchia (2006:8) has called this ―fascist cycle‖, and Masipula Sithole‘s

Authoritarianism,‖ (Journal of Democracy, 1997:442).

Clapham, (1985:7) has focused on the politicization of the Zimbabwe‘s military. In other words,

politicization of the military is the expansion of the corporate identity of the military to include explicit

class interests that the military, as a class, is then inclined to protect (Clapham, 1985:3); as well as the

explicit assignment of political relevance to military officers, retired military personnel with links to the

xxvii

armed forces, and the military as an institution. This ultimately makes the military to become a key

power broker, often at the behest of civilian politicians, and may act as a final arbiter of political

outcomes. For instance, veterans of Zimbabwe‘s liberation war have always held prominent positions in

the ZANU-led government, the institutional military structure – formed from the merging of the two

liberation armies, Zanla and Zipra, with some elements from the Rhodesian army. Arguably, the

inclusion of so many former Liberation War Veterans in ZANU-PF politics from 1980 might be

characterized as politicizing the military. One could also argue that politicization began with General

Walls in 1980, when he considered an anti-ZANU coup. Another possible example is the Gukuruhundi

campaign, which called on the military, specifically the notorious Fifth Brigade, to play a substantial

political role by attacking and repressing non-combatants as much as Ndebele/Zipra-fringe militias

(Clapham, 1985:).

According to the Global Witness magazine, (2003:87), the War Vets empowered and politicized

important elements of the ―military grassroots.‖ The key turning point in the process of politicization

actually occurred in 1998, principally through the Zimbabwe army‘s intervention in the war in the DRC.

As a result of its deployment in the Congo, Zimbabwe‘s military hierarchy began to see itself in terms of

its collective interests as an economic class. Zimbabwe‘s intercession on behalf of the beleaguered

Kabila government generated key lucrative contracts – for materiel, supplies, transport, mining rights,

and so on – many of which were given to companies controlled by senior military officers, as well as the

military itself, such as OSLEG, Zimbabwe Defence Industries (ZDI), and others (Nest; Weinstein; UN

Sec Council, 2003; Global Witness, 2003).This well documented appropriation of Congolese resources

was not, foremost, part of a strategy of collective security to rescue/aid an embattled SADC member, as

the Zimbabwe government claimed, but driven by domestic Zimbabwean politics. For the brass, the

Congo provided a treasure trove of patronage; the senior military elite drew vast amounts of capital from

their mining ventures in the DRC.

For the rank and file, their deployment to DRC literally and figuratively removed a potential

source of threat to the ruling ZANU-PF. Thus, there was an implicit recognition of the power of the

military as a corporate entity and the risk un-deployed [and underpaid?] soldiers posed as long as they

remained in their Zimbabwe barracks. By giving military elites new economic power directly, and

indirectly granting them political power, ZANU-PF gave them a stake in the outcome, both in DRC and

in Zimbabwe. Other forms of economic patronage have been heaped upon members of the military

establishment:

xxviii

Mugabe‘s beleaguered government has awarded huge pay raises to the army

ahead of critical elections [in March 2008] in a bid to calm the restless military‖

intelligence agents received increases as well; the military budget, the bulk of

which goes to salaries and personnel costs, has been spared many of the severe

cuts seen by other branches of government. In fact, ―taken as a whole, the

combined budget line for defence and security expenditure in Zimbabwe has been

‗second to none‘ since 1980; expenditure and regular increases on the police,

militia, war veterans and armed forces has been unequalled compared to civil

service and other productive sectors….Significantly, salary benefits and awards

for the security sector escalated by more than 100% in the run up to the much

contested March [2008] presidential elections. This was against much lower

percentages accorded to other groups in the country; apparently cautious about

leaving out any member of the increasingly extensive security apparatus, in early

2007 the government also increased pensions for War Vets from $103,000 to

$500,000 a month; In addition to salary increases, various gratuities have also

been made available. In mid-2007, for example, the government was reported to

have ―spent thousands of United States dollars acquiring luxurious Mazda 3

vehicles for army and police chiefs, at a time when the country has no foreign

currency for essentials such as drugs.‖ Each Mazda cost US $16,607, plus a

Zimbabwe dollar top-up of $200 million. The army chiefs fared even better,

receiving Toyota Prados or Mercedes Benzes depending on their rank, and the

government reportedly has acquired hundreds of Toyota Yaris for the Central

Intelligence Organization; Of course, senior military officials were also among

the leading beneficiaries of land seizures. The state has given them access to

credit to support their various business interests, however they were acquired. ―A

special Reserve Bank fund gives cheap unsecured loans to top officers, politburo

and central committee and central committee members, cabinet ministers, judges

and parliamentarians to finance farming and business activities‖ ;―some military

and political leaders are raking in small fortunes, particularly through the army‘s

foray into the DRC.‖ (Mawadza, Aquilina, in Institute for Security Studies

Accessed 11/29/2007 from: http://www.issafrica.org/static/templates/tmpl_html;

BBC Monitering International Reports of February 27, 2008 as cited in an article

in Business Day, Scott Baldauf, in The Christian Science Monitor of April 25,

2007 ; ( Nkatazo, Lebo 2007 ).

All these were efforts to ensure loyalty to the Zimbabwean state. Hence this placed the

Zimbabwean military unequivocally in the role of power broker. According to General Vitalis

Zvinavashe-Commander of the Zimbabwe Defense Forces who posed a thinly-veiled threat to

MDC candidate Morgan Tsvangirai:

The security organisations will only stand in support of those political leaders

that will pursue Zimbabwean values, traditions and beliefs for thousands of

lives lost in pursuit of Zimbabwe's hard-won independence‖..."[The president]

is expected to observe the objectives of the liberation struggle. We will

therefore not accept, let alone support or salute anyone with a different

xxix

agenda.(Peta Thornycroft and Tim Butcher, ―Military will not accept a Mugabe

Defeat‖ Telegraph, January 10, 2002).

Peta Thornycroft, however, reported in 2002 that the military was even given an explicit role in the

administration of elections. Zimbabwe Defense forces ―ran the nerve center of [2002‘s] disputed

presidential election, in violation of the constitution. This is evident in an exchange of letters in 2002

between the head of the Zimbabwe National Army and the head of the Zimbabwe Defense forces asking

General Vitalis Zvinavashe for permission for assignment of three officers to control the national

command center in Harare, during and after the [2002] presidential election. Thus, the national

command center was the headquarters for election logistics, providing ballot boxes, working with party

representatives, providing information for the media and reporting results. (Peta, T. VOA Feb 5, 2003,)

Matikinye, (2007:64) noted that Robert Mugabe (the government) has in February 2007, gazetted

the Defence (War Veterans Reserve) Regulations through Statutory Instrument to set up a War Veterans

Reserve. The new law incorporates former combatants into the Zimbabwe National Army as a Reserve

Force, thereby formalizing the position of the president‘s most vociferous military supporters. In a

similar vein, ―the reported deployment of units of the Presidential Guard in army barracks around the

country suggests that the government no longer trusts that the army will remain loyal under the present

conditions. Yet, increasingly, even the watchers need watching. Thus President Mugabe is also

recruiting people whose loyalty can be trusted in order to fill vacancies among service personnel created,

in part, by desertions including the replacement, ironically enough, of his own Presidential Guard with

members of his secret police and filing Army ranks with his party‘s youth militia and aging veterans of

the liberation struggle from the 1970s. (Scott, B. in the Christian Science Monitor. April 25, 2007.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007).

Sarah, B. (2005:5) states that Governance in Zimbabwe increasingly resembles a military

apparatus – the ―slow motion emergence of a junta‖ ―Autocratic Militarism,‖– wherein primary

responsibility for economic policy making now lies in the aptly named Zimbabwe National Security

Council (ZNSC), chaired by President Mugabe. This narrow body has marginalized Zimbabwe‘s

longstanding and more inclusive political institutions, such as the Politburo, the cabinet and the central

committee of the party itself. The worldview is decidedly defensive, and increasingly militaristic. In

addition, at least since 2007, the state and ZANU-PF were instrumental in the creation of the

paramilitary groups. For example, when Morgan Tsvangirai and other MDC members were arrested and

severely beaten in March 2007 after an intra-party meeting was disbanded, the calls grew louder (reports

xxx

of the abuses were widely circulated internationally). Tsvangirai, who had sustained head injuries and

had to be hospitalized, declared that this was the straw that broke the camel‘s back and that

Zimbabweans would finally rise up to overthrow the Mugabe regime. Although this sense was echoed

by observers such as US Ambassador Michael Dell and reporter Craig Timberg of The Washington Post,

such claims appear to have been wildly exaggerated.

Eric, B. (2006:13) noted that the ZNSC had taken over the operations of the Zimbabwe Revenue

Authority (ZIMRA). In addition, Oxford Research of April 20, 2006 reported that the national

railways, national parks, and the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe (NocZim) are all run by former

security men, whereas the now pervasive militias often play a more sinister role. Freedom House

(2007:95), reported that war veterans and ZANU-PF militants operate as de facto enforcers of

government policies – including land redistribution – and have committed human rights abuses such as

assault, torture, rape, extralegal evictions, and extralegal executions without fear of punishment

(Freedom in the World: 2007 :97).

Chris, M. (2005: 7) reported that President Mugabe appears to be increasingly reliant upon

members of his own Zezuru sub-group. This ―Zezuru sum game‖ can be seen as a move by Mugabe and

his close associates within this faction to address their security dilemma by gaining total dominance.

Placing trusted faction members in strategic positions would provide protection from political rivals and

from threat of prosecution in future. In fact, Mugabe has assigned key posts to members or allies of the

Zezuru-led faction of powerful former army general Solomon Mujuru, and placed members of the

security establishment in strategic civil service positions. A glaring example of this is the fact that

Mugabe has given [Didymus] Mutasa (Minister for State Security) the responsibility to manage a new

government taskforce that oversees the import and distribution of food in the country.

Gregory. (2008:45) in a study of governmental responses to food crisis in Zimbabwe, Kenya,

and Botswana, with comments on Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Kenya‘s Turkana District, argues that in a

political systems that have clientelist tendencies, governmental response to food crisis is similarly

clientelistic. In addition, he added that food scarcity provides governments with an opportunity to

instrumentalize the crisis as a patronage tool for political survival, which according to him necessitates

government to monopolize control over the food supply and food distribution for the purpose of

increasing the political power of food and therefore the power of its political-discriminatory distribution.

William and Haggard (1994:1) focused on the role of political leadership and government

officials in creating the desired environment for the implementation of economic reforms. Graw and

xxxi

McPherson (1999:17) shared a similar view .Rodstick (1994:5), and Ka and Van de Walle (1994:9) have

furthered the argument on the role of political leadership in implementing economic reforms. Focusing

on the impact of reliance on foreign experts in the design of reform programmes, some scholars contend

that such practices provides the ideal means by which large number of donor reform relations thereby

maintaining the status quo in post reform environment. Stressing the argument further, Healy and

Robison (1992:75) and Grindle and Thomas (1991:12), argues that the policy processes especially the

formulation state is dominated by state elite, sometimes in a single outcast and in others a small

oligarchy. Hence the dependence on foreign expends have led to a situation on the one hand, where:

The African post-colonial state has sought to determine the

utilization of its peoples economic resources, in many instances

become a rubber stamp for decisions made by others, usually non-

African in nationality. And the decision-making powers of aid

agencies in Africa have expanded as a result of the default of those

who mar the political kingdoms‖ hence an implicit loss of

sovereignty desirable in some instances, in view of the misuse of it

by those in power is taking place (Mkandawire 1995:24)

They further argued that the importance of broad political support depends on the form of

government in the short term. However, they are of the opinion that authoritarian regime may be able to

force the population to accept policies or to shape public opinion through the control of the media.

Drawing example from Latin America, East Asia, in sub-Sahara Africa‘ Zambia 1992, Zaire/Congo in

1997 and Nigeria in 1985-6, they concluded that most cases successful reform efforts were launched and

implemented under authoritarian regimes, and once these reforms are in place they are not reversed by

subsequent democratic regime.

Within these groups of scholars, some have focused on the role legislators, foreign experts in

reform policy design. These scholars have argued that because much of the resistance to market oriented

reforms may come from government official whose jobs salaries, prestige, and often opportunities for

graft are endangered, that in addition to leadership, successful reform requires adequate support from

legislators and or/ administration to ensure its effective implementation. Hence the recent adoption by

the World Bank of comprehensive development framework (CDF) and by the IMF of the poverty

Reduction and Growth strategy (PRGS) reflects condemnation of their close-door approach.

Thus, it is from the above observation, that the role of the world bank and the international Monetary

Fund (IMF) unprecedented control over the economic policies and institutions in most African since the

1980s which the implications of not only loss in policy autonomy but also undermining of existing

xxxii

capacity in the policy institutions can be understood. Some scholars have focused on liberalization and

how economic reforms are sequenced. Mcculloch and McPherson (2001:11) divided the liberalization

process into four components

The design of a policy package.

Its acceptance and endorsement by top policy makers and later by the public.

Its implementation in specific policy measures and their administration and

The economy‘s response to change incentives.

Also, Sachs and Warner (1995a:7) who adopted composite binary measure of openness, classifies a

country as a closed if even one of several criteria of significant insulation from global market forces

apply. According to the view of the Sachs – Warner Scheme, the removal of trade barriers is insufficient

to qualify as opening up if the real exchange rate remains overvalues as to prevent development of

export activities along lines of comparative advantage. In other words, devaluation of an overvalued

currency is a major characteristic of trade liberalizations. And thus helping one understood why Nigeria

and most Africa countries have devalued their currency.

Milner and Kubota (2005:6) have found that among developing countries, democracies are more

likely than authoritarian regimes, particularly military regimes and personalist dictatorships, to liberalize

trade. Barro (1997:14) finds an ―upside-down U-shaped‖ relationship between ―level of democracy‖ and

growth, and, echoing the concerns of classical liberals such as Lord Acton about universal suffrage,

infers that overly inclusive political systems can be bogged down with redistributive interest-group

politics. This is true of the Zimbabwean case.

Remmer, (2004:45) argues that, countries dependent on publicly owned natural resources or

foreign aid tend to suffer from dysfunctional government because such governments do not rely on

productive investment for tax revenue .Therefore, these governments pay little cost when politicians use

the manufacturing, agricultural, and service sectors as sinecures for themselves and their cronies, setting

up state-guaranteed monopolies and monopsonies (Bates, 1981:281). The productive sectors of the

economy may suffer, but the resource revenues and aid funds keep flowing into the public coffers. In

these countries, some sort of total collapse or revolutionary upheaval might be necessary to create the

sort of institutions that could constrain future governments.

Barro, R. (1997:64) finds that high government consumption also reduces growth rates. Cross-

national studies of FDI inflows specifically have found similar results: countries that are open to trade

and have low inflation, budget deficits, and corruption attract more FDI. Moreover, democratic countries

xxxiii

attract more FDI than authoritarian ones, while IMF agreements cause a decline in FDI inflows (Jensen,

2003; Jensen, 2004).Having the right policies is important for development, but what makes it more

likely that a country will have the right policies in the first place? Presumably, growth-killing policies

benefit the politicians who implement and maintain them; otherwise, they would not exist.

The burden of reform is not solely on developing country governments, nor is the blame for

persistent global poverty solely theirs. Rather than providing publicly financed aid, governments of the

developed countries should eliminate their own agricultural subsidies and tariffs, which have distorted

world markets so much that many African countries actually import food from Europe! These policies

also encourage unproductive and ecologically destructive land use in the northern hemisphere.

The recent support of Oxfam and other humanitarian NGOs for liberalized trade between North

and South is an encouraging sign. Unfortunately, the U.S. government has not been a leader in this area.

In fact, U.S. recalcitrance on farm subsidies may have doomed the Doha Round negotiations in the

World Trade Organization. Western governments also need to ease their demands on less developed

countries to adopt strict, Western-style intellectual property laws (Saches and Andrew, 1995:21).

Intellectual property laws are a creature of the state, and while they can play a role in promoting

creativity, they can also inhibit creativity and protect monopoly power. They need to be designed

flexibly to match the pace of technical change in different markets and industries. If the West is serious

about reducing global poverty, they need to follow up their rhetoric of freer markets with action.

National Development Crisis in Zimbabwe

Economic reforms as a major component of the globalization process (Onyeonoru (2003:10,

Olukoshi (1998:9) Bangura (1991:2), Obi (1991:8), and as such, an ideologically imposed project by the

IFIs (Ibeanu (2004:17) Agbakoba (2005:5) Teriba, (2005:15); Amadi (2005:45) has been linked to

national development crisis in the developing nations. This entails the introduction of rapid structural

changes (reforms) in the economy in favour of market relations which the Western nations determine its

terms. Sawyess (1998:67) who links economic reforms to globalization argues that the current wave of

economic reforms is desperately led by international capitalism to recover lost grounds due to

ideological shifts towards alternative paradigms which African countries adopted since independence,

especially with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the unchallenged hegemony of capitalist and neo-

liberal ideology. A view which, Mccullocah, R. and Makolin, M. (2001:28) reinforced by arguing that

the economic reforms has been facilitated by the debt crises experienced by African countries. Since the

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1980‘s hijacked by the Euro-Americanism mentored institution – the Bretton woods institutions,

especially the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to facilitate their globalization of

neo-liberalism.

The cost of economic reforms is socialized where as its gain are privatized. Private sector led

growth reduces the role of the state in an economy and leads to opening up the economy for foreign

capitalist who expects the market, therefore leads in turn to economic dependence, and

underdevelopment. Contrasting the sequencing of economic reforms of countries in the east Asian and

Latin America, with those of Sub-Saharan African (SSA) McPherson (1995:3) argued that in East Asian

and Latin America, measure to facilitate growth were often enacted in advance of comprehensive trade

reforms, where as in Africa, especially in Nigeria everything is seem to have been done in a haste, as all

policies relevant to liberalization of trade tend to have been changed at once.

Some scholars in addition have analyzed those who benefit and those who loose from economic

reforms. Collier (1994:98), Rodstick (1994:4), the IMF (1998:85) and Bienen (1991:76-7), all agreed

that there is a wealth of information to contrast the anticipated gains of adjusting with the equally real

and devastating costs affects, those already living on the economic margin as such are those already

poor (IMF 1998:85) moreover ,it further argues that, past efforts by Sub-Saharan African countries to

provide safety nets have been targeted primarily at politically powerful groups such as civil servants

rather than the very poor (IMF 1998:85).

Furthermore, Bienen (1991:76-77) observes that it is public officials, not necessarily the

organized interests groups, that are the major beneficiaries of protection and therefore the most

important force against reforms. He reinforced the above opinion when he contends that:

Trade liberalization policies are often hard to formulate and implement

in Africa precisely because it is powerful officials (civilians and

military) who benefit from the controls that have been established over

imports and exports. It is government official who rations and distributes

scarce imports, including foreign exchange. They realize the rents which

accrue from the systems they construct and control. Of course, officials

have allies-import-substituting manufacturers and urban workers

employed by state enterprise who are interested in subsidized urban

consumer goods (Bienen 1991:76-77).

Onumode (1987:72) and Olukoshi (1998:7,1990:15) argues that while globalization gave birth to

structural adjustment as the countries involved responded to the global economic crises, the adoption of

IMF/World Bank reform measures has in turn widened and deepened the thrust towards global

xxxv

integration. Contrary to the claims in World Bank quarters, especially of industrialization, Streeten

(1997:89) and Sawyer (1998:72) argues that the structural economic transformation of modern capitalist

relation in Africa, foisted on the content by the Breton words institutions, have been associated with a

process of industrialization. Thus, the reform programmes have not been successful, instead they have

adversely affected the industrial and economic performance of the economics. Pleskovic and Stigletz

(1997:7) observe that rather than acknowledge this failure as a mark of the inadequacy of its

globalization project, the world Bank takes the escapist route by attributing such factors as poor

governance, step-go implementation syndrome, as well as political and bureaucratic corruption.

Aina (1999:68) remarked that a major problem with globalization process in Africa is that many

of the programmes being implemented derive from the agenda of the voluntary policies of the adjusting

countries whose interests the programmes do not reflect. He add also that the expression of globalization

in terms of deregulation and liberalization of African economics has been achieved not through the

powers and compulsion and pressure available to international creditors and financial institutions. He

concluded that the economic restructuring project was therefore, a major component of the globalization

process introduced to Africa in the form of structural economic reform programmes or structural

adjustment programme all of which are interdependent and mutually reinforcing.

In addition, Tawanda, (2009:65), stated that, the US introduced economic sanctions on

Zimbabwe through the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, 2001. (ZIDERA) Through

this enactment Zimbabwe‘s access to finance and credit facilities was effectively incinerated. ZIDERA

empowers the US to use its voting rights and influence (as the main donor) in multilateral lending

agencies, such as the IMF, World Bank, and the African Development Bank to veto any applications by

Zimbabwe for finance, credit facilities, loan rescheduling, and international debt cancellation. The US

cites Zimbabwe‘s human rights record, political intolerance and absence of rule of law as the main

reasons for the imposition of sanctions. The ZIDERA also suggests that if Zimbabwe acts to correct

these ills, then the sanctions will be removed and economic support measures suggested.

Simply put, owing to the size of the US vote and influence in these institutions, neither the IMF,

World Bank nor the African Development Bank will lend to Zimbabwe, or offer it credit facilities.

Therefore, needless to say, as a direct result of the US 2001 Act, Zimbabwe‘s relationship with these

multilateral lending agencies was immediately and severely affected. In addition, Zimbabwe‘s ability to

reschedule its loan payments and to apply for debt cancellations in times of severe financial crisis was

severely affected (Tawanda, 2009:72). And once the IMF and World Bank stopped doing business with

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Zimbabwe, this had an immediate and adverse impact on Zimbabwe‘s credit and investment rating. And

with a drop in investment rating went the dream of low cost capital on the international markets.

ZIDERA was a masterstroke. At the stroke of a pen, Zimbabwe‘s access to international credit markets

was blocked. And relying purely on barter trade, and trade, mining, agricultural concessions, and on

exports-generated foreign currency, Zimbabwe‘s economy has been slowly but surely asphyxiated.

And the consequent foreign currency crisis has resulted in the continued devaluation of the

domestic currency, rapid inflation, and all else that has manifested itself in the current Zimbabwe

economic crisis. In addition, (Tawanda, 2009) maintained that both the US and the EU have frozen

financial and other assets of persons, or companies linked to ZANU PF. It is alleged that such

companies sustain the ZANU PF government. There may be a grain of truth in that observation.

However, what is often ignored in the race to rid Zimbabwe of Mugabe is that companies operating in

Zimbabwe provide a livelihood to thousands of families, and contribute to the development of the

country.

Australia is reported to have denied Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe officials‘ business visas to travel

to Australia. And the US is putting in place a raft of measures aimed at specified ZANU PF linked

individuals, their families, and companies. It is apparent therefore some of the most powerful countries

in the world have put in place measures to bring about the downfall of Mr. Mugabe by orchestrating the

economic collapse of Zimbabwe (Wertimer, 2008:12-19). It is wrong to conflate Zimbabwe with the

personality of Mugabe. They are two distinct entities. It cannot be right to say that economic support

will be provided to the country once its leader is out of power. As Zimbabwe, all too dearly knows

following the Lancester House Agreement of 1979 on the land question, such promises are impossible to

enforce.

No matter how evil a dictator Mugabe is, it cannot be right to force his downfall by killing off

the country‘s fledgling economy, by erasing the gains made after 1980, and worsening the AIDS, and

unemployment crisis. Those championing the imposition of the economic sanctions often retort that

Zimbabwe‘s ability to borrow from the IMF and World Bank was restricted in any event because it had

fallen foul of its agreements with the IMF. This argument is however disingenuous. It ignores the other

more vicious consequences of ZIDERA on the Zimbabwean economy.

In addition, according to Wertimer (2008:15), the suggestion that what is in existence is a regime

of symbolic travel bans and some asset freezes is far from the truth. It is correct that Zimbabwe must be

xxxvii

made to pay its debts, including money that it owes the IMF. However, in the circumstances of

Zimbabwe, going through a financial crisis, it is immoral for the IMF to insist on the payment of over

US$175 million on pain of expulsion from the institution for non payment. Zimbabwe recently managed

to stave its expulsion from the IMF by reportedly paying £150 million towards its debt obligations to the

institution. It was all too obvious however that Zimbabwe paid the money out of desperation. The

country cannot afford the payment it made. Zimbabwe paid the money because, owing to US influence

among others, it was unable to formally reschedule its IMF loan payments. Amidst all this, it is reported

that the country has critical foreign currency shortages, has run dry of fuel and other essentials, has

record high unemployment levels, and now has crippling inflation rates. In addition, the UN suggests

Zimbabwe is suffering from famine. Wertimer further stated that the IMF has made it patently clear that

the institution will only provide policy advice and technical support, actions which are inadequate for

Zimbabwe‘s revival. The IMF has pointed out that for a nascent recovery and balance of payment

support to be forthcoming, the Zimbabwean government must show a sustained track record of sound

policies and repay its arrears. Minister of Economic Planning and Development, Elton Mangoma

provided a clear position in that, Zimbabwe has no capacity to repay external debt including outstanding

arrears (IMF, 2006:299).

The IMF‘s declarative position means that Zimbabwe cannot negotiate any debt rescheduling

simply because it has no basis upon which to base those negotiations. According to Business Monitor

International report, the installment of Jacob Zuma as President of South Africa will not solve

Zimbabwe‘s domestic problems, but is likely to be supportive of the country‘s peace process over the

longer term. Writers contend that only until economic output recovers and collection mechanisms are

improved, taxation will remain inadequate to fund current expenditure. At the political level, Central

Bank Governor Gideon Gono and Biti remain locked in a power struggle over control of the nation‘s

financial policies, which is jeopardizing a holistic approach to economic management (Business

Monitor International, June 2009:13).

Gono retains the backing of President Mugabe, but donors would strongly prefer a change at the

top echelons of the RBZ. It remains to be seen as to how patient Zuma will be with Zimbabwe. South

Africa has a track record of maintaining policy consistency at both national and external levels.

Zimbabwe and South Africa will soon sign Bilateral Trade and Investment Protection Agreements

(BIPAs) that should calculatedly facilitate more trade between both nations.

Under the arrangement South African businesses in Zimbabwe shall be accorded national or

xxxviii

preferential treatment just like home industries within Zimbabwe. On the one hand, this move will

stimulate economic growth through increased competition at local levels and consequent lower prices to

the benefit of consumers. On the other hand, such an arrangement will be very detrimental to local

industries as foreign companies will be heavily capitalized and can push out local products and local

industries (http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/). A violation of the BIPAs will indeed stretch

South Africa‘s patience with Zimbabwe‘s challenges. A close reference to the fragility of the GPA that

is in place should provide a tentative glimpse as to the future of such BIPAs.

Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth stands at 3.7% as at 2009. This is probably as a

result of increased industrial capacity utilization and increased revenue inflows into the country.

However investors are still concerned with the volatility of the political environment.

Revenue inflows amounted to U.S$970 Million. A lot still needs to be done at fiscal level due to

major inconsistencies; inconsistencies which exist because of the lack of a complementary monetary

policy. For instance, revenue expressed as a percentage of GDP currently stands at a staggering 28%

while expenditures are at 38.9%. Resultantly, such a scenario in the inclusive government‘s balance

sheet will not lead to the widely reported economic growth in the short term. More is being spent than

is being earned. The nation is still at a crossroads after the widespread economic carnage witnessed in

the preceding years. Yet the bone of contention is all about the resolving of subtle political

polarization which is having a direct effect on the functionality of the country‘s economy. (ZimEye,

Zimbabwe in http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/).

Food Insecurity in Zimbabwe

Maxwell (1998:33) in a view argues that concerns on food security have progressed over the last

50 years or so from purely physical availability at the global level to the provisions of food to

individuals and the role of poverty in ensuring year round access to food. Maxwell (1998) however,

distinguished five (5) phases in the history of food security since 1974 as follows; 1) 1974-1980: global

food security - the world food crisis was evident from famines in Africa, doubling of international grain

prices and large grain imports by the Soviet Union. FAO set up a committee on World Food Security

and a World Food Council was established to monitor world food availability; 2)1981-1985: food

entitlement and structural adjustment - questions of poverty and access featured since it was clear that

production on its own did not assure consumption, and people needed access to food. This era coincided

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with structural adjustment activities where poverty reduction and basic needs were subordinate to debt

management, macro-economic stability, etc; 3)1986-1990: the golden age - the 1984/5 African famine

and the drawbacks of the social costs of structural adjustment changed the perceptions of food security

which rose up in the international agenda; 4)1990-1996: poverty, not food security - poverty reduction

was brought back to the front of the development stage and displaced food security; many donors

abandoned or downgraded food security. Famines were seen to be far more associated with war and with

drought (eg Southern Africa in 1992) which appeared to be managed reasonably efficiently. Thus the

problem was not seen as a food security issue per se but rather one of managing food supplies in

complex political emergencies characterized by social and policy breakdown, and 5 ) 1996 and beyond

which saw rise in food prices and renewed concern about the ability of the world to feed itself. Will the

agenda shift back to Malthusian concerns of the 1970s with a focus on food production, often in high

potential areas or will the concern with consumption and access be sustained? Maxwell concluded by

noting that there has been a significant change in the food security agenda since the mid-1970s. Instead

of a discussion largely concerned with national food supply and price, there is a discussion concerned

with the complexities of livelihood strategies in difficult and uncertain environments; and with

understanding how people themselves respond to perceived risks and uncertainties.

Similarly, Swaminathan (1998:97) divides the history of food security in the post-war era into

four (4) phases : a) 1940/60s - food security was only considered in physical availability terms ;b) 1970s

- economic access to food was considered equally important; c) 1980s - food security must be

considered at the level of the individual and not merely of the household (since within a household

women and girl children tend to be undernourished) ,and ,d) 1990s - recognition that micronutrients in

addition to environmental hygiene and safe drinking water are important He concluded that today we

have to view food security from the viewpoints of physical, social, economic and environmental access.

Governance of Global Food System

One of the earliest studies on foreign aid was conducted by Morgenthau (1962:301). He

classified foreign aid into mainly six categories and argued that only humanitarian aid is non-political.

Other five categories of foreign aid are subsistence foreign aid, military foreign aid, bribery, prestige

foreign aid and aid for economic development. Subsistence foreign aid is given to states where the

probability of regime change is high. The reason is that the donor wants political stability in terms of

leadership turnover and disintegration of an organized society which could lead to the change of status

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quo. Another interesting category of foreign aid is bribe. Morgenthau (1962, 302) argues that bribes

were used before the beginning of nineteenth century to get a political advantage. In those days it was

officially acknowledged by states. But in recent years, bribes changed forms and are given as economic

development assistances. The aim of these categories of foreign aid is close to the goal of foreign aid.

The difference, however, lies on the notion that foreign aid can take several forms but the intention is

only one. For example, the US can give to its trading or alliance partner an economic assistance,

subsistence aid or aid to improve human rights. But the goal of these aids is to maintain partner‘s

domestic status quo.

Baldwin (1966:72) argues that Morgenthau‘s (1962) classification of foreign aid is confusing.

The actual and intended functions of foreign aid are used without clear categorization. For example,

humanitarian aid is mostly given in the cases of natural disaster. But sometimes, churches and rich

foundations give aid too and these aids are not necessarily humanitarian in nature. Military aid

sometimes can be also prestige aid and. Baldwin (1966:73) argues that foreign aid categorization of

Morgenthau (1962) violates the idea of basic classification that ―parallel categories should be mutually

exclusive.‖ In Morgenthau‘s classification, foreign aid may have been given to promote economic

development, to strengthen military ability of a recipient state or to increase the prestige of the donor at

the same time. There is no clear classification and therefore it is difficult to study foreign aid using

Morgenthau‘s categories of foreign aid.

Lebovic (1988:114) argues that interest of donor is more important than interest of recipient

states in foreign aid allocation. He starts his study by trying to find an answer to question: Is foreign aid

designed to lessen sufferings and to improve economic development in recipient nations or ―is it

intended to serve the interests of the donor?‖ (Lebovic, 1988:115). After examining Carter and Reagan

administration‘s foreign aid allocations, he concludes that foreign aid is given to states in order to

promote donor‘s interests.

Another study that defines foreign aid as a policy tool to promote donor‘s interest is conducted

by Griffin and Enos (1970:310-31). They posit that how much a state gives foreign aid is not based on

how much the recipient state needs, but by how much the donor benefits in terms of political support

(Griffin and Enos 1970:315). Economic aid, to them, is just another tool of foreign policy. It can

substitute other instruments like diplomacy, military intervention, war or technical assistance (316). For

example, H.B. Chenery, who was one of the officials of the Agency for International Development,

stated that ―the main objective of foreign assistance, as of many other tools of foreign policy, is to

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produce the kind of political and economic environment in the world in which the United States can best

pursue its own social goals‖ (Griffin and Enos 1970: 316).Other studies also support the idea that

donor‘s interest, rather than needs of the recipient, determines whom to give aid (Maizels and Nissanke

,1984).

McKinlay and Little (1977:405, 1978a:106, 1978b:512, 1979:83) examine how donor‘s interest

shapes foreign aid allocation. They measure donor‘s interest using importance of a recipient state to the

donor in terms of military and former colony. Recipient‘s needs are measured using indicators such as

income per capita and quantifiable variables of quality of life. They found that Britain and France, which

previously had colonies, gives foreign aid to former colonies. The United States mostly gives to those

states where it has military and strategic interests.

Boone (1995:17) examines why foreign aid do not alleviate poverty and improve economic

development of recipient states and argue that poverty is not caused by the shortage of capital. Rather,

bad public policy and poor economic conditions (Boone 1995, 28). Therefore, when donor states give

foreign aid to poor states, bad public policy of ruling elites do not allow economic conditions to develop.

Instead of using foreign aid as an investment, ―elitist‖ governments usually maximize the welfare of

ruling coalition (Boone 1995, 3). In other words, aid is distributed among the ruling elites and does not

go to other citizens of the nation. Boone‘s findings and argument is consistent with the main theory of

this study. Political leaders in nations with small winning coalition rely on the support of small number

of elites in order to survive in political arena. This leads to bad public policies since citizens of a nation

does not affect political survival of the governing elites.

Webster‘s (1992:130) study of the US foreign aid allocations to Latin American countries also

shows that foreign aid is given to states for political purposes rather than humanitarian or economic

development intentions. He hypothesizes that the US gives aid to Latin American states in order to get

their support in the United Nations. Looking at voting in the UN, Webster (1992, 131) finds support for

his arguments and concludes that the US purposely distributes foreign aid to achieve its foreign policy

goals.

Svensson (1999: 275) argues that recipient state‘s political and civil liberties determine whether

aid positively affects growth and alleviates poverty. When there is an institutionalized check on the

government, like in democratic states, foreign aid contributes to the economic growth. But if political

and civil liberties are limited, foreign aid goes to the personal consumption of the ruling elites. Regan

(1995:3) also do not find statistically significant relationship between foreign aid and human rights.

xlii

In general, these studies show that wealthy states do not necessarily give foreign aid to promote

political liberties, increase economic development or fight the poverty. Instead, foreign aid serves as a

tool to promote donor‘s interests in recipient states. There could be many kinds of interests of the United

States, including strengthening a state against the communist regimes, policy concessions in favor of the

US, lowering leadership turnover in those states where the US has trade and alliance relationships.

Svensson (1999:277) further argues that both humanitarian aid and multilateral structural

adjustment and development assistance through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank

have actually been designed to fail in their ostensible aims: if they were to be reformed along the lines

Easterly suggests, they would lose their political raison d‘être. While publicly funded development aid

has largely failed in its stated objectives, there is substantial evidence supporting the benefits of private

foreign direct investment (FDI) and micro lending (Easterly, 2006:212).

Milanovic (2006:76) posits that publicly funded foreign aid is offered in two forms: direct

grants-in-aid and loans, and that loans through the IMF and World Bank should not be considered "aid"

since they have to be repaid, but this argument ignores the fact that these loans are offered at interest

rates substantially below market--otherwise, governments would have no reason to accept them, given

the policy strings attached (known as "conditionality").Grants-in-aid are largely conducted bilaterally,

government-to-government, or through United Nations agencies. Grants typically address imminent

humanitarian needs such as famine and disaster relief, public health, and housing. The IMF and World

Bank, which are principally funded by the G-7 developed countries, theoretically have different

functions--promoting international financial stability and economic development projects, respectively--

but since the collapse of the Bretton-Woods international monetary system in 1973, the IMF has

broadened its mandate to cover any kind of assistance for governments trying to reform their economies

(what the IMF calls "structural adjustment").

De Waal, (1993:87), argues that, "most food aid is donated on condition that it be purchased and

processed in, and shipped from, donor countries, even when adequate supplies are available in the region

where it is needed." The United States government, for instance, requires that all food aid be

transported on U.S.-flagged ships. Additionally, food aid can sometimes harm those it is intended to

help, as when UN food giveaways in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993 went chiefly to the warlords and

harmed the destitute and persecuted Rahanweyn farmers, who then could not sell their own produce (De

Waal, 1993:89).

xliii

The evidence that foreign aid generally has not enhanced economic growth is well-known. In

The Elusive Quest for Growth, Easterly (2001:203) shows that in the vast majority of countries,

development aid has not increased investment share of gross domestic product (GDP), and growth in

investment share of GDP has not caused subsequent increases in GDP per capita. Defenders of aid, such

as Jeffrey Sachs and Steve Radelet (2006:105-37), point to specific successful projects in which aid was

a component. However, it is impossible to draw any general conclusions from these experiences, for two

main reasons: 1) in case studies, it is impossible to control other factors that may have been responsible

for the success of the project, rather than aid: the counterfactual--how would the project have fared

without aid--is unavailable; 2) even when an aid-funded project meets its own targets, we do not observe

the opportunity costs of the project, all the other worthy endeavors foregone because taxpayer resources

went elsewhere. The minimum acceptable effect of foreign aid on growth and other desiderata is

therefore greater than zero.

Up-to-date, peer-reviewed, global studies of the effects of foreign aid on growth usually find

either no general relationship or even a slight negative relationship. One of the main problems with aid

is that a number of developing country governments have diverted aid to the private bank accounts of

government officials. For instance, Alesina and Weder (2002:54) find that more corrupt governments

receive just as much foreign aid as less corrupt governments, that the United States government even

gives more aid to more corrupt governments, and that the level of aid a country receives tends to

increase corruption in the future. Boone (1996:4) also finds that aid goes mostly toward wasteful public

consumption. Svensson (2000:19) finds that aid actually inhibits beneficial policy reforms, and Remmer

(2004:5) finds that foreign aid not only increases government spending, but it also reduces revenues,

presumably because aid-dependent governments feel less need to promote the kinds of economic growth

that generate tax revenue. Burnside and Dollar (2000:455-72) find that aid has a slight positive effect on

economic growth when the recipient country has good policies, but since the evidence suggests that aid

undermines good policies, their finding does not have clear policy implications.

The evidence on the IMF is equally disheartening. Vreeland (2003a:563) has corrected that, for

the fact that market-friendly governments tend to be the ones who seek IMF loans (and therefore would

grow faster than other governments without IMF loans); once this correction is performed, he finds that

IMF programs actually reduce economic growth by one and a half percentage points for each year the

country remains under an IMF agreement. Vreeland also finds that IMF programs redistribute income

from labor to capital and therefore increase income inequality.

xliv

Thus, foreign aid usually causes more harm than good. Although there might be specific

instances in which aid programs have worked, it would be a mistake to draw general inferences for

policy from the exceptions rather than from the rule. Critics of foreign aid programs do not necessarily

argue that every single aid program ever conceived has failed, but that, since aid usually fails,

maintaining current aid programs or creating new ones is probably a bad idea.

Many scholars have studied the relationship between foreign aid and change in the level of

economic and political development, human rights and economic growth. They find no statistically

significant relationship between these variables. Mosley et al. (1987:9) studies how foreign aid affects

economic growth and find no relationship. Burnside and Dollar (1997:432) examine policy change and

aid flows conclude that aid flows does not result in better public policies. Alesina and Dollar (2000:56)

find that foreign aid is given to states without considering economic policies a recipient state has.

Instead, aid is driven by the strategic interests of the donor. Alesina and Weder (2002:87) examine

whether less corrupt governments get more aid, but do not find any significant relationship.

One of the recent studies conducted by Bueno de Mesquita and Smith (2004:5, 2006:1-10) argue

that foreign aid is given to states in order to have policies that favor donor states. In nations with small

winning coalition, policy concession in exchange to aid is easier since aid serves as a resource to

redistribute to the members of the winning coalition. Particularly, aid is exchanged to favorable policy in

those states where resources to respond to the demands of the winning coalition is scarce. By contrast,

foreign aid does not transfer to policy concession very easily in states with the large winning coalition

because aid, when distributed to the members of winning coalition, becomes too small and the leader

can not reimburse supporters for policy concession. In this sense, donors do not aim to reduce poverty or

to increase economic development of recipient state, but rather a rational allocation of resources by

donors and recipients (Bueno de Mesquita and Smith 2006, 3). This allocation is in the interest of both

donor and recipient states‘ leaders. On one hand, leader of a recipient state gets aid and uses some part

of it to respond to the demands of his/her winning coalition. On the other hand, leader of donor state gets

more favorable policies.

Bueno de Mesquita and Smith (2006:6) use two different dependent variables. One is the amount

of aid which is used in models 1 to 3 and the other is the probability of getting any aid which was the

dependent variable of models 4 to 6. In models 1 to 3, they found that the larger the size of winning

coalition the more aid a state gets. This result supports arguments derived from the theory of political

survival. There are many members in the large winning coalition and their total demand is very huge.

xlv

Donor states which want policy concession from these states have to give a large amount of aid so that

leader of recipient state would satisfy demands of his/her winning coalition and reimburse policy

concessions

Hammond, (2008:5-14) in his study of five SSA countries selected through stratified random

using data obtained from the Food and Agriculture Organization for the period 1970-2000 investigates

the relationship between United States food aid flow and food needs of recipient countries; measured by

domestic food production, commercial imports and exports of food, food stock and level of financial

indebtedness. He found out that food aid does not necessarily go to food-deficit countries; the issue of

whether food needs of recipient countries is a predictor of food aid flow has not been systematically

examined .The study also revealed, contrarily to expectation, that food aid distribution does not favour

countries with relatively severe financial problems; indicated by level of financial indebtedness. The

findings are consistent with previous studies, which showed that food aid is not allocated in relative

proportion to food needs of countries.

Christopher (2007:36) demonstrates how either normative interests or real politick interests

better explain foreign policy goals, using the US as his case study. According to him, the relationships

which exist between the provision of US food aid and the humanitarian, strategic economic and strategic

security interests of the US are the primary factors that inform these policy makers. Both theoretical

concepts for humanitarian and strategic interests are determined to influence policy makers during either

the selection stage where states are chosen, during the allocation stage where food is distributed or

during both stages. The presence of US imposed sanctions also helps to inform policy makers of both

US strategic interests and the need for humanitarian assistance. Overall, the analysis indicates that many

interests inform foreign policy decision makers, while imposed sanctions and human rights specific

sanctions both greatly impact how much food aid the US allocates to a recipient country during the

allocation stage

Meernik,(2008:9-18), analyses the relationships that exist between the provision of US food aid

and need based goals, as well as strategic objectives, on the one hand, and explain how US decision

makers might be influenced by the international environment as a whole when rendering their aid

allocation decisions. He concluded that food aid is a foreign policy tool utilized by many states. Jenkins,

J. Craig., Scanlan, Stephen and Peterson, Lindsey (2008:54) argues that that world hunger is

fundamentally a political problem that should best be addressed by protecting basic political rights,

xlvi

reducing violent conflict and improving the status of women. While there is some ―trickle down‖ from

economic growth, he did not find any effects of total international food aid and emergency relief aid.

Clapp, J. (2006:98) studied the various players and positions involved in the debate over food aid

reform as part of the WTO Doha talks. He argues that the academic literature is more or less in

consensus that in-kind food aid is highly problematic, and in need, of reform. Part of the problem is that

some players such as the European Union, favours primarily a cash-based food aid system on the

grounds that the US in-kind food aid programs are trade distorting. However, he noted that a powerful

set of actors have argued vocally to maintain the in-kind food aid system in the US because the US is

the largest donor of food aid by far, and developments in that country will have global ramifications for

the governance of food aid.

Nielsen, R. (2008:340) in his study of Donor Politics and the Composition of Foreign Aid, noted

that there is significant variance in the types of aid that donors give. In particular, donor countries place

varying emphasis on aid to certain sectors (i.e. infrastructure, health, education) and donors differ in the

degree to which they ―tie‖ aid by requiring recipient countries to use aid funds to purchase goods and

services from the donor‘s firms. According to him these variations in the composition of aid have

redistributive effects within the donor economy which create domestic winners and losers from aid

policy. He further demonstrated that those domestic political actors play a significant role in shaping aid

composition, and that from 1981 to 2001, there has been an increased political strength of the heavy

industry sector in OECD donors which lead to distortions in aid composition which favoured heavy

industry. Finally, from his survey data, it was found that individuals in the European donor countries

which stand to gain economically from aid are more supportive of aid increases. Taken together; these

results provide a novel political economy explanation for the composition of foreign aid.

Fuchs, D. and Clapp, J. (2007:66) studies the role of transnational corporations in global food

governance, he noted there has to date been very little written specifically on the role of transnational

corporations in global food governance. This lack of work on broader issues of global food governance

is surprising given the key role these actors play in the setting of global norms, institutions and rules that

govern global food and agriculture.

The scholars noted that the production, trade and marketing of food and agricultural products

have achieved a truly global scope in the past half century. However, that while the globalization of the

food and agricultural systems has produced some benefits, such as increased varieties of foods available

to consumers and new markets for producers, there are also concerns about the impacts of this food

xlvii

globalization, including the effects that it has on local farmer livelihoods, the environment, food safety,

and consumer sovereignty

Bermeo, S. (2008:9) examines foreign aid allocation of OECD countries in the new millennium.

According to the study, during the Cold War, aid was often ineffective at promoting development

because it was not given for development purposes, and that donor‘s condition aid on the quality of

governance in recipient countries. This implies that donors respond to governance as a signal of

recipient capacity to use aid effectively. Thus, poorly governed countries receive significantly less aid

for sectors where recipient government involvement is likely to be high. However, donors also recognize

the increased need experienced by citizens in countries where the quality of governance is low.

In a similar but, a different work, Bermeo, S. (2008:76) examines whether bilateral donors

consider the needs and capabilities of recipients when making aid allocation decisions. He argues that

donors use sector allocation as a tool to differentiate among recipients. He found out that countries with

poor policies receive a larger proportion of aid for emergency assistance and social sector programs,

while in countries with good policies donors allocate a larger proportion of aid to economic

infrastructure and production sectors. Donors give aid aimed at sectors likely to promote growth - such

as economic infrastructure and production - to countries with a policy environment conducive to growth,

while focusing on immediate needs and providing social services in other recipients. These patterns

suggest that donors pursue a strategy of poverty reduction and providing for the immediate needs of the

poor when allocating aid dollars. This is significantly different from previous studies on aid allocation,

which have concluded that aid is used to promote other donor objectives with little emphasis on poverty

concerns. These findings also have implications for the debate regarding the role of policies in

determining the ability of aid to foster growth, since donors consider policy when deciding whether or

not to target growth.

Wertimer, S. (2008:80) examine and analyze the various alliances, as well as, innovative

approaches to improving food security and an assessment of the structural forces that create and

perpetuate extreme inequality is paramount to understanding the undercurrents of hunger problems. He

argues that though the largest number of hungry people live in developing countries (Africa, South Asia;

Latin America and the Caribbean basin), some of the hungry also live in developed countries. In other

words, chronic food insecurity is not just peculiar to the developing countries alone.

Foreign aid generally does not promote economic development, Burnside (1997:256) for three

main reasons. First, governments in developing countries have become dependent on aid, diverting it to

xlviii

government consumption while reducing their efforts at market reforms that would boost productivity

and tax revenue in the rest of the economy. Second, donor countries have tied foreign aid to domestic

interest group objectives and to international power politics; they have little interest in holding recipient

countries accountable for achieving anything productive with aid. Finally, the driver of long-term

economic growth is not more dams and factories and schools, the objects of most development

assistance, but adoption of new technologies, broadly understood to include new ideas about how to

organize workforces and production processes (Burnside, 1997).

Rather than doling out aid, countries in the West can alleviate global poverty by ending their

hypocrisy on free trade and opening their own economies to imports from less developed countries. This

particular solution is not at all unthinkable; it is quite possible that Western governments will ultimately

face a crisis of conscience on this issue and give in. Unfortunately, the debate around the UN's

Millennium Development Goals has centered chiefly on the issues of debt forgiveness and massive new

aid, actions that will probably have little positive effect.

Even if we grant to aid proponents that there have been some aid successes, the evidence shows

that IMF structural adjustment loans and foreign aid more generally, tend to cause more harm than good

(Svensson, J. 1999:98). If a policy is likely to fail, then it should be abandoned. Apart perhaps from

emergency assistance and certain kinds of military aid, foreign aid should not be publicly funded. The

political temptations to misuse aid--on the part of both donor and recipient countries--are strong enough

to resist any real reform attempts. Foreign aid is not the primary solution to global poverty--few, if any,

scholars would dispute that--and it is probably a hindrance to the real solutions (Barro, R. 1997:6).

Donors, if want foreign aid to be effective, have to look at the institutionalization of a recipient

state. If institutes, such as elections and checks and control on governmental actions, are relatively

consolidated, then donors can be sure that the aid will increase development in economy and other

fields. In these recipient states, aid is invested in reforms and good public policies. But if a recipient

state is not institutionalized, it is obvious that aid will be distributed among elites and no reform will

occur. Elites of these states can not commit credibly to use aid in reforms. So, we should see aid flows

going to more institutionalized states. But this is not a case according to many studies. There is no

relationship between the level of institutionalization, political and civil liberties in one state, and the

likelihood of receiving foreign aid.

Thus, foreign aid is not necessarily given as a humanitarian or economic assistance. Rather, it is

used as one of the foreign policy tools to achieve strategic goals of donors (Burnside and dollar,

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2000:455). Interests of donor are more important than the needs of potential recipient states. This study

contributes to this argument. Particularly, results show that autocratic states which have trade or alliance

relationship with the United States receive aid in order to survive politically and protect the status quo

against rivals. This conclusion is important since previous studies showed that the size of winning

coalition and selectorate are main determinants of the likelihood of receiving foreign aid. However, as a

results the, likelihood of receiving aid depends on trade or alliance relationship (Burnside, 1997:259)..

When autocracies have this relationship with the United States, only then they receive significant

amount of aid and stay in power until the winning coalition continue to support.

In the past, food security focused mainly on helping countries increase food availability but now

the emphasis is more on household food security issues. The present programme promotes increases in

agricultural production with enhanced food security at household, national and regional level combined

with improved welfare (especially rural) by promoting increases in broad-based employment and

income generation. There is an increasing urbanization along with manufacturing and services so that

causes of food insecurity are likely to shift from drought to unemployment and old age. This implies that

poverty alleviation, urban as well as rural, is now the prime food security concern

(http://www.fao.org/newsroom/).

Food production requires adequate funding for agricultural R&D which must be kept at an

adequate level by both public and private funding and must be complementary. The continuing long-

term decline in grain prices should not preclude R&D funding which is required to ensure productivity

increases and lower prices. Both of these trends benefit all developing countries; only those with weak

external trading positions may not be able to take full advantage of world markets and prices. It is these

weaker developing countries where research and policy on poverty alleviation must be enhanced in

order to promote food security(http://www.fao.org/newsroom/).

Three approaches to food security are identified were: i) National self-sufficiency by increasing

food production through hybrid maize production and intensification. ii) Market liberalization with price

incentives to encourage diversification into high value and export crops; iii) Targeted safety nets or

research transfer for the poor (malnutrition and child mortality are very high)

(http://www.fao.org/newsroom/).

Summary of Literature Review and identification of Gaps

l

The studies reviewed, no doubt have helped in clarifying issues, enhancing understanding and

capably eliciting, stimulating and enlightening intellectual discourse on the debate. However, most

studies reviewed presented the phenomenon, and treated it as a mere humanitarian emergency, and, the

reader is often given the impression that foreign aid is given to states for humanitarian or economic

development intentions.

After synthesizing the literature reviewed, one major observation that emerges is that foreign aid

generally does not promote economic development because foreign aid is given to recipient states in

order to promote donor‘s interests. Specifically, most food aid was donated on condition that it be

purchased and processed in, and shipped from, donor countries, even when adequate supplies were

available in the region where it is needed.

Also studies on governmental responses to food crisis showed that food scarcity provides

governments with an opportunity to instrumentalize the crisis and monopolize control over food supply

and food distribution, and use it as not only an instrument of control, but also, as patronage too for

support. As such, in political systems that have clientelist tendencies governmental response to food

crisis are similarly clientelistic. While this is a good observation, the studies above limited the

―clientelist/ clientelistic tendencies‖ to the domestic environment which reflects poor understanding of

the patron – client relationship between the major food exporting countries from the developed nations:

United States, Canada, Australia, and Argentina which provide about 80 percent of cereal exports on the

world market, and the 95% Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries (LFDCS) which import more food than

they produce, nor does it show a clear understanding of both the logic and dynamics of the

politicization of food security and manipulation of international food markets for various political

reasons based on the neo-liberal productivist agricultural policy and management of global food system,

all of which are driven by the logic of commodity production and exchange.

A major gap in the literature is the low level of stimulating and enlightening intellectual

discourse on how the activities of the multinational corporations have helped in compounding the global

food crisis. Another gap identified is that most studies reviewed presented the phenomenon, and treated

it as a mere humanitarian emergency, and, the reader is often given the impression that foreign aid is

given to states for humanitarian or economic development intentions.

Similarly, some studies concluded that humanitarian aid is non-political (Morgenthau 1961, 301)

based on certain classification (subsistence foreign aid, military foreign aid, bribery, prestige foreign aid

and aid for economic development) is confusing because such foreign aid categorization violates the

li

idea of basic classification that parallel categories should be mutually exclusive.. For instance, foreign

aid may have been given to promote economic development, to strengthen military ability of a recipient

state or to increase the prestige of the donor at the same time. There is no clear classification and

therefore it is difficult to study foreign aid using the above classification

As such, the studies have paid very little attention to the politicization, internationalization, and

institutionalization of the management of the global food system and the resultant monopolization of

food aid by a cluster of developed nations (the High Food Sufficient Countries -HFSC) as instrument of

foreign policy in their interference in domestic affairs of developing countries. These are essentially, but

not exclusive of the gaps, the present study intends to fill by exploring the organic interconnections

between the governance of the global food system, the international division of labour, the flow of food

aid, and how these have contributed to food insecurity in the developing nations.

1.6 Theoretical Framework

The study is undertaken within the theoretical assumption of the Marxists political economy

paradigm, which was developed, by Karl Marx, Fredrick Engel‘s, and V.I Lenin as a critique of

capitalism. It is adapted to the objective nature and character of global food crisis, its

internationalization, and institutionalization of its management as strategy and tactics employed by the

High Food Sufficient Countries (HFSC) in their trade relations with between Low-Income Food-Deficit

Countries (LFDCS) in such a way that the former determines the economic positions of the later.

The basic assumption of the above neo-liberal approach is there is no ―Free Lunch ―a

commodified food system, and that Green revolution and globalization of agriculture are seen as the

fundamental threat to food security of developing countries. The theory assume that famine and hunger

problems in the third world were not caused by overpopulation and scarcity as proposed by neo-

Malthusian thesis ( Ehrlich (1968:8), or social structural causes (Sen 1981:7; Lappé et al. 1998:90) but

due to globalization of agriculture.

While there may be proximate causes of food crisis across nations, the theory sees the root cause

as international vertical division of labour, and asymmetrical trade relations among states. Hence, the

conceptual focus of the theory is international exploitation and inequalities in food- resource due. The

theory recognizes the fact that the internationalization, and institutionalization of the management global

food system monopolized by the High Food Sufficient Countries (HFSC) leads to sort of patron –

lii

client relationship between Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries (LFDCS),and major food exporting

countries from the developed nations. The theory defines nations in terms of, food sovereignty, that is,

whether nations are dependent on other nations, not just for their food, but also for their agricultural

inputs.

The theory recognizes the polar economic strength and asymmetrical relationship and benefits

between the High Food Sufficient Countries and Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries. For instance,

while the four leading food exporters—the United States, Canada, Australia, and Argentina—provide

about 80 percent of cereal exports on the world market, more than 95 countries in the world import more

food than they produce, as well as the politicization of food security and manipulation of international

food markets for various political reasons by the major food exporting countries led by the US.

The theory, therefore, conceptualizes politicization of food in terms of the capability of an actor

to forge or construct an exclusive regime or platform through which national agricultural processes can

be controlled .Food is used to further national objectives, and therefore, perceived as a tool of

diplomacy .Power is exercised in terms of the manipulation of food supplies by interests within certain

countries, and outside them , especially, through tying of food aid to commodity purchases in the donor

country (in-kind food aid. In other words, Thus, food is seen as a viable instrument of foreign policy

which certain privileged and powerful groups may restrict food supplies (directly or indirectly by

controlling distribution systems, etc) to segments of the population that are out of favours.

Under these circumstances, the question of food—who has food and who can produce it—

becomes an effective weapon in the relations between nation-states. The theory is a radical critique of

the humanitarian strategy adopted by the developed nations in their relations with the developing

countries. The theory sees Nutritionalization (the scientization of food in the Third World), and (bio)

fortification (the process of adding micronutrients to food products during the manufacturing process) as

additional advantage to the High Food Sufficient exporting Countries (HFSC) over their Low-Income

Food-Deficit importing countries (LFDCS), as it results to major change from the previously prevalent

food policy that was centered around more productivist policies. The productivist agricultural policy is

driven by the logic of commodity production and exchange and seeds the Low-Income Food-Deficit

importing countries (LFDICS) as a huge market.Hence, a number of working groups and donor agencies

spearheaded fortification in developing countries (Darnton-Hill and Nalubola 2002:45).The solution to

the food problem of the LFDICS is considered to lie in what is called Green Revolution technologies,

and food aid.

liii

Finally, the analysts sees this neo-liberal development approach to global food management as

both a cause and consequence of nutritionalization, as it encourages nutritionalization as a cost-

efficient, market-friendly path to development and food security , but at the same time, by shifting

resources from other food policy, nutritionalization reinforces neoliberal development practices.

Adaptation of the theory to the Subject Matter.

The global society is seen as one huge market, in which the logic of commodity production and

exchange derive at the economic level (globalization, liberalization, deregulation) economic reforms

derives both at the political and ideological level (democracy and governance) .Two classes of nations

are discernable in such society: the High Food Sufficient exporting Countries (HFSC) ,and the Low-

Income Food-Deficit importing countries (LFDCS).Agro-industrialization became the dominant policy

framework in which the newly-independent states sought to become self-sufficient in food supply for its

own population, restructuring the rural landscape through modernization and intensification. As Agro

industrialization required much state involvement in food production, the government had to subsidize

necessary synthetic inputs and large-scale irrigation (McMichael 2000a:57) in the, Green Revolution

programmes and projects in the post-independence Third World nations.

The gap in the needed resources implies that the developing nations will have to borrow from

the international capital market .Hence the Bretton-Woods institutions in collaboration with world food

exporters notably ,the United States, Canada, Australia, and Argentina which supply about 80 percent

of cereal exports on the world market, designed lending policies to promote neo-liberal policies in

developing countries.

With this market-opening policies on ground, production and supply became ―internationalized‖

(Raynolds et al. 1993:2).This forced the governments to restructure their food supply policies towards

global market, departing from self-sufficiency oriented approaches, the governments now consider food

security to be achieved by relying on world trade, emphasizing strategies to secure procurement sources

rather than self-sufficiency (Thompson and Cowan 2000:24). Emphasis on export-oriented agriculture

for the supermarkets in the North meant that production is not necessarily based on the domestic food

needs.

The explosion of debt in the 1980s, and the Structural Adjustment Program were partially

responsible, pressuring many developing countries to seek foreign currency as depicted in Fig.1.1

below:

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Fig1. 1: THE MECHANISM OF FOOD AID RECYCLING

UNDP

Source: Conceptual Depiction of the Global Food Aid Industrial Complex of the World

Food Programme http://www.allacademic.com

These liquidity regulation institutions are of three main types:

Export Credit Agencies (ECAs), which help domestic companies trade by lending them money;

Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) which, broadly, lend companies money to buy

factories and facilities abroad, most often in the context of Southern countries; and then jointly

held

International Financial Institutions (IFIs), which are majority owned by a collection of rich

states.

Beyond the delivery of aid resources, organizations such as the IMF, the World Bank, International

Development Agency, Paris Club, EU serve as the tributaries and arteries of Agro multinational firms,

governments, and banks which ,in turn act as gatekeepers of food aid export or ‗financial capital‘ for the

Low-Income Food-Deficit importing countries (LFDCS).

EIB

DG ID

EDFI

WEDFI

IDA

IMF

IFAD

FAO

The Low-Income Food-Deficit

importing countries (LFDCS)

contract Aid

The Low-Income Food-

Deficit importing

countries (LFDCS)

supplying Agro –raw

materials to (HFSC)

The High Food Sufficient exporting

Countries (HFSC) buys, or exchange

Agro –raw materials with their value

added capital goods produced from the

initial transaction

‘Core’ (HFSC) states

(OECD) underwrite

liquidity for Food Aid

export: Central banks

underwrite liability

(SDRs held for IFIs

High Food Sufficient

exporting Countries

(HFSC) pumps

CGIAR- the Consultative Group on

International Agricultural Research

International Food Policy

Research Institute, the Gates

Foundation, the World Bank,

USAID, DANIDA, and ADB.

lv

Starting with the establishment of the World Food Program which was established in 1963 with

the goal to coordinate a part of global food aid, a Global Food Aid Industrial Complex started

emerging. Hence, institutionalized food aid such as PL 480 in the U.S, which made it possible for the

US to maintain its policy of tying 100% of its food aid to purchases of US grown, packaged, and

shipped.

The above set up which sustains the business practices of multinational corporations is a form of

neocolonialism. The multinational corporations have the financial resources available to buy up the

agricultural resources of impoverished nations, particularly in the tropics. They also have the political

clout to convert these resources to the exclusive production of cash crops for sale to industrialized

nations outside of the tropics, and in the process to squeeze the poor off of their more productive lands.

It encourages "import dumping"- low-cost subsidized food from industrialized nations into developing

countries" domestic market. This creates a cycle of food safety dependence.

For instance, between 1996 and 2002, EU frozen chicken exports to West Africa rose eight fold, due

mainly to import liberalization. In Ghana, for instance, the half million chicken farmers have suffered

from this situation. In 1992, domestic farmers supplied 95% of Ghana‘s market, but this share fell to

11% in 2001, as imported poultry sells cheaper.

Once production and supply became ―internationalized‖, it becomes possible for, countries

which cannot become NACs like Singapore to focus on agrotechnology parks and relocated food

production elsewhere since the mid-1980s (Ufkes 1995:2).

Land where indigenous farmer would have is now being acquired by foreign agrofirms. In

Ghana, the Norwegian firm Biofuel Africa secured 38,000 hectares for 'the largest jatropha plantation in

the world'; European companies have grabbed over 600,000 hectares of land for the cultivation of

agrofuels crops; In Mozambique too Sun Biofuels has acquired 11 million hectares - more than one-

seventh of the country's total area - for growing energy plants; In Swaziland the British multinational

D1 Oils have acquired over 3,000 hectares in various parts of the country in addition to over 1,000

hectares at D1 Oils-operated farms. This internationalization, and acquisition rather than nationalization

of national arable land by Agro multinational corporations does not only deepen the dependence of the

Low-Income Food-Deficit importing countries (LFDCS) ,but also leads to their exploitation, and food

shortage because, what is produced from the land is neither for human consumption, nor for the

domestic market.

lvi

Under this view subsistence farmers in the Low-Income Food-Deficit importing countries

(LFDCS) are left to cultivate only lands that are so marginal in terms of productivity as to be of no

interest to the multinational corporations

For instance, Zimbabwe which was a major exporter of commercial crops, and self-sufficient in

food production, today agricultural production is down precipitously and the people have recurrent need

of emergency food aid. Since many of the once highly productive, mechanized and irrigated large-scale

properties are now idle or operating at a fraction of their capacity – many as so-called ―trophy farms‖

now owned by elites who are not commercial farmers by vocation – the result is a 50 percent reduction

in overall agricultural output, and chronic shortages in key staples, such as maize..

It is the light of the above land grabbing exercise and in a bid to maintain a permanent control of

power, that we can understand the Zimbabwean Government‘s decision to nationalise nearly all of the

country‘s commercial farms. Hence this has led to a sharp decline in export earnings as well as food

production in the short run, as well as the reason why the IMF and World Bank disapprove of balance of

payments support for Zimbabwe. Hence foreign banks withdrew credit lines and most aid donors to

suspend their Zimbabwe operations.

To get further assistance, Zimbabwe was asked or advised to (1) dismantle marketing boards and

guaranteed prices for farmers‘ products; (2) phase out or eliminate subsidies and support such as

fertilizer, machines, and agricultural infrastructure; (3) reduce tariffs of food products to low levels by

their donors.

The above theoretical insight underlies the dialectical and the organic interconnections between

the governance of the global food system, the international division of labour, the flow of food aid, and

food insecurity in the developing nations. It therefore provides both conceptual and analytical

framework through which the paradox ,and political economy of foreign food aid can be understood, in

such a way that the reader sees both food not only as an economic tool but also a more fundamental tool

of foreign policy, and economic diplomacy.

1.7 HYPOTHESES

In an attempt to answer the questions raised, following hypotheses will guide this study:

I. The character of political leadership contributed to the national development crisis and food

insecurity in Zimbabwe.

lvii

II. There is no organic interconnection between food insecurity, food aid, as well as the character of

governance in Zimbabwe.

1.8 Scope of the Study

This study is confined to the analysis of the political, economic, socio-political-cum food crisis

with a view to critically appraising its causes, and possibly proffers policy options with which to

mitigate the identified problems. However, to contextualize, the intricacies and dynamics of the reality

of socio-political-cum food crisis, reference shall be made to other nations to foreground the political

economy of foreign aid in the relations between the High Food Sufficient exporting Countries (HFSEC)

and Low-Income Food-Deficit importing countries (LFDICS),

This study was confronted with unavoidable limitations such as the extent to which accurate data

is available and the conceptual clarification of ―food crisis‖. Also, foreign policy is an area where

secrecy seems to be the norm .What people see are usually the action of the state but the motivations and

the real intentions of the actors are usually hidden. The net effect of this is that, the analyst has to rely on

mere conjectures a times in trying to figure out why particular state give assistance to another state,

while denying another. This creates a problem of information and data for the analyst especially in Third

World countries where trade and official data between nations are not accessible.

Another limitation is that foreign policy analysis has a lot of competing ontology ,as each

theoretical framework claim to have more explanatory power than others, not only do differences exist

among them but also even within them. This multiplicity of theoretical frameworks poses a problem for

trade and economic analysis ,in the sense that, the framework adopted affects not only the focus of the

study, but also the questions to be asked and conclusions that would be reached. With different

conclusions, it becomes really very difficult to determine which is accurate and which is not. Hence the

analytical quarrel among scholars about the most appropriate framework of analysis. In spite of these

constraints, the objectives set out in the study were achieved.

1.9 Methods of data collection

In this section an attempt is made to explain how the study was carried out, and what was used in

carrying it out. This involves showing /demonstrating how the researcher intends to go about solving the

already identified research problems (Legee, C. and Wayne, F., 1974:66; Obikeze, 1990:13).Indeed,

what is common to all research is the conceptual framework and analytical approach, which the

lviii

researcher brings to the entity or phenomenon being studied and into which in a sense, he/she constraints

it as a basis for the investigation of it (Warmington, Lupton and Gribbin, 1977:78).

In terms, of method of data collection, we used extraction (abstraction) from secondary data,

that is, from existing records and documents, and this entails teasing the research data from other forms

of recorded and stored information (Obikeze, 1990:18).Thus, the researcher relies mainly on secondary

sources of information, especially by eminent scholars, many of these studies appear in textbooks,

journals conference papers, newspapers and other research work on similar topic. This necessitated

using data from textbooks, journals of foreign policy and diplomacy.

As a result, we used descriptive and historical analysis which seeks for an in-depth and insightful

understanding of the subjects or the social phenomenon being studied. This is with a view to

discovering the underlying meanings and patterns of relationship as well as provides insights into subtle

nuances that quantitative approaches might miss.

This enabled us to place the subject matter in its historical perspective with a view to producing

an accurate reconstruction of the past history of the subject matter by identifying and analyzing social

forces and processes that brought it into being, and shaped or directed its subsequent development and

evolution to the present time. Therefore, given the ex post facto nature of this study, we adopted the

One-Shot Case Study designated as XO

. A study using the One-Shot Case Study [X O

] design involves a

careful examination of only one group, event or phenomenon at a single point in time after a presumed

causal event has occurred. Thus, an event is observed and linked to a probable cause (Legee, C. and

Wayne, L., 1974:70).The question arising from the use of the above design is how much of the observed

variance of O (the dependent variable can be attributed to the experimental treatment X (the independent

variable), and how much can be attributed to other substantive variables (extrinsic effects) and the

research design itself (intrinsic effects).

In terms of model,our design is an ex post facto descriptive research because we are more

concerned with examining how the commodification, and globalization of food system, creates

conditions that leads to internationalization of the Zimbabwean food ,and socioeconomic crisis.

The following conventional notation system is used:

X=The experimental treatment (Independent variable)

0=An observation on the dependent variable

O1,2,...=The time order of observation

R=The assignment to groups by randomization

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- = Nonrandom group assignment

* Dependent variable, here is a variable whose value is determined in the model.Hence the independent

variable explains the behaviour of the dependent variable.

In the present study, the following notations are used:

X=the tying of food aid to commodity purchases in the donor country (in-kind food aid),i.e, of the

Patron – client relationship between Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries (LFDCS), and major

food exporting countries from the developed nations, including market-based food policies, and

liberalization of the Zimbabwean economy

0= the deterioration of, economic, social infrastructures of Zimbabwe which made up to a third of the

populace to be in need of food aid, and the steady erosion of remaining democratic practices.

O1,2…= The on-going political and economic crisis in Zimbabwean dates back to 1997, a time the

international financial organizations (IFIs ),especially, the IMF and World bank

specifically withheld an essential balance of payments facility with a view to reducing

government spending, , which in turn, will force the government accelerate

privatization, and renew the structural adjustment program.

R=the assignment to groups by randomization (the Zimbabwean nation),

--- = Nonrandom group assignment (the Zimbabwean poor small peasant farmers),

In order to analyze the data collected, we used the content analysis approach which involves a

systematic transformation of quantitative data to qualitative data with a view to situate patterns of events

in their historical context and establish their subsequent development. Accordingly, documents on the

state of the Zimbabwean nation, and economy, and other relevant materials were subjected to textual

analysis, which according to Babbie`s The Practice of Social Research is ―the study of recorded human

communication involving six processes: objectivity, intersubjectivity apriori design, reliability, validity,

generalizability, replicability and hypothesis testing), the study of texts as to authorship, authenticity or

meaning (Neuendorf, 2002:27). The hypotheses raised will be tested, and based on the weight of the

evidence after analysis; each hypothesis will be validated (rejected or accepted) based on our decision

rule:

lx

Table: 1.1 Decision Table

Decision Rule: Decisions:

State of nature

Reject Do not Reject Null

Hypothesis Null Hypothesis

Null Hypothesis

Is true

Type I Error

P=ø

Correct Decision

Null Hypothesis

Is true

Correct Type II Error

Is false

1.10 Operationalization of Concepts.

Food security-access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life. This

implies individual access in all seasons and all years not just for survival but for active

participation in society

Food insecurity - the physical unavailability of food, and lack of social or economic access to

adequate food, and/or inadequate food utilization,or a condition in which people lack basic food

intake to provide them with the energy and nutrients for fully productive lives.

Food-insecure people- those individuals whose food intake falls below their minimum calorie

(energy) requirements, as well as those who exhibit physical symptoms caused by energy and

nutrient deficiencies resulting from an inadequate or unbalanced diet or from the body's inability

to use food effectively because of infection or disease.

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CHAPTER TWO: CONTRADICTIONS OF POLITICAL GOVERNANCE AND THE

ZIMBABWEAN FOOD CRISES

2.1 Leadership Crisis and National Development Crisis in Zimbabwe

As pointed out in our background of study earlier, a mixture of factors has conspired to challenge

the Zimbabwe‘s food security. Atleast three deeply-rooted interrelated long-term factors and one

additional proximate converge to cause the socio-political-economic cum food crisis in Zimbabwe.

These three interrelated long-term factors have both internal-structural dimension (Zimbabwe‘s

incendiary combination of economic decline, social dislocation, and, most importantly, a politicized

military), and external institutional dimension (Kriger, 2003:8). Thus, one way of understanding the

political and economic trends that has characterized the state of the Zimbabwean nation without

undermining, or glossing over the political economy of the Zimbabwean crisis, is by focusing the

analysis on both the character and the contradictions in both the domestic and international political

system, and on the place which Zimbabwe occupies in the international division of labour and

production.

Put differently, the contradictions of governance, and crisis of leadership, or the character of

politics in Zimbabwe is a major contributory factor to the national development crisis in Zimbabwe. For

instance, Robert Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since its independence from settler rule in 1980 till date.

Although never a fully fledged democracy, in most conceptions of the term, during that period,

Zimbabwe has gone from multiparty state in the 1980s, to dominant one party state in the 1990s to

autocracy in the 2000s. Both scholarship and popular writing on democracy, and more specifically on

Zimbabwe, have accurately mapped Zimbabwe‘s descent into authoritarianism (Kriger, 2003:8).

In fact, not long after he began his fourth presidential term in 2002 – when the first serious

discussions of succession and ―will he/won‘t he‖ speculation began about the prospects of Mugabe

lxii

standing again in 2008 – the country has been sliding inexorably toward militarism. Research on African

regimes (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main) suggests that states displaying Zimbabwe‘s incendiary

combination of economic decline, social dislocation, and, most importantly, a politicized military, have

experienced coups d‘état, and indeed, Zimbabwe appears ripe for a coup, but one has not occurred.

It has become convenient, if not fashionable, among many observers to locate much of the

responsibility for Zimbabwe‘s democratic decline in the person of President Mugabe. From this follows

the assertions that competitive multiparty politics, or even civilian order, will be restored upon his

demise. However, the environment of politicized military and militarized politics has succeeded in

making Robert Mugabe essential to Zimbabwe‘s stability in the medium term. Over the longer term, the

keys to a political, and economic, ―soft landing‖ in Zimbabwe lie not in the country‘s fractured civilian

opposition groups, but in the most unlikely quarter – cronies of the ZANU-PF regime, a group that now

prominently includes the military apparatus itself and its representatives.

The political, economic and social infrastructures of Zimbabwe, described as the world‘s fastest-

shrinking economy, have been decimated in a remarkably short span of time. Having experienced eight

years of recession, Zimbabwe‘s economy has shrunk by more than one third since 1999

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main). More recently, GDP declines have still averaged a staggering

6 percent per year between 2002-2006, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, and this ―slower‖

pace results only from the fact that the economy is running out of ways to contract. The proximate cause

of the economic collapse was the invasions of mainly white and opposition-owned commercial farms,

which began in February 2000, and which, in turn, led to the destruction of agricultural sector. Some

4,000 mostly white commercial farmers have been displaced, as lands were seized and reapportioned to

cronies of the regime. In addition, an estimated 350,000 black farm workers and their families also were

disgorged (Julian, 2008:15).Whereas Zimbabwe was a major exporter of commercial crops, and self-

sufficient in food production, today agricultural production is down precipitously and the people have

recurrent need of emergency food aid. Since many of the once highly productive, mechanized and

irrigated large-scale properties are now idle or operating at a fraction of their capacity – many as so-

called ―trophy farms‖ now owned by elites who are not commercial farmers by vocation – the result is a

50 percent reduction in overall agricultural output, and chronic shortages in key staples, such as maize.

Indeed, Zimbabwe has experienced serious food shortages each year since 2001, with up to a third of the

populace in need of food aid. Once among largest sources of formal sector jobs, unemployment in the

commercial farming sector is now extreme, (John, 2003:9) as it is nationally.

lxiii

The destruction of Zimbabwe‘s once impressive urban-industrial infrastructure is perhaps more

striking. Zimbabwe‘s industry, built around policies of import substitution in the 1960s and seventies,

was indisputably damaged by the effects of economic structural adjustment in the 1990s (Bond,

Manyanya and Carmody: 2001:17). Yet productivity has virtually ground to a halt under conditions that

are fundamentally inhospitable to business and commerce. Moreover, the collapse is not simply of

physical infrastructure, as institutional and organizational networks have also suffered, and trust has

dwindled. Formal economic activity becomes nearly impossible amidst Zimbabwe‘s capricious policy

environment; its mass exodus of skilled labor, managers and capital, and rampant inflation, which some

estimates suggest is a staggering 100,000 percent annually. Not surprisingly, unemployment estimates

range from 75 to 85 percent, and poverty is estimated as high as 90 percent (ICG, 2007:2). Cholera and

other preventable diseases are becoming commonplace as water treatment facilities, not to mention the

country‘s once laudable health care system, has collapsed. Average life expectancy has plummeted,

down to 37 for men and just 34 for women, the lowest in the world.

This economic disintegration is inextricably tied to the deterioration of political life and the

steady erosion of remaining democratic practices. Notwithstanding various qualifications about

Zimbabwe‘s democracy in previous decades, the country once enjoyed vibrant institutions of political

and civil society, a surprisingly autonomous judiciary, a briefly ascendant political opposition. These

institutions have been severely undermined, aided by draconian legislation – among them, the

Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), LOMA, and Public Order and Security Act

(POSA), (ICG, 2007:5),which limited or prevented assembly, protest and grassroots organizing.

The IMF has estimated poverty at 80 percent (the IMF, 2005:460), but the point is clear. The

independent media has been banned, proscribed and even bombed into submission – and sometimes all

three – so that opposition voices are either not heard, or are audible to such a small percentage of the

populace that they are deemed inconsequential. Electoral institutions have been wholly penetrated by

ruling party and military officials. Perhaps not surprisingly; the prevailing economic and political

conditions have contributed directly to an estimated 3.4mm Zimbabweans now living abroad. This

number could be as high as 4 million exiles – or more than 30 percent of the population, by some

estimates (the IMF, 2005:460).

Although their remittances literally have enabled many of those remaining in Zimbabwe to

survive, these earnings have come at enormous cost. Indeed, among Zimbabwe‘s exiles who now make

their home in the U.K, the US, South Africa, Botswana and elsewhere, are many of the country‘s best

lxiv

and brightest, including healthcare professionals, educators, business owners and managers, farmers, and

a significant portion of Zimbabwe‘s laborers, both skilled and unskilled. At the same time, famously

labeled an ―outpost of tyranny‖ by US Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, Zimbabwe has become an

international pariah, at least vis-à-vis the OECD countries. Tourism, once a pillar of the economy, has

plummeted, as travelers have diverted their holidays – and their hard currency – elsewhere. Leading

politicians associated with Zimbabwe‘s ruling party, ZANU-PF, and their families, face sanctions on

travel and investment in a number of northern countries, including the United States, the EU and Japan.

Moreover, Zimbabwe has withdrawn from the Commonwealth and finds itself at odds with many of its

regional neighbours, despite increased dependence on them for electrical power and other essential

imports, and, of course, financial credit (the IMF, 2005:462).

In 2007, several amendments were made to the Public Order and Security Act (POSA), the

Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) and the Broadcasting Services Act, but

these have been deemed ―piecemeal reforms‖ and unlikely to affect the climate of repression (ICG,

2008:3). Certainly, President Robert Mugabe poised to begin his 29th year in office – bears considerable

blame for the myriad problems facing his country. Yet it is equally apparent that the complexity of those

problems means that they cannot simply be fixed with the demise of the 84-year old head of state. Even

under the best case scenario, the damage to population, economy, and infrastructure will require decades

to rectify. Mugabe‘s death, or departure from office by other means, is a necessary, but hardly sufficient

step to precipitate positive change in Zimbabwe. Moreover, March 29, 2008 marked the almost

inevitable reelection of the still vigorous Mugabe and, in all likelihood, an ironclad majority in a newly

expanded legislature (ICG, 2008:5). In addition to Mugabe, two opposition candidates contested the

presidential poll on March 29, 2008. Because a victory by MDC candidate Morgan Tsvangirai is all but

impossible, and a win by independent and former ZANU-PF minister Simba Makoni (which is a more

credible prospect, although still unlikely) would unleash a lethal contest for power, Mugabe remains the

most stable alternative despite pressure from middle class elements and restive military elites. In other

words, rather than undergoing some progression toward transition, however teleological, Zimbabwe is

actually ―stuck in reverse.‖ Yet while this reversal aptly captures the erosion of democracy, it does not

mean that Zimbabwe is intrinsically unstable (ICG, 2008:5).

As suggested by the coup literature, states displaying Zimbabwe‘s combination of economic

decline, social dislocation, and, importantly, politicized military, have experienced coups (Brian,

2001:40). Why not Zimbabwe? To a measurable degree, conditions appear far more ―ripe‖ for a coup

lxv

d‘état than they do for a post-Mugabe democratic transition. The military as the ―armed wing of the

bureaucratic bourgeoisie as another faction of the ruling elite, seeks to protect its own interests

(Clapham,1985, in Third World Politics, 143, cited in Thomson, 2002:136). When these interests are

materially threatened, the military has a clear incentive for intervention in politics via a coup d‘etat. On

the surface, it appears that these interests are seriously threatened in Zimbabwe, commensurate with the

collapse of the economy, political uncertainty and infighting, a restive political opposition, and the

occasional pledge of President Mugabe to remain in office, in his words, ―until I am a century old‖ (

Moore, 2006:9). Indeed, in Zimbabwe today, military interests are so diversified and so bound up with

factors completely outside the ordinary military sphere that the armed forces would appear to have

ample incentive to intervene to protect those interests. This is even more likely because over the long

term, militarized politics itself contains the seeds for an economic and political revitalization in the

country (Maroleng, 2005:16).

Although other factors are also relevant, Mugabe and his party have certainly put many of the

above coup-proofing strategies into practice. For example, the creation of parallel forces and the

proliferation of militias have characterized the Zimbabwean polity for most of this decade. Further,

although ethnic balancing was always imperfect in Zimbabwe, the promotion of the president‘s co-

ethnics from the Zezuru sub-group of the Shona, has become the modus operandi particularly in regard

to military and military-connected positions. In addition, Zimbabwe‘s 1998-2004 misadventure in the

DRC certainly fits the model, described by Belkin and Schofer,2005:7, of giving your troops something

else to shoot at (it also provided rich patronage opportunities for the officer ranks, especially).

Moreover, arguably, the regular army was so broken upon that coup risk was doubly diminished.

Although it seems unlikely that this was the leading cause of Zimbabwe‘s Congo intervention, it was,

for the regime, a positive spin off. [The DRC conflict thus served multiple functions: distract and

possibly divide the rank and file and enrich the brass].

However, in terms of outright repression, Mugabe and ZANU-PF have effectively imposed

legislation that includes various restrictions on civil society and political opposition. Coupled with a

disastrous economic regime, this political repression has contributed to the emigration of millions of

Zimbabweans; many of those now abroad make up Zimbabwe‘s intelligentsia (Maroleng, 2005:16), and,

as such include the likely architects of a civilian effort to wrest power from ZANU-PF.

In Zimbabwe, in addition to its politicized military, at least two indicators suggested by Belkin

and Schofer (2003:45) currently obtain, namely, a weakened civil society and regime that is increasingly

lxvi

considered illegitimate (only the absence of a history of coups plays in Zimbabwe‘s 10 favour). Using

the second edition of the Economist Intelligence Unit‘s democracy index, which used 60 indicators

grouped in five categories: electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of

government; political participation; and political culture on a 0 to 10 scale, we can demonstrate that the

character of governance and leadership is influences the stability of a state. For instance, Zimbabwe

scored 149, 2.53; 0.83; 4.29, 1.67 4.38 and 1.47 respectively on rank, overall score, electoral process and

pluralism; functioning of government, political participation, political culture, and civil liberties (Belkin

and Schofer, 2003:45). Threshold points for regime types depend on overall scores that are rounded to

one decimal point.

Table : 2.1:The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Index of Democracy 2008.

lxvii

KEY:

1. Full democracies —scores of 8-10; 2. Flawed democracies—score of 6 to 7.9;

3. Hybrid regimes—scores of 4 to 5.9; 4 Authoritarian regimes—scores below 4 Source: Economist Intelligence Unit, Country Report: Zimbabwe. March 2007

IFAD, UN sets up food crisis task force, http://www.ifad.org/media/press, April 29th, 2008.

lxviii

In their articles, captioned, ―How Mugabe is Destroying the Zimbabwean Economy‖ by Ralph R.

Reiland (August 17, 2007:14), and "Caps on Prices Only Deepen Zimbabweans' Misery" by Michael

Wines (2008:4), a perfect illustration of how the "fatal conceit" of government can turn a difficulty into

a catastrophe was provided.‖Robert G. Mugabe has ruled over this battered nation, his every wish

endorsed by Parliament and enforced by the police and soldiers, for more than 27 years," explained

Wines (2008:4). It appears, however, that not even an unchallenged autocrat can repeal the laws of

supply and demand. With prices doubling weekly, Mugabe's attempt to revoke the laws of economics

came via an anti-inflationary order, "Operation Slash Prices," on June 25, ordering merchants to cut their

prices by 50 percent. One month after Mr. Mugabe decreed just that, commanding merchants nationwide

to counter 10,000-percent-a-year hyperinflation by slashing prices in half and more, Zimbabwe's

economy is at a halt, reported Wines (2008:6). Most students with a passing grade in Economics 101

could have predicted that Mugabe's decree would produce shortages. Cut the price of gasoline by law to

a dollar per gallon, and there'll be less supply and more demand -- the formula for a shortage. Cut the

price to 50 cents and we'll be walking.

It's the same with supply in the labor market. Cap the salaries of brain surgeons at $100,000 and

there'll be a shortage of brain surgeons. Predictably, the results of Mugabe's decree were catastrophic.

Bread, sugar and cornmeal, staples of every Zimbabwean's diet, have vanished, seized by mobs who

denuded stores like locusts in wheat fields (Wines, 2008:9). Meat is virtually nonexistent, even for

members of the middle class who have money to buy it on the black market. Gasoline is nearly

unobtainable. Hospital patients are dying for lack of basic medical supplies. Power blackouts and water

cutoffs are endemic. Similarly, the impact on manufacturing and jobs was ruinous. Manufacturing has

slowed to a crawl because few businesses can produce goods for less than the government-imposed sale

prices. Raw materials are drying up because suppliers are being forced to sell to factories at a loss.

Businesses are laying off workers or reducing their hours (Wines, 2008:9).

With three-fourths of Zimbabwe's labor force already jobless prior to Mugabe's decree, the

government's prescription for bringing down inflation only worsened the nation's poverty crisis. To keep

critics in line, a new law gives Zimbabwe's security forces the right to observe as many e-mails and tap

as many phones as they see fit. For noncompliance with Mugabe's edict, business owners are threatened

with jail and the nationalization of their companies. "We are at war," explained one of Mugabe's vice

presidents, Joseph Msika. "We will not allow shelves to be empty." (Ralph and Reiland August 17,

2007:14).

lxix

Wines (2008:12) further reported that, if supplies won't come forth voluntarily via the market,

the government will force the production. Thus as many as 4,000 businesspeople have been arrested,

fined or jailed. While the state-run newspapers publish lists of telephone numbers on their front pages

daily, exhorting citizens to report merchants whose prices exceed the dictates. In the Soviet Union, to

keep things moving according to plan, the government eventually killed 55 million of its own citizens

and in China, 36 million. To kill in those numbers required the obedience of many. According to

Clifford (2008),"There is one thing more wicked in the world than the desire to command, and that is the

will to obey." (Ralph and Reiland August 17, 2007:18).

2.2 Militarization of Politics and Governance in Zimbabwe

The origins of Zimbabwe‘s recent chaos are well known (Kriger, 2003:5). The underlying/long-

term factors are deeply-rooted and stem from at least three interrelated long-term factors and one

additional proximate cause. The first centers, around unresolved disparities over economy and land. This

―incomplete liberation‖ meant that there was a reservoir of populist resentment, which, though long

dormant, could be tapped and mobilized by opportunistic politicians and other actors. Indeed, this

contributed to long term dissatisfaction among military and proto-military elements in society (see

Kriger, 2003). White Zimbabweans are often portrayed as victims of brutality and appropriation by a

deranged regime. After all, it was predominantly white commercial farmers who were displaced by the

land invasions from 2000-2004 and whose lost productive capacity directly contributed to the country‘s

macroeconomic decline. Yet these Zimbabweans, whose population numbered around 70,000 as

recently as the mid-1990s, were essentially enablers of the government‘s/political elites‘ failures to

achieve liberation.

This is not a case of blaming the victims; rather, Zimbabwe‘s whites were at best only

intermittently pressured by the state to share land, resources, wealth, capital or even managerial

positions/affirmative action with blacks for nearly a generation following independence. Faced with

such laissez faireism from the state, the so-called settler class responded in kind with complacency of its

own (Bauer and Taylor, 2005:98). As subsequent events would reveal, however, the state was later able

to manipulate to its advantage the image of a white populace enjoying the perquisites of a colonial

lifestyle as a pretext for racism and the confiscation of white owned commercial farms. A second key

variable is the lack of accountability that characterized the ZANU regime from its inception. Beginning

in 1980, when ZANU won the vast majority of contested seats in Zimbabwe‘s first-ever democratic

lxx

elections, the party under the leadership of prime minister, later president, Mugabe became increasingly

dominant. After 1987, Zimbabwe had established a de facto one-party state. It maintained its

hierarchical structure, with power concentrated in the president and a handful of executive-level and

party institutions, such as the politburo, Central Committee and, perhaps a distant third, the cabinet (See

Bauer and Taylor, 2005). The incorporation of ZANU‘s rival and leading opposition party, ZAPU,

through a merger in 1987 essentially foreclosed the prospect of any potent political competition in the

country for the next dozen years (Sylvester, 1995:6). By definition, power is not diffused in a single-

party predominant system. This type of governing structure renders the Zimbabwean state particularly

susceptible to militarization (Sylvester, 1995:6).

Third, although the ZANU-led state displayed flashes of democratic governance in its first two

decades, a closer inspection reveals an astounding willingness by the regime to use various tools of

repression to maintain its authority. Indeed, ZANU had a history of using violence for political ends.

The most severe example of this was the infamous Gukurahundi campaign between 1982 and 1986, in

which some 20,000 Zimbabweans, mainly from Matabeleland, died at the hands of the regime (See

Bauer and Taylor, 2005).

The immediate catalyst for Zimbabwe‘s collapse is more recent and dates to just 1997, a time in

which the political and economic environment in the country was particularly fragile. After seven years

of experimentation with economic liberalization, known in Zimbabwe as ESAP, several historically

strong sectors were under threat. Largely as the result of trade liberalization, footwear, clothing and

textiles, metals and manufacturers found they could not compete in the liberalized trade environment

prescribed by the IFIs and donors (See Bauer and Taylor, 2005:103). Moreover, although commercial

agriculture sector was, by and large, performing well in the 1990s, farmers at the smaller end of the

scale had been buffeted by the effects of two major droughts in 1992 and again in 1995, and the rising

cost of finance and inputs and were therefore on the verge of bankruptcy (especially black large-scale

farmers). Formal sector employment was also under threat, and wages had become stagnant, leading to

increased union activism, really for the first time in independent Zimbabwe‘s history (Carmody and

Taylor, 2002:342; Bond and Manyanya, 2002:221). At the same time, the government faced rising

pressures from the IFIs to reduce government spending, accelerate privatization, and renew the

structural adjustment program, ESAP, and the IMF specifically withheld an essential balance of

payments facility.

Ostensibly, the Gukurahundi was directed at renegade members of ZANU‘s former rival army

lxxi

ZIPRA, under the pretext that they were seeking to overthrow the ZANU-led government. Vast numbers

of non-combatants, mainly of the Ndebele minority, were also killed in the campaign. Somewhat

paradoxically, the mid-late 1990s were also a time of modest political opening in Zimbabwe. Labor

leaders, represented in the umbrella body ZCTU, were increasingly emboldened. Organizations of civil

society, including various campaigns such as the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) and

the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) were increasingly vibrant; opposition parties, though small

and fragmented, were quite outspoken (Bond and Manyanya, 2002:224).. Indeed, although such groups

and their predecessors had scant impact on the results of the elections in 1995 and 1996 for parliament

and the presidency, respectively, opposition voices were represented quite forcefully. This revealed

growing credibility problems for the ruling party, particularly in the urban centers. Nonetheless, as a

formidable actor, the ZANU-PF government was able to effectively parry the demands and pressures

from each of these groups (Bond and Manyanya, 2002:224).

Yet another entity whose organizational and political strength grew immensely during this period

of relative social opening was the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans‘ Association (the ―War

Vets‖). When they marched in mid-1997 demanding that they receive pensions, land and health care for

their sacrifices to the nation years earlier, President Mugabe capitulated, granting lump-sum payments

and guaranteeing lifetime pensions costing the treasury Z$4.5 billion (then about $440 mm US). At the

same time, incendiary rhetoric about seizures of white-owned land and land reform – long a regular

feature of Zimbabwean election cycles, but prior to 2000 without any foundation or follow-up – formed

an expedient corollary to the regime‘s new found commitment to its War Veterans (Bond and

Manyanya, 2002:230).

Each time even a modest move toward greater political liberalism has occurred in Zimbabwe, it

appears to suffer a severe authoritarian backlash. Christine Sylvester (1995:6) demonstrates this

phenomenon in elections through 1995. Thereafter, a backlash was seen in 1997, in which fears of a

ZCTU-War Vets collaboration led to anti-white and anti-democratic reaction, and in 2000, which

marked the most competitive election in Zimbabwean history (Bond and Manyanya, 2002:230) This

bodes poorly for 2008, and suggests that any relaxation that results in an advance by pro-democracy

forces will be met with a similarly authoritarian response from ZANU-PF and its military allies.

The ZNLWVA was itself notoriously corrupt, and numerous recipients of the payouts were not

actual veterans (see Bond and Manyanya, 2002). More than any single event up to that time, Mugabe‘s

concessions to the ZNLWVA had an impact on Zimbabwe‘s political economy that was both immediate

lxxii

and severe. In fact, despite the political logic of placating a critical constituency (railing against white

farmers also arguably aided the fading liberation credentials, on which the aging ZANU-PF elites relied

for much of their legitimacy), this extra-budgetary largesse undermined Zimbabwe‘s fragile

international and domestic economic relations and threatened to bankrupt the treasury. The Zimbabwe

dollar plummeted 75 percent in one day against hard currencies and the economy, for all intents and

purposes, never recovered. IMF withheld its disbursement and the donor community soon followed suit.

By September 1999, the country was in severe economic difficulty and both local and

international investors were alarmed about the threat to property rights embedded in the anticipated land

acquisition program. Domestically, the vulnerability of the regime emboldened emergent political actors

such as the ZCTU, and this climate of relative political freedom and economic contraction, fostered the

emergence of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in September 1999. It was joined by

whites, long supporters of the regime, who were now fearful enough of Mugabe that they needed to

break their tacit alliance, and sufficiently overconfident in Zimbabwe‘s democratic legitimacy that they

could make a difference, not least financially, to the new party‘s success (Bond and Manyanya,

2002:235). The fundamental error made by opponents of ZANU-PF was in overestimating plasticity of

Zimbabwe‘s partial democracy. Hence, the emergence of a bona fide opposition party in MDC was a

tipping point, leading not to greater democracy, but to a descent into militarism.

MDC, therefore, was unable to secure electoral victory in 2000 or 2002 or 2005; in 2008, victory

.Consider Masipula Sithole‘s ill-timed and unfortunately titled ―Zimbabwe‘s Eroding Authoritarianism,‖

which appeared in the Journal of Democracy in 1997.It is clear in retrospect that as of February 2000,

fresh from the defeat of its constitutional referendum, that Mugabe and ZANU-PF were faced with a

critical choice upon which rested not only the credibility of putative multiparty democracy/politics in

Zimbabwe, but the very foundations of civilian rule. The choices were to submit to democracy, and most

likely lose, or to seek to retain power at all costs by entering what Timothy Scarnecchia (2006:4) has

called the ―fascist cycle.‖ Yielding to democracy would have almost certainly ensured a parliamentary

victory by the MDC in June 2000 and very likely in the presidential elections that followed two years

later. Thus, Mugabe through populist policy of land reform established a dictatorial position in

Zimbabwe.

2.3 The Politicization of the Military

It is worth noting that what differentiates Zimbabwe‘s experience from that of other authoritarian

incumbents facing serious electoral competition like Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia in 1991, Kenya in

lxxiii

2002; Ghana in 2000; Malawi in 1993, and elsewhere is that ZANU-PF was able to engage in a dry run

in which it discovered its electoral vulnerability months before it actually counted. Although sponsored

by ZANU-PF, Zimbabwe‘s first-ever popular referendum in February 2000 on the subject of a new

constitution was resoundingly defeated 55% to 45%. The results surprised Mugabe and ZANU-PF, yet

they could not otherwise have known the depths of their unpopularity in Zimbabwe, particularly in the

cities, absent this test (Meredith, 2007:7). This, in short, was Zimbabwe‘s ―Algeria moment.‖ And like

Algeria‘s preempted election in 1992, ZANU-PF rejected democracy in favor of militarism. The 2000

election, hijacked by ZANU-PF, was a Zimbabwean veto coup, albeit one executed by a nominally

civilian government, which moved quickly to shore up its military credentials (see Meredith, 2007).

Since early 2000, two features have come to characterize Zimbabwe‘s political economy. The

first dimension is the politicization of the military. In other words, politicization of the military is the

expansion of the corporate identity of the military to include explicit class interests that the military, as a

class, is then inclined to protect (Clapham, 1985:4); as well as the explicit assignment of political

relevance to military officers, retired military personnel with links to the armed forces, and the military

as an institution. This ultimately makes the military to become a key power broker, often at the behest of

civilian politicians, and may act as a final arbiter of political outcomes.

A second feature of contemporary Zimbabwe is the militarization of politics. This

dimension attempts to capture the degree to which the political sphere itself has been penetrated by

militarist logic (Clapham, 1985:5). It suggests that military rhetoric and behavior permeates the

nominally civilian regime, and paramilitary organizations – militias, youth wings, and the like –

proliferate; the police abandon a law enforcement function, ostensibly geared toward protecting citizens,

and instead perform a regime enforcement function designed to preserve regime power through threats,

intimidation and terrorism against the populace, especially key civic groups. Necessarily authoritarian,

violence becomes the currency of a militarized regime.

Although veterans of Zimbabwe‘s liberation war have always held prominent positions in the

ZANU-led government, the institutional military structure – formed from the merging of the two

liberation armies, Zanla and Zipra, with some elements from the Rhodesian army – has always

traditionally remained outside of politics (Clapham, 1985:5). The early years of independence perhaps

revealed some ambiguity about the military‘s role, and it has been more visible in the party structures,

however, I would argue that there has been a clear institutional division since 1980 between ―military‖

and ―civilian leadership‖. Arguably, the inclusion of so many former Liberation War Veterans in

lxxiv

ZANU-PF politics from 1980 might be characterized as politicizing the military – or at least, those of a

military background. One could also argue that politicization began with General Walls in 1980, when

he considered an anti-ZANU coup. Another possible example is the Gukuruhundi campaign, which

called on the military, specifically the notorious Fifth Brigade, to play a substantially political role by

attacking and repressing non-combatants as much as Ndebele/Zipra-fringe militias. (see Clapham, 1985)

Certainly, for years following the Gukurahundi, neither the military nor paramilitary

agents/actors had any domestic or political role whatsoever. This has contributed to Zimbabwe‘s

character historically as a fundamentally civilian-ruled state. In fact, Zimbabwe is one of few countries

in Africa that has avoided a coup; although the severity of at least two rumored attempts has never been

firmly established (Clapham, 1985). Ceteris paribus, the politicization of the military threatens this

record. Individually and institutionally, military actors are now seen as bona-fide political players in

their own right. The mobilization of the War Vets in 1997 and Mugabe‘s capitulation was a precursor,

but it is important to note that their campaign was largely organic in origin; in that period of relative

political pluralism, they were another interest group, albeit an extraordinary one. The War Vets

empowered and politicized important elements of the ―military grassroots.‖ The key turning point in the

process of politicization actually occurred in 1998, principally through the Zimbabwe army‘s

intervention in the war in the DRC. As a result of its deployment in the Congo, Zimbabwe‘s military

hierarchy began to see itself in terms of its collective interests as an (economic) class (Meredith 2007:7).

Zimbabwe‘s intercession on behalf of the beleaguered Kabila government generated key

lucrative contracts – for materiel, supplies, transport, mining rights, and so on – many of which were

given to companies controlled by senior military officers, as well as the military itself, such as OSLEG,

Zimbabwe Defence Industries (ZDI), and others (Weinstein, in UN Sec Council, 2003:232; Global

Witness Magazine, 2003:97).This well documented appropriation of Congolese resources was not,

foremost, part of a strategy of collective security to rescue/aid an embattled SADC member, as the

Zimbabwe government claimed, but driven by domestic Zimbabwean politics. For the brass, the Congo

provided a treasure trove of patronage; the senior military elite drew vast amounts of capital from their

mining ventures in the DRC.14 For the rank and file, their deployment to DRC literally and figuratively

removed a potential source of threat to the ruling ZANU-PF.

Thus, there was an implicit recognition of the power of the military as a corporate entity and the

risk un-deployed [and underpaid?] soldiers posed as long as they remained in their Zimbabwe barracks.

By giving military elites new economic power directly, and indirectly granting them political power,

lxxv

ZANU-PF gave them a stake in the outcome, both in DRC and in Zimbabwe. Other forms of economic

patronage have been heaped upon members of the military establishment. Given the not outlandish fears

that Zimbabwe‘s deteriorating economic conditions since at least 2000 ―could erode the loyalty of the

security forces to the ZANU-PF regime… the loyalty of senior army officials has been reinforced by

them being provided generous salaries and other benefits such as luxury cars to shield them from

economic conditions.‖(Mawadza, Aquilina, in Institute for Security Studies Accessed 11/29/2007 from:

http://www.issafrica.org/static/templates/tmpl_html.)

According to BBC Monitering International Reports of February 27, 2008 as cited in an article

in Business Day, captioned ―Zimbabwe: Mugabe Gives Army, Teachers ‗Huge; Pay Raises Ahead of

March Poll,‖ in the current environment of runaway inflation, ―Mugabe‘s beleaguered government has

awarded huge pay raises to the army ahead of critical elections [in March 2008] in a bid to calm the

restless military‖ intelligence agents received increases as well. Thus, in an effort ―to ensure loyalty,

Mugabe gives priority to the military at the expense of other ministries. Scott Baldauf, ( 2007:15), noted

that, the military budget, the bulk of which goes to salaries and personnel costs, has been spared many of

the severe cuts seen by other branches of government. In fact, ―taken as a whole, the combined budget

line for defence and security expenditure in Zimbabwe has been ‗second to none‘ since 1980.Martin

R.(2008:45) in, ―Civil Military Relations in Zimbabwe: Is there a Threat?‖ noted that expenditure and

regular increases on the police, militia, war veterans and armed forces has been unequalled compared to

civil service and other productive sectors. Significantly, salary benefits and awards for the security

sector escalated by more than 100% in the run up to the much contested March [2008] presidential

elections. This was against much lower percentages accorded to other groups in the country, according

to Martin Rupiya(2008). Apparently cautious about leaving out any member of the increasingly

extensive security apparatus, in early 2007 the government also increased pensions for War Vets from

$103,000 to $500,000 a month.

In addition to salary increases, various gratuities have also been made available. In mid-2007, for

example, the government was reported to have spent thousands of United States dollars acquiring

luxurious Mazda 3 vehicles for army and police chiefs, at a time when the country has no foreign

currency for essentials such as drugs. Each Mazda cost US $16,607, plus a Zimbabwe dollar top-up of

$200 million. The army chiefs fared even better, receiving Toyota Prados or Mercedes Benzes

depending on their rank, and the government reportedly has acquired hundreds of Toyota Yaris, for the

Central Intelligence Organization (Nkatazo, 2007:5). Of course, senior military officials were also

lxxvi

among the leading beneficiaries of land seizures. The state has given them access to credit to support

their various business interests, however they were acquired. A special Reserve Bank fund gives cheap

unsecured loans to top officers, politburo and central committee and central committee members,

cabinet ministers, judges and parliamentarians to finance farming and business activities. McGreal (2007

) reports that ―some military and political leaders are raking in small fortunes, particularly through the

army‘s foray into the DRC.‖ He explains that ―this is no mere looting spree‖ as the Zimbabwean defence

force has created ―joint-venture and front companies to cream off some of Congo‘s richest mines.‖

All these placed the Zimbabwean military unequivocally in the role of power broker. According

to General Vitalis Zvinavashe-Commander of the Zimbabwe Defense Forces who posed a thinly-veiled

threat to MDC candidate Morgan Tsvangirai:

The security organisations will only stand in support of those political

leaders that will pursue Zimbabwean values, traditions and beliefs

for thousands of lives lost in pursuit of Zimbabwe's hard-won

independence‖..."[The president] is expected to observe the

objectives of the liberation struggle. We will therefore not accept, let

alone support or salute anyone with a different agenda.‖(Peta

Thornycroft and Tim Butcher, 2002:45).

Moreover, the military was even given an explicit role in the administration of elections. Journalist Peta

Thornycroft reported that an exchange of letters in 2002 between the head of the Zimbabwe National

Army and the head of the Zimbabwe Defense forces revealed ―that the country's army ran the nerve

center of [2002‘s] disputed presidential election, in violation of the constitution. The letter from General

Constantine Chiwenga dated March 4th, 2002, five days before Zimbabweans went to the polls to the

head of the defense force, General Vitalis Zvinavashe asking for permission for assignment of three

officers to control the national command center in Harare, before, during and after the [2002]

presidential election. In his reply, the leader of the defense force gives his permission, and says the

arrangement should be speedily concluded (Peta Thornycroft, VOA Feb 5, 2003,)

. The national command center was the headquarters for election logistics, providing ballot boxes,

working with party representatives, providing information for the media and reporting results.It is

normally run by the Election Supervisory Commission, and the Zimbabwe constitution specifically

forbids military personnel from any involvement, except to provide security (Peta Thornycroft, VOA

Feb 5, 2003).

Although, the secondment of military personnel in electoral institutions is expected to be

discontinued for the 2008 polls (ICG, 2008:16), the military‘s broader role as guarantor of election

lxxvii

victories by ZANU-PF and President Mugabe remains intact. In the run up to the March 2008 elections,

which harmonizes presidential and parliamentary elections for the first time, Commissioner of Prisons

Paradzai Zimondi, a retired army major-general, offered similar sentiments. Effectively channeling

Zvinavashe‘s 2002 pronouncement, Zimondi addressed a function marking the promotion by President

Mugabe of 14 senior prison officers by saying

If the opposition wins the [2008] election, I will be the first one to resign

from my job and go back to defend my piece of land. I will not let it go.

We are going to the elections and you should vote for President

Mugabe… I am giving you an order to vote for the president. Do not be

distracted. The challenges we are facing are just a passing phase…I will

only support the leadership of President Mugabe. I will not salute them

[Makoni and Tsvangirai] (Quoted in ―Partisan Statements Erode Public

Trust, Zimbabwe Independent. 07 March 2008).

Peter,K. and Patrick M. (2008), noted that Like Zimondi and others, Army Commander, General

Constantine Chiwenga has warned that he will overturn the constitutional order if President Mugabe

loses, noting in an interview with The Zimbabwe Standard that ‗The army will not support or salute sell-

outs and agents of the West before, during and after the presidential elections.Matikinye, Ray in ―War

Vets Form Army Reserve.” cited in Zimbabwe Independent, March 31, 2007 noted that Robert Mugabe

(the government) has in February 2007, gazetted the Defence (War Veterans Reserve) Regulations

through Statutory Instrument 64/2007 to set up a War Veterans Reserve. The new law incorporates

former combatants into the Zimbabwe National Army as a Reserve Force, thereby formalizing the

position of the president‘s most vociferous military supporters. In a similar vein, the reported

deployment of units of the Presidential Guard in army barracks around the country and suggests that the

government no longer trusts that the army will remain loyal under the present conditions. Yet,

increasingly, even the watchers need watching. Thus President Mugabe is also recruiting people whose

loyalty can be trusted in order to fill vacancies among service personnel created, in part, by desertions

includes the replacement, ironically enough, of his own Presidential Guard with members of his secret

police and filing Army ranks with his party‘s youth militia and aging veterans of the liberation struggle

from the 1970s. (Scott, B, accessed in, The Christian Science Monitor, April 25, 2007.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007).Again, however, the use of counter-balancing signals to both

supporters and would-be opponents alike that they matter politically.

Lastly, the politicization of the military is also evidenced in the range of duties now assigned to

the military. These new obligations now far exceed those ordinarily associated with the armed forces.

lxxviii

For example, among the growing responsibilities Mugabe has given the army includes, the expectation

that it will clean up ‗mistakes‘ by civilians. Among these are, Operation Maguta, which sought to revive

the agricultural sector in the wake of its collapse following land reform, and Operation Garikai, which

charged the military with building housing. This of course followed the widely condemned Operation

Murambatsvina, launched in May 2005, which literally bulldozed thousands of urban residences and

businesses deemed illegal by the state, and in which the military also played a role( OxResearch: April

20, 2006:1)

In sum, from explicit patronage opportunities, to expanded roles in non-traditional functions,

including elections and quasi-ministerial duties typically associated with civilian individuals and

institutions, to, most damningly, explicit declarations of intent to serve the party and the president and

not the state, the military in Zimbabwe has been highly politicized. Governance in Zimbabwe

increasingly resembles a military apparatus – the ―slow motion emergence of a junta‖ ―Autocratic

Militarism,‖(Sarah B.2005:8) – wherein primary responsibility for economic policy making now lies in

the aptly named Zimbabwe National Security Council (ZNSC), chaired by President Mugabe. This

narrow body has marginalized Zimbabwe‘s longstanding and more inclusive political institutions, such

as the Politburo, the cabinet and the central committee of the party itself. The worldview is decidedly

defensive, and increasingly militaristic. In addition, at least since 2007, all key decisions are now made

either by the president or through the Zimbabwe National Security Council (ZNSC), whose membership

includes many current and former senior military officers who will not question his inflexible, hardline

policies(Sarah B.2005:8). Hence Military backgrounds are increasingly seen as a prerequisite to access

the president‘s inner circle.

The state and ZANU-PF were instrumental in the creation of the paramilitary groups. For

example, when Morgan Tsvangirai and other MDC members were arrested and severely beaten in

March 2007 after an intra-party meeting was disbanded, the calls grew louder (reports of the abuses

were widely circulated internationally). Tsvangirai, who had sustained head injuries and had to be

hospitalized, declared that this was the straw that broke the camel‘s back and that Zimbabweans would

finally rise up to overthrow the Mugabe regime. Although this sense was echoed by observers such as

US Ambassador Michael Dell and reporter Craig Timberg of The Washington Post, such claims appear

to have been wildly exaggerated (ICG, March 2008:17).

In fact, the militarization of politics has severely undermined the capacity of MDC and other

potential centers of opposition in Zimbabwe to challenge the hegemony of the ZANU-PF regime.

lxxix

Notwithstanding its claims to unity, the MDC remains significantly divided; the party split over whether

or not to boycott elections for the newly established 66 member senate in 2005, and has remained

divided into two factions ever since, one led by Arthur Mutambara, the other by Tsvangirai. Running as

an independent, Simba Makoni faces similar obstacles, as discussed earlier (see ICG, March 2008). Civil

Society, once vibrant, is substantially cowed, and closely monitored.

Leading activists have been silenced, through arrest, intimidation or de facto exile. Indeed,

MDC‘s main supporters in civil society from the ZCTU, the NCA, the Crisis in Zimbabwe Committee,

the remaining independent media (namely the Zimbabwe Independent and The Standard newspapers),

ZimRights, and many others, are continually threatened with harassment and intimidation, or in some

cases, possible takeover by the state. At the same time, the vast majority of the population is focused,

quite understandably, on subsistence. More than 700,000 Zimbabweans was dispossessed by 2005‘s

Operation Murambatsvina (see ICG, March 2008).

Eric Bloch (2006:5) noted that the ZNSC had taken over the operations of the Zimbabwe

Revenue Authority (ZIMRA). In addition, Oxford Research of April 20, 2006 reported that ―the

national railways, national parks, and the National Oil Company of Zimbabwe (NocZim) are all run by

former security men,‖ whereas the now pervasive militias often play a more sinister role. Freedom

House reports ―war veterans and ZANU-PF militants operate as de facto enforcers of government

policies – including land redistribution – and have committed human rights abuses such as assault,

torture, rape, extralegal evictions, and extralegal executions without fear of punishment (Freedom

Watch: 2007:18).

Maroleng (2005:7) reported that President Mugabe appears to be increasingly reliant upon

members of his own Zezuru sub-group. This Zezuru sum game can be seen as a move by Mugabe and

his close associates within this faction to address their security dilemma by gaining total dominance.

Placing trusted faction members in strategic positions would provide protection from political rivals and

from threat of prosecution in the future. In fact, Mugabe has assigned key posts to members or allies of

the Zezuru-led faction of powerful former army general Solomon Mujuru, and placed members of the

security establishment in strategic civil service positions. A glaring example of this is the fact that

Mugabe has given [Didymus] Mutasa (Minister for State Security) the responsibility to manage a new

government taskforce that oversees the import and distribution of food in the country (Maroleng

2005:7).

According to International Crisis Group, cited in Africa Report No. 132, 18 September 2007: 6,

lxxx

at a lower level, youth militias are another avenue for the militarization of the state. ZANU-PF has

deployed some 10,000 youth militia and war veterans in rural areas to deny the opposition access to a

significant part of the electorate. This is particularly problematic in advance of the March 2008

elections. Yet it is likely that the war veterans and their allies will continue to play a role in prolonging

Mugabe‘s rule (Africa Report, 2007: 6). Since the beginning of 2007, war veterans, who campaign for

Mugabe in the party and the countryside at election time, have been formally constituted as a reserve

force under defence ministry control, with a monthly wage. Their loyalty and that of the military make it

difficult for ZANU-PF dissidents to stage a successful coup against Mugabe. Despite sharply

diminishing patronage resources, ZANU has attempted to service these core constituencies. For

example, Brian (2007:6) reported that, Zimbabwe‘s central bank has doubled salaries for youth militia

squads employed to monitor prices in shops to Z$1.2 million per month, a figure more than ten times the

monthly salaries of teachers and doctors.

However the salaries of national service youths are more than 20 times what trained junior

members of the uniformed forces who pay tax are being given per month. There have been reports that

these youths have unleashed a reign of terror around the country as they beat up and harassed

businessmen and informal traders whom they accused of inflating prices in a bid to sabotage the

government (Chihuri, 2006:19). Additionally, Project Sunrise has seen the introduction of nation-wide

roadblocks and stricter border patrols involving ZIMRA, the Zimbabwe Republic Police and ―The

Youth‖ to investigate the illegal export and import of local currency. $10 trillion (US $40 million) – 22

per cent of the money in circulation [is] unaccounted for,( Maroleng, C. cited in African Security

Review, 2007:Vol. 15 No 4).

Based on the evidence from the foregoing analysis, we accept and validated our earlier working

hypothesis and restate to read that the Zimbabwean socio-politico cum economic, and food crisis has a

relationship with the character of the governance, military, and politics.

lxxxi

CHAPTER THREE: HUNGER AND POLITICS, ECONOMIC REFORM,

ZIMBABWEAN NATIONAL ECONOMIC REVIVAL PROGRAMME, AND

CRISIS OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN ZIMBABWE

3.1 Zimbabwe’s Inheritance: Hunger and Politics.

The correlation between hunger and politics is increasingly becoming more manifest, especially

in Africa and the Third World. On the political front, factors which have exacerbated the famine

situation in Africa include armed conflict, corruption and the mismanagement of the economy. There are

also arguments that global trade policies are playing an increasingly leading role in causing hunger in

Africa. Food security is threatened by GATT and its protectionist policies. Serious inequalities in world

agriculture trade and Western policies have had a devastating impact on agriculture producers in the

South.

Hunger in Zimbabwe cannot be understood outside colonialism. Colonialism produced a racially

skewed land ownership structure where 50% of the best land was owned by the minority white while

Africans were expelled from their choice of land and through systematic land segregation policies, were

squashed in reserves, most of them with poor soil quality or located far away from water and the major

lines of communication. Major laws relating to land were passed to legalize the racial character of the

colonial state (John, R. 2003:13).

In 1930 the Land Apportionment Act was passed and divided the land into racial blocks, giving

Whites the better half of the land. In 1951, the Land Husbandry Act was passed whose intention was to

lxxxii

divide the African population into farmers and non-farmers and those blacks temporary working in the

cities or on European farms were deprived of their land rights. The Land Husbandry Act greatly

undermined the African economic security in rural areas without creating any alternative means of

livelihood. In 1969, the white government passed the Land Tenure Act which increased the proportion

of land reserved for white occupation (Maroleng, C. 2005:45). Thousands of Africans continued to be

evicted from white farming areas. In short, all the land laws converted black farmers from successful

and enterprising people growing a surplus of food into impoverished subsistence farmers in

overcrowded reserves, practicing inefficient agricultural techniques. It is against this background that

Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980.

Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980 after 15 years of internal civil war(John, R. 2003:13).

Zimbabwe‘s political independence was a result of the Lancaster House Constitution signed in London

on 17 December 1979. With the signing of the Lancaster House Constitution, a new democratic and

multi-racial society emerged in Zimbabwe. A Bill of Rights and an independent judiciary were included

in the new constitution. Despite all these changes, continuity with the past was still evident mainly

through the disproportionate number of reserved white seats and land compensation clause. The

constitution established an unfeasible system of market transfer and did not resolve the nature of

colonial responsibility ( http://www.afrika.no/noop/file).

This prevented the government from enacting any law that would revoke Section 16 of the

Constitution, which deals with protection from deprivation of property within the first 10 years of

independence. This meant that for 10 years the government could only purchase land against the

owner‘s wishes if it was underutilized or required for a public purpose. Indeed, the new constitution was

seen as a liability by the ZANU leader Robert Mugabe as seen in these remarks:

Yes, even as I signed the document…I was not a happy

man at all.I felt we had been cheated to some

extent…that we had agreed to a deal which would to

some extent rob us of the victory we had hoped to have

achieved in the field( http://www.afrika.no/noop/file).

Thus Zimbabwe‘s independence was obtained as a consequence of a negotiated settlement rather than

a final takeover of power. This fact has influenced the political and economic outcome of Zimbabwe.

The introduction of the multiple currency system has had major repercussions on many sectors of

Zimbabwe‘s economy. The United States dollar, commonly referred to as Obamas, is the most used

currency as the rand and other currencies are hard or impossible to come by now

lxxxiii

(http://www.afrika.no/noop/file). It is an incontestable verity that politics and business are inseparable.

The Global Political Agreement, through the Short Term Economic Recovery Program (STERP), which

informs the very basis of Zimbabwe‘s economic revival efforts is presently susceptible to

violation.Thus,the ideology behind the neo-liberal economic reform is a structured ideological response

of an organized corporate and technocratic class whose interests are well served by the asymmetrical

opportunities and outcomes of global capitalism, and a set of policy preference based on a normative

and prescriptive view of social reality (http://www.afrika.no/noop/file). the imposition of new policies

and institution occurs because international technocrats invade domestic policy making area as, directly

or through domestic acolytes who share their world view and language and introduce powerful

ideologies and conditionalties in support of change ( Amadi, 2005: 8-18).

3.2 The Politicization of Land, and Land Reform in Zimbabwe, and Root Cause of Hunger.

Land in the Post-Colonial State.

Zimbabwe‘s land reform was market-oriented from the beginning. Land reform in post-

independent Zimbabwe can be separated into three main periods: the early 1980s saw the government

purchasing land on a ―willing buyer, willing seller‖ basis with co-financing from the British

government. Between 1980-1998, approximately 3.5 million hectares were redistributed in this manner.

The government put a lot of effort in land settlement, with the creation of the Ministry of Lands and

Resettlement. The mid-1980s to mid-1990s, land reform took a back seat due to government‘s

preoccupation with economic revival under the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) and the mid-

1990s and onwards saw the politicisation of land reform (http://www.afrika.no/noop/file). Land

increasingly became a major political issue tied to the constitutional reform campaigns and the General

election (Maroleng, C. 2005:45).

In the early 1990s, an alliance of the labour and students began to openly question the hegemonic one

party state advocated by ZANU-PF. Two political parties were formed in this period – ZUM in 1989 and

the Forum Party of Zimbabwe (FORUM) in 1993 (http://www.afrika.no/noop/file).

lxxxiv

However, this did not pose a threat to the government as they lost momentum a few years after

formation. They were not in existence by the time the 1995 General Elections were held (Maroleng, C.

2005:47).However, it was the formation of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) in 1998 that

changed the political face of Zimbabwe and made government become even more antagonistic. The

NCA was a grouping of a number of civic groups which included human rights organisations, churches,

women‘s groups, opposition parties, media and labour. Its main objective was to lobby the government

and the general public for a broader popular process of constitutional reform.

The formation of the NCA saw civil society begin to occupy a meaningful space in the national

discourse and public sphere. Apart from demanding for a new Constitution, the NCA began to question

the government‘s very legitimacy in the face of increasing economic decline

(http://www.afrika.no/noop/file). The NCA in collaboration with the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade

Unions (ZCTU) among other alternative groupings propelled the formation of a new political

movement, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in September 1999. The leadership of the

new party represented a combination of trade unionist and leaders from the NCA. In late 1999, the MDC

began to make inroads into rural areas through trade union and NCA structures

(http://www.afrika.no/noop/file). This meant that the rural people, traditional support base of ZANU-PF,

began to receive alternative political messages.

Faced with a mounting political challenge, the government responded in many ways. As a result

of the successful NCA constitutional process, President Mugabe was forced to set up his own

constitutional commission on 29 April 1999. After the formation of the MDC, the government launched

a deluge of abuse on the opposition, calling them puppets controlled by whites and the western world. It

was also at this time that the discourse of land resurfaced in the public sphere. ZANU PF‘s campaign

slogan during the whole constitutional debate and thereafter the General elections held in June 2000 was

―LAND IS THE ECONOMY AND THE ECONOMY IS LAND.‖ It was thus land that provided the

central ideological theme for ZANU-PF and this was employed to garner support and gain legitimacy

from the rural populace (http://www.afrika.no/noop/file). The government termed the struggle for land

as the Third Chimurenga (The Third Revolution). Anyone who opposed the governments‘ view of the

land issue was viewed as an enemy and against nationalistic aspirations. The MDC was the target of this

diatribe as articulated by the ruling party newspaper:

lxxxv

That their ties with ex-Rhodesians and Western powers who

have been working against the realisation of our people‘s

aspirations and goals such as land reform is clear testimony

that they are enemies of our revolution. To be more precise,

they are puppets of these imperialists who want to re-colonise

Zimbabwes( http://www.afrika.no/noop/file).

Land Invasions

The political face of Zimbabwe changed dramatically in February 2000 when Zimbabweans

went to vote in a referendum for a new constitution. This was the first referendum to be held in

independent Zimbabwe. 53% of the population voted ―NO‖ to the government-sponsored constitution.

The government blamed the referendum defeat on the minority white community and the Western

world. Robert Mugabe said a few weeks after the referendum-―Their mobilizing, actually coercing their

labour force on the farms to support the one position opposed to government, has exposed them as not

our friends, but enemies…we are full of anger. Our entire community is angry and that is why we now

have the war veterans seizing land‖ ( http://www.afrika.no/noop/file)

On 26 February 2000, a combination of war veterans, unemployed ZANU-PF youths and other

members of the party began a series of violent land occupations throughout the country. Government

and army trucks were used to transport these people to the farms. The farm invasions had a devastating

effect on the white commercial sector, the main producer of food in the country. The farm invasions

increased as the country was nearing the crucial General Elections in June 2000

(http://www.afrika.no/noop/file). Initially, the government told the international world that the land

invasions were as a result of land-hungry peasants denied access to land by the white commercial

farmers. However, it became quite obvious that the government was using land as its last trump card to

win the hearts and minds of voters for the elections. The Police Commissioner, Augustine Chihuri

unknowingly confirmed that the land invasions were used for political legitimacy when asked to stop the

violent land invasions, he said ―It is a political issue…what do you expect the police to do?...Talk to the

politicians about it‖ (in http://www.afrika.no/noop/file).

The land discourse increasingly became racialised. The land invasions led to deaths of many

supporters of the MDC and some white farmers. The first farmer to be killed was David Stevens, who

was also an MDC organizer in Macheke, a small farming community in Mashonaland East. His death

was followed by the killing before the General Elections of 35 MDC supporters, including 5 white

lxxxvi

commercial farmers, human rights violations of approximately18, 000 people. The violations included

assaults, property damage, detention, abduction, death threats and displacement from home areas.

There is no issue in Africa today that has divided the African progressives as much as the

Zimbabwean crisis. While the international community, led by the United Kingdom condemned the

violent land invasions, Robert Mugabe justified it by saying that he was correcting historical imbalances.

He depicted the crisis as a struggle by Zimbabwe to gain its rightful heritage against colonial power

acting on the behalf of the white community to protect their interest. He blamed the whites for their

refusal to cooperate with the government and attacked them for their entrenched colonial attitudes and

their vestigial attitudes from the Rhodesian yesteryears- attitudes of master race, master colour, master

owner and master employer ( http://www.afrika.no/noop/file).

Britain‘s intransigence and overt intervention in Zimbabwe‘s affairs did not change Mugabe‘s

behaviour, but made him even more critical of external intervention and gave him the opportunity to

dismiss and attack his critics as agents of imperialism. His arguments somehow struck a positive cord in

many hearts of African people. They praised him for standing up to the former colonial masters and

giving back land to the black people. The ―new nationalism‖ espoused by Mugabe was reinforced by the

support he got from other African Heads of government and some African-Americans and given

immense publicity by such magazines as the New African which is widely distributed all over Africa

and the world. Mugabe strengthened his support in southern African region by articulating the land

question in Zimbabwe as part of a broader regional and continental struggle against a colonial legacy

(http://www.afrika.no/noop/file).

There is no doubt that Zimbabwe has had diplomatic successes in propagating land and

Zimbabwe relations with the former colonial power Britain as the core of the crisis. Mugabe‘s

attendance at the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD) in September 2002 and his

famous speech on 2nd

September showed that a dangerous form of pan-africanism and solidarity was

emerging on the continent. Dangerous because in Zimbabwe gross human rights abuses have been

committed in the name of land reform and many of those killed and tortured were supporters of the

opposition. The violence was enacted in the name of anti-colonial land reclamation. Dangerous again

because the ―pan-africanism‖ espoused by the ruling party in Zimbabwe is radically racist, reminiscent

of the liberation war rhetoric (http://www.afrika.no/noop/file).

Accesses to food and basis social security are basic human rights regardless of political

affiliation, race, gender and ethnicity (http://www.afrika.no/noop/file). However, in Zimbabwe in the

lxxxvii

past year, the land reform programme, coupled with economic mismanagement and poor governance

have exacerbated the current hunger caused to some extent by the regional drought. This has jeopardized

Zimbabwe‘s food security. The government seizure of almost all productive farms formerly owned by

white commercial farmers has significantly reduced food production in the country.

To make matters worse, government is using food as a political weapon

(http://www.afrika.no/noop/file). Food is being used to buy support. And maize meal and other staple

food, is often distributed only to those with membership cards of the ruling party. The denial of food to

opposition strongholds has in some cases replaced overt violence as the government‘s principle tool of

repression. Grain is now milled almost exclusively by ruling party members and shipped to shop owners

who are known as party faithful. Government has declared a monopoly on food importation, making it

difficult for business, church groups and civil society organizations to distribute food freely and openly.

Seizures of food by para-state groups, particularly in politically volatile areas, have been widespread

(http://www.afrika.no/noop/file).

In short, politics in Zimbabwe, via the chaotic land reform, has worsened the hunger situation in

the country. The political drama of Zimbabwe was played prominently on the international media scene.

The international media depicted the growing crisis in Zimbabwe as solely a land issue. They depicted

the land issue in racial terms and in most cases failed to articulate the Zimbabwean crisis not only as a

land issue, but as a crisis of legitimacy and governance. The most vulnerable group in the whole land

reform process has been the 1.5 million black farm workers who have been displaced. However, the

international media, especially in the UK, concentrated on the plight of hundreds of white farmers

forced off their land. The twin issues of race and property rights in Zimbabwe were brought into sharp

focus by the international media at the expense of the gross human rights violations suffered by the

majority black people (http://www.afrika.no/noop/file). At the centre of the land reform programme in

Zimbabwe has been a struggle by a political party to retain power at any cost.

The effect of all this is that some sections of the international media have played right into the

hands of the government by giving the government the excuse that opposition to the land reform is tied

to Western interests. Mugabe has successfully portrayed within the region the perception that the

opposition MDC, civil society organizations in Zimbabwe and the international media are fronts for

championing white minority colonial interests in Zimbabwe. Many people asked why the international

media and the Western governments had remained quite and unconcerned when the Mugabe regime

killed approximately 10,000 black people and tortured thousands more during the Matebeleland Crisis

lxxxviii

in the early 1980s and yet the deaths of 5 white farmers in 2000 made headline news and changed the

course of international policy towards Zimbabwe (http://www.afrika.no/noop/file).

3.3 National Economic Reform Programme and the Zimbabwean Crisis.

Many in the world place the blame of the collapse of Zimbabwe‘s once stable economy on

Robert Mugabe. Among the issues usually cited are Mugabe‘s land policies, endemic corruption,

Zimbabwe‘s involvement in the DRC war, absence of the rule of law, and other ill-conceived economic

policies. It is also argued that Mugabe‘s political intolerance, electoral fraud and gross human rights

abuses have contributed to the country‘s economic malaise. Indeed, it is true that each one of these

often cited factors has contributed, or provides an explanation to Zimbabwe‘s current economic

problems (Tawanda, H. 2009:78). However, western countries and media almost collectively ignore one

other significant factor responsible for the country‘s economic collapse, that is, economic sanctions

imposed by the US, the EU, and Australia against Zimbabwe (Tawanda, H. 2009:78). Given that

Mugabe‘s often cited and main transgression, which has given rise to the country‘s international

isolation, was his forcible expropriation of farmland owned by the country‘s white farmers, and the

implications of his actions for the respect of private property rights and investments in the region, this

collective amnesia is hardly surprising. It is often argued that the sanctions in place against Zimbabwe

are not economic in nature; rather, the argument goes, there is in existence a regime of smart sanctions,

which targets specific ZANU PF loyalists (Ndlovu, 2007:8).

This is not true. Zimbabwe‘s economic woes are the direct result of a concerted and systematic

campaign to effect regime change through an economic implosion. Zimbabwe has a critical shortage of

foreign currency. However for the past four years or so, Zimbabwe has been unable to obtain finance or

credit facilities from international lenders to inject into the economy. And this is a direct consequence of

a sanctions regime imposed against the Zimbabwe by particularly the US, and the EU. That Mugabe is

an evil, brutal; dictator that needs to be removed from office is not in doubt. It is however immoral to

cause the removal of Mugabe from office by precipitating the collapse of a developing, only recently

independent, now famine-ravished African country through an economic sanctions regime (Tawanda H.

2009:78).

The on-going political and economic crisis in Zimbabwean dates back to 1997, a time the

international financial institutions (IFIs ),especially, the IMF and World bank specifically withheld an

essential balance of payments facility with a view to reducing government spending, which in turn, will

lxxxix

force the government to accelerate privatization, and renew the structural adjustment program (Ndlovu,

2007:8).

For Zimbabwe specifically, it seems all these have converged in causing the looming socio-

political-cum food crisis. However, there are at least three deeply-rooted interrelated long-term factors

and one additional proximate which converge to explain the paths the political and economic trends

socio-political-cum food crisis. These three interrelated long-term factors have both internal-structural

dimension (Zimbabwe‘s incendiary combination of economic decline, social dislocation, and, most

importantly, a politicized military), and external institutional dimension. Thus, one way of

understanding the political and economic trends that has characterized the state of the Zimbabwean

nation without an inevitable sense of detraction from the political economy of the Zimbabwean crisis, is

by focusing the analysis on both the character and the contradictions in both the domestic and

international political system, and on the place which nations occupy in the international division of

labour and production (Kriger, 2003:46).

The first centers on unresolved disparities over economy and land. This ―incomplete liberation‖

meant that there was a reservoir of populist resentment, which, though long dormant, could be tapped

and mobilized by opportunistic politicians and other actors. Indeed, this contributed to long term

dissatisfaction among military and proto-military elements in society (Kriger, 2003:50). A second key

variable is the lack of accountability that characterized the ZANU regime from its inception. Beginning

in 1980, when ZANU won the vast majority of contested seats in Zimbabwe‘s first-ever democratic

elections, the party under the leadership of prime minister, later president, Mugabe became increasingly

dominant. After 1987, Zimbabwe had established a de facto one-party state. It maintained its

hierarchical structure, with power concentrated in the president and a handful of executive-level and

party institutions, such as the politburo, Central Committee and, perhaps a distant third, the cabinet (

Bauer and Taylor, 2005:105). The incorporation of ZANU‘s rival and leading opposition party, ZAPU,

through a merger in 1987 essentially foreclosed the prospect of any potent political competition in the

country for the next dozen years (Sylvester, 1995:5). By definition, power is not diffused in a single-

party predominant system. This type of governing structure has the tendency of rendering the

Zimbabwean state particularly susceptible to militarization.

The proximate cause of the economic collapse was the invasions of mainly white and opposition-

owned commercial farms, which began in February 2000, and which, in turn, led to the destruction of

agricultural sector. Some 4,000 mostly white commercial farmers have been displaced, as lands were

xc

seized and reapportioned to cronies of the regime. In addition, an estimated 350,000 black farm workers

and their families also were disgorged (Sylvester, 1995:7), and inflation accelerating at a very rapid rate,

the commercial sector and service industries are feeling the effects of sharp declines in domestic

purchasing power.

Zimbabwe which was a major exporter of commercial crops, and self-sufficient in food

production, today agricultural production is down precipitously and the people have recurrent need of

emergency food aid. Since many of the once highly productive, mechanized and irrigated large-scale

properties are now idle or operating at a fraction of their capacity, many of the so-called ―trophy farms‖

are now owned by elites who are not commercial farmers by vocation (Sylvester, 1995:8). The result is a

50 percent reduction in overall agricultural output, and chronic shortages in key staples, such as maize.

Faced with such laissez faireism from the state, the so-called settler class responded in kind with

complacency of its own. As subsequent events would reveal, however, the state was later able to

manipulate to its advantage the image of a white populace enjoying the perquisites of a colonial lifestyle

as a pretext for racism and the confiscation of white owned commercial farms. White Zimbabweans are

often portrayed as victims of brutality and appropriation by a deranged regime (Ndlovu, 2007:8).

. White commercial farmers who were displaced by the land invasions from 2000-2004 and

whose lost productive capacity directly contributed to the country‘s macroeconomic decline.

The above exposition foregrounds the internal and structural dimension of the socio-economic

cum political crisis in Zimbabwe (Ndlovu, 2007:8).

. Yet there are external and structural dimension from which, the analyst can argue that, the on-

going political and economic crisis in Zimbabwean contributed to the current and future development

needs which dates back to 1997, a time in which the government faced rising pressures from the IFIs to

reduce government spending, accelerate privatization, and renew the structural adjustment program,

ESAP, and the IMF specifically withheld an essential balance of payments facility.Thus,the political and

economic environment in the country was particularly fragile.

Once the Zimbabwean economy was driven down the road of economic liberalization, known in

Zimbabwe as ESAP, after seven years of experimentation, several historically strong sectors were under

threat as Zimbabwean manufacturers found out that they could not compete in the liberalized trade

environment prescribed by the IFIs and donors, who had to, out of necessity bail them out of the

economic quagmire (The Economist, 2007:56). Having experienced eight years of recession,

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Zimbabwe‘s economy shrunk by more than one third since 1999. More recently, GDP declines have still

averaged a staggering 6 percent per year between 2002-2006, and this ―slower‖ pace results only from

the fact that the economy is running out of ways to contract (The Economist, 2007:56).

Apart from man-made policy-induced problems, farmers at the smaller end of the scale were

buffeted by the effects of two major droughts in 1992 and again in 1995, in addition to a rising cost of

finance and inputs. Given the vertical division of labour among the white and black Zimbabwean

farmers, the black large-scale farmers were, therefore, on the verge of bankruptcy. This brought about a

downward trend in the formal sector employment, hence wages became stagnant, leading to an increased

union activism for the first time in independent Zimbabwe‘s history (Carmody and Taylor, 2002:45;

Bond and Manyanya, 2002:87).

Government‘s decision to nationalise nearly all of the country‘s commercial farms has led to a

sharp decline in export earnings as well as food production. The need to pay for substantial food imports

has intensified the impact of reduced foreign earnings, while the policy choices in general have

prompted foreign banks to withdraw credit lines and most aid donors to suspend their Zimbabwe

operations (Carmody and Taylor, 2002:45).

Balance of payments support is not available because the IMF and World Bank disapprove of the

government‘s policies and because Zimbabwe is in arrears with its repayment commitments to these

bodies. The country is also in arrears in its payments to the suppliers of a variety of essential imports,

among which the fuel and electricity suppliers are the more obvious. As these and other cuts have bitten

deeper into business efficiency, creditors in other economic fields have felt the need to further reduce

their exposure. Thousands of exporting companies also face uncertainties, partly because their foreign

customers are concerned about continuity of supply. Producers requiring allocations of foreign exchange

for the imports needed to produce the exports await evidence that the Reserve Bank‘s share-out of scarce

foreign currency earnings will be fair and sustainable (Carmody and Taylor, 2002:48).

This has forced the Zimbabwean government to devalue its currency, though the government has

been able to avoid the use of the word ‗devaluation‘. Thus, the Zimbabwean Reserve Bank now pays

Z$800 for every US dollar it receives, no explanation is offered by the Reserve Bank on how it will

provide for the loss of Z$745 it will incur on every dollar taken by the government. This translated to a

total loss of US$10 million every month, or Z$7,45 billion a month (Carmody and Taylor, 2002:45). It

has affected productivity. Provisional figures for the final quarter of 2002 show that manufacturing

output for the whole year declined by 16,4% compared to the volume produced in 2001. Manufacturing

xcii

output has fallen every year since government announced its intention to nationalise commercial

farming land in 1997.On April 16 2003, fuel prices were increased again, this time by much bigger

margins. In February, the petrol price had been increased by 95% and the diesel price by 80%, but these

adjustments fell a long way short of the amounts needed to close the gap. In April, the increases were

210% for leaded petrol and 67,5% for diesel (IMF, 2005:305).

The introduction of price controls in November and the imposition of a price freeze in December

have brought the supply of a wide range of finished goods to local stores almost to a stop. Exchange rate

is in disarray as each importer is now required to apply for a foreign exchange allocation which is far-

from-adequate current earnings, from which 50% has already been captured by government for its own

use. The balance has to be shared between private sector companies and most of the parastatal

organizations, all of which are paying Z$848 for each US dollar‘s worth of hard currency (IMF,

2005:314).

With an estimated poverty rate of at 80 percent by the IMF has (2005 Statistical Appendix),

Zimbabwe has become an international pariah, at least vis-à-vis the OECD countries. All these are

happening after Robert Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since its independence from settler rule in 1980 till

date. Although never a fully fledged democracy, in most conceptions of the term, during that period,

Zimbabwe has gone from multiparty state in the 1980s, to dominant one party state in the 1990s to

autocracy in the 2000s (IMF, 2005:308).

Finally, it appears Zimbabwe is becoming a serious threat to the stability of the whole Southern

African region. As such changes to the current policy mix are essential which will include a return to the

rule of law based upon acceptable property rights, and a reversal of provisions in the land reform

programme that made land free and distributable by political patronage. It is, however, only a moot

point whether politically, the ruling party could meet these demands.

To address these issues, government published its National Economic Revival Programme in

March. This document is the result of discussions that were triggered by the threats posed to the business

sector by the changes announced in the 14 November 2002 budget. Government rejected the initial

submissions by business organisations, which had concentrated mainly on the inflexibility of the

exchange rate policy statement in the budget, but this response did prompt wider-ranging discussions

between government, the business organisations and labour movements (IMF, 2005). In the three

months that followed, the Minister‘s budget speech, resulted in the National Economic Revival

Programme.This incorporated the changed exchange rate policy already described.

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3.4 The Economic Sanctions and Food Crisis in Zimbabwe.

Given the role of the close link between agriculture, increased production, employment, feeding

and health, national growth and economic development, foreign food aid is a key issue among states,

and probably the most politicized realm of international relations (Ndlovu, 2007:17). With reference to

the developing nations, common means by which one-nation exploits, and one that is relevant to

Zimbabwe, and other food –insecure nations, is exploitation through foreign food aid, especially, when

the terms aid are set by one nation or group of nations, in a manner that is entirely advantageous to one

nation, and detrimental to the other, or others.

Another way in which food can be linked to security is when it is used as a "weapon" or even a

tool for gaining political leverage of some sort. In some cases, governments will use food as a weapon—

by restricting its access, for instance—against segments of its own population, such as political

opposition groups (FAO. 2007:56). In Sri Lanka, for example, several hundred Tamils recently

demonstrated in the northern Vanni region against what they alleged to be an official government policy

of restricting food supplies to the region. In contrast, some governments may assure access to food in

exchange for promises of political support (FAO. 2007:56). In Indonesia, for instance, the ruling Golkar

Party has reportedly engaged in "food politicking" by handing out bags of rice and money in exchange

for political support. (Ndlovu, 2007:15). For instance, in the case of North Korea, the current North

Korean regime has sought to consolidate its power by restricting food aid to its population out of

concern that such aid might result in some degree of "foreign penetration" of the country which could

somehow threaten the regime‘s absolute hold over the country (Ndlovu, 2007:17).

The above background explains how food aid has increasingly become a major if not the most

important tool in the dynamics of international power and diplomacy as it is being used to/or in

furtherance of wider national objectives. Under these circumstances, the question of food—who has it

and who can produce it—can become a legitimate strategic consideration because food can be an

effective weapon in the relations between nation-states (IMF, 2005:113). For example, food may

become a subject for international economic sanctions; when a nation that is a major food producer

refuse to sell grain to another country in order to assert its own power and perhaps even influence the

policies of other countries. Similarly, a food exporting country might use its abundant food resources as

a means of tempering relations with a foreign power that might otherwise be acrimonious (IMF, 2005).

Some have argued that the former Soviet Union‘s reliance on American food imports during the Cold

xciv

War helped strengthen relations between the two adversaries—despite their obvious and extensive

political differences.

Clearly, a mixture of climatic, economic or political factors have conspired to challenge

Zimbabwe as well as Africa‘s food security. For instance, increased farming for use in biofuels,global

population growth change, loss of agricultural land to residential and industrial development, and

growing consumer demand in China and India (FAO, 2008:322), among other variables are the

correlates that have pushed up the price of food.Hence,food riots have recently taken place in many

countries across the world.

3.5 The First Millennium Development Goal and Food Security in Zimbabwe.

The First Millennium Development Goal objective is to eradicate extreme hunger and poverty,

and agricultural productivity is likely to play a key role if it is to be reached on time. The MDG (1) call

for about 50 percent reduction of hunger and poverty by 2015 in relation to 1990, is a collective

approach based on agriculture to achieve food security.

The World Food Summit was held in Rome in 1996, with the aim of renewing global

commitment to the fight against hunger. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

(FAO) called the summit in response to widespread under-nutrition and growing concern about the

capacity of agriculture to meet future food needs. The conference produced two key documents, the

Rome Declaration on World Food Security and the World Food Summit Plan of Action. The Rome

Declaration calls for the members of the United Nations to work to halve the number of chronically

undernourished people on the Earth by the year 2015 (FAO, 2003:144). The Plan of Action sets a

number of targets for government and non-governmental organizations for achieving food security, at

the individual, household, national, regional and global levels.

Globally enough food is produced to feed the entire world population at a level adequate to

ensure that everyone can be free of hunger and fear of starvation. That no one should live without

enough food because of economic constraints or social inequalities is the basic goal. This approach is

often referred to as food justice and views food security as a basic human right (FAO, 2003:146). It

advocates fairer distribution of food, particularly grain crops, as a means of ending chronic hunger and

malnutrition .The core of the Food Justice movement is the belief that what is lacking is not food, but

the political will to fairly distribute food regardless of the recipient‘s ability to pay (FAO, 2003:146).

Eradicating hunger and poverty requires an understanding of the ways in which these two

injustices interconnect, that is, the agriculture-hunger-poverty nexus. Hunger, and malnourishment that

xcv

accompanies it, prevents poor people from escaping poverty because it diminishes their ability to learn,

work, and care for themselves and their family members. Food insecurity exists when people are

undernourished as a result of the physical unavailability of food, their lack of social or economic access

to adequate food, and/or inadequate food utilization. Food-insecure people are those individuals whose

food intake falls below their minimum calorie (energy) requirements, as well as those who exhibit

physical symptoms caused by energy and nutrient deficiencies resulting from an inadequate or

unbalanced diet or from the body's inability to use food effectively because of infection or disease

(FAO, 2003:148). An alternative view would define the concept of food insecurity as referring only to

the consequence of inadequate consumption of nutritious food, considering the physiological utilization

of food by the body as being within the domain of nutrition and health. Malnourishment also leads to

poor health (FAO, 2003) hence individuals fail to provide for their families. If left unaddressed, hunger

sets in motion an array of outcomes that perpetuate malnutrition, reduce the ability of adults to work and

to give birth to healthy children, and erode children's ability to learn and lead productive, healthy, and

happy lives. This truncation of human development undermines a country's potential for economic

development – for generations to come.

There are strong, direct relationships between agricultural productivity, hunger, and poverty

(FAO, 2003:144). Three-quarters of the world's poor live in rural areas and make their living from

agriculture. Hunger and child malnutrition are greater in these areas than in urban areas. Moreover, the

higher the proportion of the rural population that obtains its income solely from subsistence farming

(without the benefit of pro-poor technologies and access to markets), the higher the incidence of

malnutrition. Therefore, improvements in agricultural productivity aimed at small-scale farmers will

benefit the rural poor first. Increased agricultural productivity enables farmers to grow more food, which

translates into better diets and, under market conditions that offer a level playing field, into higher farm

incomes (FAO, 2003:144). With more money, farmers are more likely to diversify production and grow

higher-value crops, benefiting not only themselves but the economy as a whole.

Yet despite the World Food Summit of 1996 held in Rome and both the Rome Declaration on

World Food Security and the World Food Summit Plan of Action, the attainment of the declared First

Millennium Development Goal objective of eradicating extreme hunger and poverty, food insecurity is

still the norm ,rather than the exception in the developing nations (FAO, 2003).

As a result, World-wide around 852 million men, women and children are chronically hungry

due to extreme poverty, while up to 2 billion people lack food security intermittently due to varying

xcvi

degrees of poverty (source: FAO, 2003). More than half of the planet's population, numbering

approximately 3.3 billion people, lives in urban areas as of November 2007. Any disruption to farm

supplies may precipitate a food crisis in a relatively short time. The ongoing global financial meltdown

has affected farm credits, in spite of the irony of booming commodity prices. The crisis-ridden global

financial structure will only exacerbate multiple foreclosures, credit defaults and, ultimately, incidences

of poverty. A direct relationship exists between food consumption levels and poverty.

According to FAO (2008:14-27) the number of people without enough food to eat on a regular

basis remains stubbornly high. Over 840 million people (15% of population) are undernourished. By

2010, this will only reduce to 680 million (10% of world population). This translates to the fact that 18%

of the population in the most vulnerable countries where 3 billion people would live (out of a world

population of about 6.8 billion in 2010) will be vulnerable. The implication is that: a third of children

(nearly 180 million) are malnourished and this may only drop to a quarter worldwide by 2020 and

remain at 40% in South Asia; a third of the people in Sub-Saharan Africa will be food insecure by 2010

while the population may have doubled from today. Data at the country or local level will most likely

show even greater disparities (FAO (2008:20).

While this may be a general problem for the Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries (LFDCS),the

proportion of people who are hungry, however, is greater in Africa (33%) than Asia (16%),this is

evident in the latest FAO figures indicating that there are 22 countries, 16 of which are in Africa, in

which the undernourishment prevalence rate is over 35% ( FAO (2008:17).

Thirty five years ago about half the population (1 billion people) of developing countries was

undernourished - today it is under 20% (about 800 million people). During this period cereal yields, total

cereal production and total food production in developing countries more than doubled while the

population increased by 75%. As a result average daily calorie supply increased by a quarter from under

2,000 calories per person per day in the early 1960s to almost 2,500 calories in the mid 1980s, of which

1,500 calories was provided by cereals (Conway, 1997:47). This trend has continued into the mid 1990s

so that the last 30 year period has seen a worldwide 19% per capita increase in food for direct human

consumption with a 32% increase for developing countries as a whole. Today only 10% of the world

population lives in countries with very low per capita food supplies (under 2200 calories) down from

56% in 1969/71 (de Haen, 1998:8).

However, these impressive gains have bypassed a large number of countries and population

groups so that Sub-Saharan Africa is no better and often worse off today than 20 years ago and South

xcvii

Asia is still in a mid- low position as regards per capita food supplies. Nevertheless, considering India

alone we see tremendous advances over the last 50 years - food grain production has increased four fold

(50 to 200 Mt) while population has increased three fold (330 to 960 million) (FAO, 2008:27). These

successes of the Green Revolution should be widely acknowledged but the shortcomings also need to be

recognized. The resource-poor farmers and landless and especially those in marginal areas have not

benefited significantly. The inability of such groups to improve their food security, in spite of substantial

food production gains, is now recognized as a general failure to alleviate poverty within the context of

enhancing agricultural resources so that employment and incomes may increase (Conway, 1997:47).

There are also gender-related causes of food crisis (IFPRI, 1997:90-94). Thus, an aspect of

agriculture which is often ignored is that 60-80% of the staple food production in developing countries is

produced to a large extent by women. Unfortunately, in the past the role of women in local food

production did not receive a sufficiently broad-based recognition so that their inputs were not targeted

by yield-enhancing techniques. Now however, this is changing, albeit slowly (IFPRI, 1997:90) recently

projected food production and consumption to 2020 using their updated IMPACT. They concluded that

there are signs of progress toward a food secure world but prospects are bleak if a business-as-usual

scenario is used - there will be food insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia. Nevertheless,

worldwide per capita availability of food is projected to increase around 7%. Not a dramatic percentage

increase but certainly significant quantitatively as the population is also predicted to increase to about

7.6 billion (WFP, 2002:405).

The rate of increase in the world's population has declined from 2.0% p.a. prior to 1970 to about

1.4% today. In 1997 the population was estimated at about 5.8 billion and growing by about 80 million a

year (or 1 billion in 12 years) (UNFPA, 1998:44). The 2020 population is predicted to be about 7.6

billion with 90% of the increase occurring in developing countries whose share of the global population

will be 84% (compared to 79% today). The estimates of future population have been declining over the

last decade as population growth rates decline. Lutz et al (1997:1) make a persuasive case that global

population growth is slowing down and that there is a probability of two-thirds that the world's

population will not double into the 21st century. They conclude that the fertility transition is well

advanced in most developing countries and has even started in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 1960 woman

gave birth to more than 5 children on average and today only 3. In order to stabilize world population

while maintaining low death rates, births will need to average about 2 children per woman. Attaining

this level will almost certainly take decades. Lutz et.all, median path projection is for 10 billion people

xcviii

in 2050 with a major concern (for them) of a doubling of the world's elderly people (>60 years) (Lutz,

1997:1).

The significant increase in cereal (and some other crop) yields since the 1960s has been analysed

in many publications (see for example Alexandratos, 1995:47; Dyson, 1996:5; Conway, 1997:47).

Doubling and trebling of yields of rice, wheat and maize in both developing and developed countries is

well documented. The so-called Green Revolution where breeding and agronomic practices were

successfully combined undoubtedly improved the standard of living of billions of people. The question

being posed now is whether the yield growth rates of cereals can continue to keep up with population

growth since globally they appear to have lowed down since the mid 1980s - declining from 2.3% p.a. to

about 1.5% p.a. today and possibly only 1% p.a. over the next 25 years. However, the analysis is

complex since developed countries have been decreasing productive capacity due to macroeconomic

policies while in many developing countries where agriculture is of major importance to their economy

they have maintained growth rates of all agricultural produce combined, besides cereals (Conway,

1997:47).

The question of China's food security (where rice yields have increased 2 fold from 1961 to 5t/ha

today) and their possible import requirements received much publicity in 1996 when wheat and maize

prices peaked in May 1996 after China became a substantial net importer in 1995. However, it should be

realized that this peak (in the wheat price at $260/t) was only a third in real terms of the peak price in

1974. The 1996 price move was due to a combination of circumstances and prices have declined by over

half since then (early 1998). An analysis by International Food Policy Research Institute (1997:2) points

out that predictions vary from China being a major cereal exporter to becoming the world‘s largest

importer. IFPRI concludes that china is already a significant player on world food markets and is likely

to become increasingly important. However, it does not represent a major threat to world food markets.

Global projections by IFPRI (1997:48), using a market-driven model indicate that developing

countries as a whole will double their net imports of cereals up to 2020 reaching about 230Mt/p.a. Latin

America will most likely not increase imports but Asia could quadruple imports due to rapid income

growth while Sub-Saharan Africa will increase imports by 150% due to poor food production. This

situation is not thought to be satisfactory by Conway (1997:47) for a number of reasons. Firstly, the

number of undernourished people is unlikely to decrease unless something new is done to increase food

production locally. Many developing countries could not afford to be so dependent on food imports.

Secondly, the model predictions depend on a significant rate of economic growth in developing

xcix

countries highly dependent on the effectiveness of current economic reforms. However, the lack of

infrastructure and institutional obstacles to reform are formidable. Thirdly, continuing increases in crop

yields and production following recent trends are assumed, whereas these have in fact shown a degree of

stagnation possibly due in part to environmental degradation caused by agriculture itself (Conway,

1997:48).

The December 1997 Food Policy Report on the World Food Situation: Recent Developments,

Emerging Issues and Long Term Prospects described the results of their analysis and modeling

projections to 2020 (Andersen, 1997:9). It is concluded that in many developing countries food

production is unlikely to keep pace with increases in demand for food. The food gap could more than,

double in the next 25 years. An increasing share of food demand in developing countries (especially

cereals and meat) will have to be met by imports from developed countries. This will be different for

many low-income countries including most of those in Sub-Saharan Africa which will not be able to

generate the necessary foreign exchange to purchase food on the world market. Many poor people

within these countries will not be able to afford sufficient food (Andersen, 1997:9). The poor could

become more vulnerable to hunger if there is increasing volatility in the world food situation. This could

also be aggravated by the halving of food aid over the last 5 years. Support for agriculture has also

decreased significantly over the last decade. It is predicted that the long-term trend for world cereal and

meat prices will continue downward in real terms. But unless the poor in rural (and urban) areas can

generate the necessary purchasing power they will not benefit from lower prices (Andersen, 1997:12).

Policies and investments in rural areas to improve agricultural productivities and generate income are

essential if food security is to be improved. The focus on agricultural research and policy should be on

low-income developing countries, and particularly small-scale farmers in those countries (Andersen,

1997).

Governments should direct resources toward rural facilities which accelerate broad-based growth

within and outside agriculture. Often agriculture extension and research is inadequately supported and is

not directed to marginal areas where food security problems are prevalent.

About 30 million people are facing hunger in Africa alone. The United Nations, African

governments and relief organizations put the number at about 15 million in the Horn of Africa and over

14 in southern Africa and the rest in the Sahel region of West Africa. (ICG, 2007:13). It is known and

accepted that hunger and famine are mainly caused by drought- this is an indisputable fact.

c

Of the 22 countries, of which 16 are in Africa, in which the undernourishment prevalence rate is

over 35%, Zimbabwe is a peculiar case (ICG, 2007:13). Zimbabwe has experienced serious food

shortages each year since 2001, with up to a third of the populace in need of food aid. Once among

largest sources of formal sector jobs, unemployment in the commercial farming sector is now extreme,

as it is nationally. The destruction of Zimbabwe‘s once impressive urban-industrial infrastructure is

perhaps more striking. Zimbabwe‘s industry, built around policies of import substitution in the 1960s

and seventies, was indisputably damaged by the effects of economic structural adjustment in the 1990s

(Bond Manyanya Carmody, 2002:28).

Furthermore, productivity has virtually ground to a halt under conditions that are fundamentally

inhospitable to business and commerce. Moreover, the collapse is not simply of physical infrastructure,

as institutional and organizational networks have also suffered, and trust has dwindled. Formal

economic activity becomes nearly impossible amidst Zimbabwe‘s capricious policy environment; its

mass exodus of skilled labor, managers and capital, and rampant inflation, which some estimates suggest

is a staggering 100,000 percent annually (ICG, 2007:13).

Not surprisingly, unemployment estimates range from 75 to 85 percent, and poverty is estimated

as high as 90 percent (ICG, 2007:14). Cholera and other preventable diseases are becoming

commonplace as water treatment facilities, not to mention the country‘s once laudable health care

system, has collapsed. Average life expectancy has plummeted, down to 37 for men and just 34 for

women, the lowest in the world (ICG, 2007:13).

Zimbabwe is now facing an unprecedented hunger crisis since independence. The country which

has normally been a food surplus country has seen a sharp deterioration of its food security. Zimbabwe

was a net exporter of maize mainly to neighbouring countries, especially during the drought of 1984,

1992 and 1993.The present hunger crisis in Zimbabwe is due to a combination of factors: erratic

rainfalls, a rapidly declining economy and the negative impact of the government‘s land reform

programme. As a result, today 7,2 million of the 14 million of Zimbabweans do not have enough food.

Of this figure, approximately, 5.5 million are facing starvation.

(http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41502).

In Zimbabwe, the issue of hunger cannot be understood outside the land question. The land

question has proved to be thorny in Zimbabwe and indeed in other settler-dominated colonies such as

Namibia and South Africa. It is a topic of considerable political and moral debate and contention in the

region. Land reform is a central issue in the wider regional political economy and has had a direct effect

ci

on addressing poverty, hunger and underdevelopment. In Zimbabwe the issue of land however has been

linked to the struggle for democracy and good governance. ZANU-PF‘s increasingly eroding legitimacy

in the 1990s gave the ruling party a political space to launch a renewed nationalist ideological assault

around redistributive demands relating to the land question.

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CHAPTER FOUR: CHARACTERISTICS OF FOOD AID, AND EFFORTS OF

GOVERNMENTS TOWARDS FOOD CRISIS.

4.1 Characteristics of Food Aid and Its Implication for Recipient Nations

Food crisis has been greatly exacerbated by the character of food aid, and a series of political

factors. There are Some special characteristics of food aid and their particular implications for food

deficit dependent nation‘s .For instance, first, a number of regulations for the disposal of food aid imply

that it has repercussions on the commercial food and nonfood trade of the recipient countries. Second, a

considerable share of food aid is not provided on a grant basis but rather as long-term soft loans with

related long-term foreign exchange and fiscal implications. Third, concern about the developmental

impact of food aid supplies seems to be increasing. Fourth, food aid is an unstable and insecure source

of supply (IFAD, 2008:95). Food aid tends to have an opportunity cost to the donor countries not only in

the sense that it results from misallocated agricultural resources but also in the sense that it partly

replaces capital aid, which maybe used more effectively in development.

Thus, because of the above outlined character of food aid, recipient countries are continually

facing policy dilemmas as to how to optimize the use of available food aid in both the short and the long

run and how to adjust domestic price policies, given their economic, and possibly political, costs. This

discussion is largely based on the current food aid disposal policies of donor countries. We do not imply

that suppliers should not explore policy improvements. Numerous efforts have been made to persuade

donor countries to adjust food aid supplies to enhance the potential growth, employment, and nutritional

effects in recipient countries. These adjustments include policies to assure a continuous flow of food aid,

viewed as a resource transfer under multi-year commitments, and to provide food aid to stabilize

domestic food availability in less developed countries with short domestic production and depleted

foreign exchange reserves (IFAD, 2008). However, various exogenous factors, such as protection of

agriculture in the United States and Europe and fluctuating international price levels, continue to

determine the availability of food aid to low-income countries.

Food aid distorts incentives to increase agricultural production. An analysis of sixteen

developing countries: Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Ghana, Iran, Ivory Coast, Malaysia, Mexico,

Morocco, Pakistan, Paraguay, the Philip pines, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Thailand, and Tunisia that achieved

ciii

particularly high growth rates in food production of 3.9 percent during 1961-76 shows that they also

received about 80percent more food aid per capita than the average food aid recipient country (IFAD,

2008). Six of these countries: Brazil, Morocco, Pakistan, Paraguay, Sri Lanka, and Tunisia received high

amount of food aid over an extended period (IFAD, 2008:97).

Overemphasis on the disincentive effect of food aid can be attributed to simplistic theoretical

reasoning, for example, neglect of the dual structure of markets in most recipient countries. Von Plocki's

in-depth analysis of the Indian case (1979:4) shows the shortcomings of much of the earlier work. He

concluded that an additional 100tons of food aid to India reduced domestic production by only 15 tons.

Food aid in the Brazilian case had a positive effect on government-administered wheat support prices

and production. According to Hall (1978:7), this effect was mostly due to the use of government

revenues from wheat imports to support prices to wheat producers. A similar conclusion was reached by

Stevens (1978) for Tunisia. For Egypt, Braun (1982:5) estimated that food aid (wheat) reduced domestic

wheat production by an amount equivalent to 4 to 9 percent of total food aid. In this case, the change in

wheat production was not equal to reduced farm output because the decrease in production was mainly

from changes in acreage allocation toward other competing crops. In Bangladesh, preliminary results of

a normative model by Norton and Hazell (1984:16) yielded a price elasticity of staple food with respect

to food aid of only —0.013. This result indicates that food aid had relatively little effect on domestic

prices.

Maxwell and Singer (1979:34), in their survey of nine non-India studies of food aid, cite two

countries in which a significant disincentive effect can be identified (Colombia and Pakistan). However,

these countries achieved particularly rapid growth in food production during the 1960s and 1970s

(Pakistan, 4.7 percent; Colombia, 4.2 percent).This is supported by the fact that a number of countries

which had absorbed large amounts of food aid during rapid growth in food production received

significantly less food aid in the 1980s. These included Taiwan, Korea, India, Paraguay, Colombia, and

Brazil. Such cases demonstrate that food aid need not lead to long-term dependence. Taiwan is a

particularly interesting case in terms of the relationship between the disincentive effect of food aid for a

single crop and overall agricultural growth (Lu, 1973:2). The country received high amounts of food aid

(wheat) during the 1950s and 1960s, and agricultural output grew at the exceptional rates of4.6 and 5.9

percent per annum, respectively, in the two decades. However, wheat production increased rapidly

during the 1950s but fell back to its earlier levels during the 1960s, when more profitable winter crops

replaced wheat.

civ

Food aid's disincentive effect may be only part of the reason why wheat lost its comparative

advantage. Furthermore, the cheap import supply of wheat (food aid) contributed to high growth in rice

exports. Consequently, the country and the agricultural sector obtained substantial benefits from food

aid through the resource transfer and reallocation of domestic agricultural resources. The lesson is that

"disincentive effects" must not be assessed through a single crop perspective (Huddleston, 1984:9).

Production and trade effects for competing crops must be assessed as well. The effects of food aid on

demand for foreign exchange and the exchange rate must also be kept in perspective, given the direct

effects of exchange rate changes for the structure of incentives (Huddleston, 1984).

Food aid is characterized by short-term relief and long-term burden of food aid/concessional

imports. The "market" in which food aid transactions are negotiated is highly regulated and segregated.

Complex bargaining among suppliers as well as between demanders and suppliers finally determines the

quantity flowing to a particular country in a particular year. It also should be pointed out that political

considerations of costs and benefits continue to play a major role in equating supply and demand of food

aid (Hopkins 19804). There are two types of food aid: project aid provided by donors on a grant basis, a

large share of which is tunneled through the World Food Programme, and program aid on a grant basis

or funded by long-term soft loans for which no specific project use is identified. The economic value

and costs of the two types to recipient countries are quite different.

A particular problem arises from the long-term repayment schedules of food aid provided on a

soft-loan basis, which usually starts with a ten-year grace period. It seems fair to assume that a period of

ten years is far beyond the food supply planning horizons of most governments in low-income, food-

deficit countries. Nor is it likely that import planners use a social discounting rate, however constructed,

in formulating the demand for concessional imports. In the case of a continuous inflow of this type of

food aid, the repayment burden grows exponentially after the grace period is over (Srivastava, 1975:34).

Egypt, for example, is currently shifting into this phase, since it has been receiving food aid under P.L.

480Title I continuously since the early 1970s.A common agreement on food aid supplied under U.S.

P.L. 480 Title I during the 1970s and 1980s has the following terms: initial payment of some percent;

installments of equal annual amounts; ten-year grace period; initial interest rate of 2 percent; continuing

interest rate of 3 percent (Srivastava, 1975). A shrinking value of the domestic currency compared to

the dollar may further reduce the ex-post perceived benefit of food aid received a decade before if

repayments are due in hard currency. This is increasingly the case. Consequently, debate on

rescheduling "food aid debts‖ became an issue in a number of recipient countries in the 1990s

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(Srivastava, 1975).

Since the per capita income of food-deficit countries is used by the World Bank to determine

eligibility for IDA assistance, it means that Low-income, food-deficit countries (LFDCS) have received

about 7.6 million tons of food aid in recent years. This was about 15 to 17 percent of total cereal

imports. During 1976-78, food aid exceeded 20percent of total grain imports in one-half of the LFDCS

receiving food aid and in one-third of all recipient countries. Although food aid was not very important

in some developing countries, it certainly mattered to a number of the poorest. During 1976-78, food aid

covered between 6 and 16 percent of total grain consumption in nine low-income countries. It was even

more important for the poor in some of these countries because their special food subsidy schemes

depended on food aid (IFPRI, 1997:46).

In addition, research at IFPRI has shown that, in the aggregate, food aid supplies are not very

responsive to short-term fluctuations in LDCS" import requirements. However, if allocated

appropriately over time and countries, the same quantities could significantly contribute to increased

food security (Huddleston 1981:9). Except for 1974, the year of the grain price crisis, total annual food

aid ranged between about 7 and 12 million tons of grain (most of which was wheat) during 1970-83.

However, the drop from 10.1 to 5.7 million tons in 1973-74 suggests that food aid can hardly be relied

upon to provide food security in severe crisis situations. As long as the food aid commitments of major

donors are made largely in terms of fiscal allocations rather than actual quantities, prices will

significantly influence food aid supplies (Huddleston 1981).

The instability of food aid becomes even more evident in a country-by-country analysis. During

1962-78, the average coefficient of variation of food aid was 1.25 in LFDCS in which food aid averaged

more than 10 percent of grain imports. Clearly, that means that the quantities of food aid received

fluctuated substantially from year to year over the time period. Frequently, countries that have been

important recipients for some time suddenly face a "blackout" of food aid. Twenty-seven countries con-

fronted this situation between 1965 and 1978. . Food aid, which had exceeded 15percent of imports over

three years, dropped below 3 percent in the next year in these cases (IFPRI, 1997:46).

Frequently, domestic and foreign policy events cause the interruptions of the food aid inflow.

The time series on food aid shows no diminishing trend in these "blackouts." Food aid remains an

insecure and risky source of supply. During 1964-78 only one-half to two-thirds of all countries facing a

cut-back in food aid fully replaced the aid with commercial imports in the short run. The difference was

particularly wide when cuts in food aid coincided with high world prices and related foreign exchange

cvi

constraints that prevented imports from staying at normal levels. Increases in domestic supplies, which

are not accounted for in the data, were insufficient to compensate fully for the incomplete substitution of

commercial imports for food aid. The incomplete substitution between trade and aid is further indicated

by a reduction of food aid by one ton from trend levels increases commercial imports by 0.8 tons in

these countries. Obviously, the response is not uniform. Given the simplistic approach, the parameters

should not be interpreted with too much emphasis on numerical results. Of course, this is not a

monocausal relationship. Commercial grain imports in the medium run are determined by import prices,

foreign exchange availability, domestic supplies, stocks, etc., which are not taken into account

sufficiently by a trend variable (IFPRI, 1997:49).

The estimation results suggest that substitution occurs to a certain extent but that food aid cannot

be viewed as either a simple balance of payments support, which would be the case if it substituted

completely for commercial imports, or as fully additional. This has direct implications for the price

effects of food aid in recipient countries. Among factors which determine the incomplete substitution

between trade and aid, the following seem important. First, it is clear that food aid represents a resource

transfer which may allow further expansion of demand for food and other goods and services. To the

extent that food aid is channeled into employment- and demand-creating programs, the additional

demand requires continuation of at least a fraction of earlier commercial imports to avoid domestic food

price inflation. Secondly, and probably more important, donors regulate provision of food aid so as to

avoid reducing commercial imports by food aid. The usual marketing requirements regulation (UMR) in

the food aid convention is intended to serve this purpose (IFPRI, 1997:49). Although not always

enforced, this regulation has at least some relevance for major food aid recipients who also are major

commercial importers and reduces the ability of food aid to contribute to balance of payments support.

Thirdly, when food aid is used to build up domestic stocks and therefore is received only erratically, its

relation to normal imports should be small, and its price effects largely depend upon releases of grain

from stocks (IFPRI, 1997).

Because of the instability of food aid and the numerous forms of its regulation, trade and price

policy must be extremely flexible to avoid its undesirable side effects or even to use it as an incentive.

The domestic price effects of food aid depend to a large extent on the degree to which it substitutes for,

or is in addition to, trade. An improvement in capacity of recipient country institutions, including

physical facilities (ports, storage, transportation, etc.) and less rigid food aid disposal rules such as

UMRS, would certainly increase the ability of such countries to use food aid as a source of foreign

cvii

exchange savings and fiscal support with no disincentive effects on domestic production. However,

using food aid just as a general resource transfer conflicts with the concern for its equity effects through

raising food consumption levels of the poor (Mellor 1980:2). As a means of achieving the latter

objectives, food aid must be at least partly additive to normal supplies, as is generally the case. The

general problem of food aid for price policy stems from attempts to achieve these conflicting objectives

simultaneously with the same instrument. The compromise appropriate for a specific country depends on

its ability to channel additional food to the poor and at the same time generates demand-creating

employment.

Food aid appears to be inherently unstable and insufficiently tuned to meet shortfalls in domestic

food production or to supplement foreign exchange needs. The general instability of food aid matters

very much to countries confronted with high levels of instability in food production and severe short-

term constraints in foreign exchange reserves and storage capacities. This situation is familiar in many

sub-Saharan African countries. To provide effective food security to such countries, it is necessary to

eliminate the insecurity associated with the supply of food aid. Donor coordination and improved

planning and managerial capacities in recipient countries are required for this purpose. The potential of

the IMF cereal import financing scheme can be exploited fully if some of its regulations can be reformed

further to provide easier access to low-income countries with emergency need for food supply

(IMF1981:314).

4.2 Food Crisis and Social Unrest in Developing Countries

Food security and political stability are often linked, although the relationship is complicated

and not necessarily direct or causal. The manipulation of food supplies by interests within certain

countries, and outside, or privileged and powerful groups' restriction of food supplies to segments of the

population that are out of favours with the powers that be may lead to social instability. In recent times,

this has been the case as there has been panic, and social unrest in developing countries resulting to

"Food riots following the UN (FAO) projection of a 49 percent increase in African cereal prices, and 53

percent in European prices, in December 2007 through July 2008 (FAO, 2008:187).

The unavailability of basic food staples due to price rises in parts of Asia and Africa, particularly

Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Senegal, Mauritania, Cote d'Ivoire, Egypt and Morocco experienced protests

and food riots in late 2007 and early 2008 .Similarly, other countries that have seen food riots or are

facing related unrest were: Mexico, Bolivia, Yemen, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and

cviii

South Africa. For instance, in Bangladesh 10,000 workers rioted close to the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka,

smashing cars and buses and vandalising factories in anger at high food prices and low wages. Dozens

of people, including at least 20 police officials, were injured in the violence. Ironically, the country

achieved food self-sufficiency in 2002, but food prices increased drastically due to the reliance of

agriculture on oil and fossil fuels (FAO, 2008:187).

Economists estimate 30 million of the country's 150 million people could go hungry. In April

2008, the Brazilian government announced a temporary ban on the export of rice. The ban is intended to

protect domestic consumers. One of the earlier food riots took place in Burkina Faso, on February 22,

when rioting broke in the country's second and third largest cities over soaring food prices (up to 65

percent increase), sparing however the capital, Ouagadougou, where soldiers were mobilized throughout

strategic points. The government promised to lower taxes on food and to release food stocks. Over 100

people were arrested in one of the towns (FAO, 2008).

Cameroon, the world's fourth largest cocoa producer, saw large scale rioting in late February

2008, in protest against inflating food and fuel prices, as well as the attempt by President Paul Biya to

extend his 25-year rule. At least seven people were killed in the worst unrest seen in the country in over

fifteen years. This figure was later increased to 24. Part of the government response to the protests was a

reduction in import taxes on foods including rice, flour, and fish. The government reached an agreement

with retailers by which prices would be lowered in exchange for the reduced import taxes. As of late

April 2008, however, reports suggested that prices had not eased and in some cases had even increased

(see FAO, 2008:187-95).

On April 24, 2008, the government of Cameroon announced a two-year emergency program

designed to double Cameroon's food production and achieve food self-sufficiency.Similarly,on March

31, Côte d'Ivoire's capital Abidjan saw police use tear gas and a dozen protesters injured following food

riots that gripped the city. The riots followed dramatic hikes in the price of food and fuel, with the price

of beef rising from $1.68 to $2.16 per kilogram, and the price of gasoline rising from $1.44 to $2.04 per

liter, in only three days. In Egypt, a boy was killed from a gunshot to the head after Egyptian police

intervened in violent demonstrations over rising food prices that gripped the industrial city of Mahalla

on April 8. Large swathes of the population have been hit as food prices, and particularly the price of

bread, have doubled over the last several months as a result of producers exploiting a shortage which has

existed since 2006 (FAO, 2008:187).

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On April 12, 2008, the Haitian Senate voted to dismiss Prime Minister Jacques-Édouard Alexis

after violent food riots hit the country. The food riots caused the death of 5 people. Prices for food items

such as rice, beans, fruit and condensed milk have gone up 50 percent in Haiti since late 2007 while the

price of fuel has tripled in only two months. Riots broke out in April due to the high prices, and the

government is attempting to restore order by subsidizing a 15 percent reduction in the price of rice. Food

riots were reported in the Indian state of West Bengal in 2007 over shortages of food. India has banned

the export of rice except for Basmati types of rice which attract a premium price. Street protests over the

price of food took place in Indonesia where food staples and gasoline have nearly doubled in price since

January 2008. (FAO, 2008:189).

In April 2008, the Latin American members of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture

Organization (FAO) met in Brasília in order to confront the issues of high food prices, scarcities and

violence that are affecting the region. The President of Mexico, Felipe Calderón, with industry

representatives and members of the Confederation of Industrial Chambers (Concamin), agreed to freeze

prices of more than 150 consumer staples, such as coffee, sardines, tuna, oil, soup or tea, among others,

until the end of December 2008. The measure was carried out in an attempt to control inflation, which

stood at an annual rate of 4.95%, the highest increase since December 2004. Mexican baking company

Grupo Bimbo agreed to maintain stable prices of their products, despite of the 20% raise of the

production costs. Daniel Servitje, CEO of this company, announced in the 19th Plenary Meeting of the

Mexico-China Business Committee (FAO, 2008).

In mid February, rioting that started in the Mozambican rural town of Chokwe and then spread to

the capital, Maputo, has resulted in at least four deaths. The riots were reported in the media to have

been, at least in part, over food prices and were termed "food riots." (FAO,2008). A biofuel advocacy

publication, however, claimed that these were, in fact, "fuel riots", limited to the rise in the cost of

diesel, and argued that the "food riot" characterization worked to fan "anti-biofuels sentiment."The

Pakistan Army has been deployed to avoid the seizure of food from fields and warehouses. This hasn't

stopped the food prices from increasing. The new government has been blamed for not managing the

countries food stockpiles properly.

Once the world's top rice producer, Myanmar has produced enough rice to feed itself until now.

Rice exports dropped over four decades from nearly 4 million tons to only about 40,000 tons last year,

mostly due to neglect by Myanmar's ruling generals of infrastructure, including irrigation and

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warehousing. On 3 May 2008 Cyclone Nargis stripped Myanmar's rice-growing districts, ruining large

areas with salt water. U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimate that these areas produce 65

percent of the Southeast Asian country's rice. Worries of long-term food shortages and rationing are rife.

The military regime says nothing about the rice crisis, but continues to export rice at the same rate.

According to Turnell (2008:76), at least the next two harvests are going to be greatly affected and

there‘ll be virtually no output from those areas during that time. So we‘re likely to see considerable food

and rice shortages for the next couple of years. The damage to the economy is going to be profound.

In Panama, in response to higher rice prices the government began buying rice at the high market

price and selling rice to the public at a lower subsidized price at food kiosks. In the Philippines, the

Arroyo government insisted on April 13 that there would be no food riots in the country and that there

could be no comparison with Haiti's situation. Chief Presidential Legal Counsel, Sergio Apostol stated

that: "Haiti is not trying to solve the problem, while we are doing something to address the issue. We

don't have a food shortage. So, no comparison..." (Apostol in FAO, 2008:92). Comments by the Justice

Secretary, Raul Gonzalez, the following day, that food riots are not far fetched, were quickly rebuked by

the rest of the government. On April 15, the Philippines, the world's largest rice importer, urged China,

Japan, and other key Asian nations, to convene an emergency meeting, especially taking issue with those

countries' rice export bans. "Free trade should be flowing," Philippine Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap

stated. In late April 2008, the Philippines government requested that the World Bank exert pressure on

rice exporting countries to end export restrictions (FAO, 2008).

Apart from the analysis of the above wider cases, the African cases deserves special attention,

especially, the Southern African experience and specifically, the experience of the crisis in Zimbabwe.

Of the six countries primarily affected, Lesotho and Swaziland (along with Botswana and Namibia) are

traditionally food deficit countries that require imports from South Africa to make up the shortfall.

While the shortfall is larger this year, the problem is manageable. About 20% of the population in each

of Lesotho and Swaziland is estimated to be in need of food aid (445,000 and 231,000 respectively).The

impact of the Zimbabwe crisis lies not only in the sudden absence of the food that the country is

traditionally able to export to its neighbours. The political and economic consequences are equally

important. Inflation exported from Zimbabwe has put food prices out of the reach of poor people in

Malawi and parts of Zambia, as well as within the country itself. This famine, like most, is primarily a

problem of access to food rather than availability (FAO, 2008). Inevitably it is the poor who are hit

hardest.

cxi

The crisis in Zimbabwe is of a quite different quality and magnitude from that in the other

affected countries. After South Africa, Zimbabwe has the second largest and most diverse economy in

the sub-region. The seizure of commercial farm land has had a direct impact on the nation‘s capacity to

produce enough food. But of equal significance has been the disruption of other forms of agriculture,

such as tobacco production and horticulture for export, which has severely hit foreign exchange

earnings. Industrial production has equally been hit, with an overall shrinkage of 12% in the economy

this year. Half of those affected by food shortages are in this, the most fertile and, until recently, the

most productive agricultural economy in the region (FAO, 2008). It is this that transforms serious

shortages caused by climatic factors into a potential disaster.

Six million Zimbabweans, according to an Oxfam International survey of the Crisis in Southern

Africa on 26 June 2002, of which nearly half the population and about half the number affected

regionally, are in need of food aid. Normally self-sufficient in maize, in the last growing season

Zimbabwe produced only 480,000 tonnes of maize – a quarter of its needs. It needs to import 1.7 million

tonnes of maize to meet the shortfall.The first manifestations of the food crisis in Zimbabwe had nothing

to do with the weather and everything to do with the disruption of agriculture caused by land

occupations (FAO,2008). The first signs came during 2001 when there were shortages of vegetables

supplied from commercial farms. Then the disruption of planting of wheat (a winter crop) in the same

year led to shortages of bread. However, wheat is a staple only for a small proportion of the urban

population (and a reserve staple for others). It was the collapse of the maize crop that caused disaster.

The argument advanced by the government and its supporters is that communal farmers have

been extremely efficient maize producers since independence. An expansion of the small-scale black

farming sector is vital to long-term food security, according to this argument. It is a view that has some

substance, but one that leaves two important factors out of account (FAO, 2008). First, the dramatic

increase in communal maize production since independence has been based upon the availability of

efficient extension services and farming inputs. The resettlement of 2001-2002, by contrast, has been

chaotic and virtually without any infrastructural support for resettled farmers. In addition, many of those

resettled have not been landless peasants, but ruling party and government loyalists rewarded for their

support. The second important factor is that commercial maize production, unlike that in the communal

areas, is irrigation-fed. This makes it less vulnerable to short-term fluctuations in rainfall and avoids the

situation – which has been prevalent this year – when people are short of food, ostensibly as a result of

drought, while the country‘s dams are full (FAO,2008:190).

cxii

The impact of Zimbabwe‘s land resettlement on the food situation goes far beyond the fall in

crops planted. One of the most devastating effects of the land occupations, was the displacement of

hundreds of thousands of workers employed on the commercial farms, along with their families.

Deprived of homes and income, these are the most vulnerable to food shortages. Equally, the overall

effect of land occupations, political violence and disruption over the past two years has been shrinkage

of the economy and a loss of foreign exchange earnings. In the past year GDP has contracted by 12%

and inflation is running at more than 120%. This has generated greater poverty at a local level, as well as

reducing the country‘s capacity to import food (FAO, 2008).

Finally, the crisis has been exacerbated by serious mismanagement of food relief on the part of

the government and its agencies. The government has insisted on channeling food imports through the

parastatal Grain Marketing Board, an inefficient mechanism, but one that allows the government to

control distribution of grain on party political grounds. The same applies to food-for-work schemes. The

third channel for distribution of food aid is through donor-funded schemes. In most instances external

donors have monitored distribution to make sure that opposition supporters are not denied support. Yet

there have been instances where this has happened. Human rights groups accuse the government of

deliberately inflicting starvation on its political opponents (FAO, 2008).

To be added to the discussion is the fact that the crisis has implications for and/or, on

population movements .To some extent present food shortages result from and are bound up with

displacement of people that has already occurred. This is most evident in Zimbabwe. It is also apparent

that people who have already been displaced will be less able to resort to traditional coping strategies

than if they had remained in their previous homes. This applies particularly to farm workers who would

have maintained a small garden to supplement their food needs. The loss of these small plots is both a

cause of the crisis and an obstacle in the way of farm workers and their families adopting their usual

strategies in periods of hunger. Survival or coping strategies were adopted, though it varied throughout

the region: Reduction of food consumption; eating bush foods, sharing with family and neighbours,

selling assets, and working for cash, etc.

The crisis in Zimbabwe has had its own inflationary impact, which affects not only the 12-13

million Zimbabweans, half of whom will be among the seriously hungry, but also many people in

adjacent areas. The other reason waged employment has been undermined as a survival strategy is the

impact of AIDS, with many households not having an active adult who can go and find a job. One of

these strategies – working for cash – clearly entails migration for most southern Africans (WFP,

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2002:116), often over great distances. The major population displacement caused by food shortages will

be of individual family members trying to find work, rather than a mass flight of the starving. The

migratory patterns of this crisis will be influenced in part by its very regional character. Many of the

farm workers displaced in Zimbabwe are of Malawian, Zambian or Mozambican origin – especially the

first of these. Yet the severity of the food shortages in Malawi make it unlikely that the feared mass

return of Zimbabweans of Malawian origin will in fact take place (WFP, 2002). In the two worst

affected countries, Zimbabwe and Malawi, traditional coping strategies have largely failed for differing

reasons.

It seems likely that this will be a significant ―push‖ factor (WFP, 2002:116). In Zimbabwe, entire

families have already been deliberately uprooted. In Malawi, it is more likely families will divide, in the

hope that a breadwinner, usually male, can earn a cash income elsewhere in the region. Historically,

southern African economies have been structured around the labour needs of mines, industry and large-

scale agriculture in South Africa (and to a lesser extent Zimbabwe and Zambia). Four of the countries

affected by the current food shortages – Malawi, Mozambique, Lesotho and Swaziland – have

historically functioned as labour reserves, with extensive male migration on either a seasonal or long-

term basis. In the case of Lesotho and Swaziland, this has been because they are simply not viable as

national economies. In the case of Malawi, even as South Africa‘s need for migrant labour was

declining, the local economy was becoming more dependent upon remittances. The extensive alienation

of communal land and development of estate agriculture in the period from the 1960s to the 1980s

undermined the viability of subsistence agriculture in Malawi even in good years. Hence individual

households are permanently dependent on labour migration and cash earnings, whether on agricultural

estates in Malawi itself, or from elsewhere in the region (WFP, 2002:118).

In the past two decades, South Africa‘s labour needs have changed and the pattern of migration

with it. The system of labour migration overseen by the apartheid administration and the big mining

houses has been replaced by a much more varied pattern of seasonal and often informal migration. Some

countries, such as Mozambique, have continued to maintain their share of jobs in traditional sectors,

such as mining, even as the total number of such jobs available has declined. Other nationalities have

also tended to be concentrated in particular sectors, such as Zimbabweans in the construction industry.

Also, not surprisingly, there are geographical factors at work. So, for example, many Zimbabweans

work seasonally in farms in South Africa‘s Limpopo Province, which borders Zimbabwe (WFP,

2002:118).

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With further development in the Zimbabwe crisis, the assumption on the part of the South

African authorities has been that mass refugee flows are likely. They have established holding camps

near the Messina-Beitbridge border crossing to allow for the reception of asylum seekers. The reaction

to the growing food shortages north of their border has been the same. Yet this refugee flow has never

materialized. It is unlikely that it ever will in the form that is currently anticipated. Of course it is

impossible to quantify informal or illegal immigration from Zimbabwe into South Africa. Some

estimates in early 2002 put the number of Zimbabweans in South Africa at 2 million – probably an

exaggeration, but possibly indicative of a rough order of magnitude. A clearer indication of the increase

in the number of Zimbabweans in South Africa, if not the overall numbers present, comes from statistics

for deportations. In May 2002, the Zimbabwean press reported that the South African authorities had

deported 11,181 Zimbabweans since the beginning of the year (WFP, 2002:116). This was a significant

increase on the 8,603 deported in the whole of 2001.

. The Zimbabwean crisis is a highly complex one. The government‘s obstruction of food aid to

presumed opposition supporters lends substance to the accusation that the ruling party is engaged in a

campaign to exterminate the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Whilst history

suggests that starving people are unlikely to rise up in arms, it is not inconceivable in the coming months

that sections of opposition supporters might abandon the MDC‘s policy of non-violent resistance. If this

happens, which is most likely in the urban areas, and then there may be refugee flows similar to those in

the 1980s, when the army was engaged in its counter-insurgency campaign in Matabeleland

(WFP,2002:116). Botswana, along with South Africa, would seem the most likely destination for such

flows, especially if they emanated mainly from Matabeleland again.

4.3 Actions by Governments Toward the Global Food Crisis

To address the crisis discussed above, governments, and international institutions and

organizations are building up a synergy to resolve the problem. It was for this reason that on 28 April,

2008, the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon established a Task Force on the Global Food

Security Crisis under his chairmanship and composed of the heads of the United Nations specialized

agencies, funds and programmes, Bretton Woods institutions and relevant parts of the UN Secretariat to

co-ordinate efforts to alleviate the crisis (UNO,2008:113).The Russian government pressured retailers to

freeze food prices before key elections for fear of a public backlash against the rising cost of food in

October 2007.The freeze ended on May 1, 2008.On 31 March 2008, Senegal saw riots in response to the

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rise in the price of food and fuel. Twenty four people were arrested and detained in a response which

one local human rights group claimed included torture and other unspeakable acts on the part of the

security forces (UNO,2008). Further protests took place in Dakar on 26 April 2008.Witnesses and

officials in Somalia said thousands of angry Somalis rioted on May 5, 2008 over rising food prices and

the collapse of the nation's currency, culminating in clashes with government troops and armed

shopkeepers that killed at least five protesters. The protests occurred amid a serious humanitarian

emergency due to the Ethiopian war in Somalia (UNO,2008).

The Christian Science Monitor, (Neweurasia, 2009:5) and other media observers are predicting

that a nascent hunger crisis will erupt into a full famine as a consequence of the energy shortages. UN

experts announced on 10 October that almost one-third of Tajikistan‘s 6.7 million inhabitants may not

have enough to eat for the winter of 2008-09.Food riots in southern Yemen that began in late March and

continued through early April, saw police stations torched, and roadblocks were set up by armed

protesters. The army has deployed tanks and other military vehicles. Although the riots involved

thousands of demonstrators over several days and over 100 arrests, officials claimed no fatalities;

residents, however, claimed that at least one of the fourteen wounded people has died (see Neweurasia,

2009).

IFAD is making up to US$200 million available to support poor farmers boost food production

in face of the global food crisis (UNO,2008: 115). On May 2, 2008 U.S. President George W. Bush said

he was asking Congress to approve an extra $770 million funding for international food aid. On October

16, 2008, former US president Bill Clinton scolded the bipartisan coalition in Congress that killed the

idea of making some aid donations in cash rather than in food. The release of Japan's rice reserves onto

the market may bring the rice price down significantly. As of May 16, anticipation of the move had

already lowered prices by 14% in a single week. On April 30, 2008 Thailand announced the creation of

the Organization of Rice Exporting Countries (OREC) with the potential to develop a price-fixing cartel

for rice. This is seen by some as an action to capitalise on the crisis to rip off the Low-Income Food-

Deficit importing Countries ( LFDICs ) .In June 2008 the Food and Agriculture Organization hosted a

High-Level Conference on World Food Security, in which $1.2 billion in food aid was committed for

the 75 million people in 60 countries hardest hit by rising food prices. however, a sustained commitment

from the G8 was called for by some humanitarian organizations. On October 23, 2008, Associated Press

reported the following:

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Former President Clinton told a U.N. gathering Thursday [Oct 16, 2008] that the

global food crisis shows "we all blew it, including me," by treating food crops

"like color TVs" instead of as a vital commodity for the world's poor.... Clinton

criticized decades of policymaking by the World Bank, the International

Monetary Fund and others, encouraged by the U.S., that pressured Africans in

particular into dropping government subsidies for fertilizer, improved seed and

other farm inputs as a requirement to get aid. Africa's food self-sufficiency

declined and food imports rose. Now skyrocketing prices in the international

grain trade — on average more than doubling between 2006 and early 2008 —

have pushed many in poor countries deeper into poverty (UNO,2008:115).

In line with the above scenario, Former US President Bill Clinton, in Speech at United Nations

World Food Day, on October 16, 2008, noted that ―food is not a commodity like others. We should go

back to a policy in which food self-sufficiency is maximized. It is crazy for us to think we can develop

countries around the world without increasing their ability to feed themselves‖ (UNO,2008).

4.4 The Internal/External Dimension of the National Food Crisis in Africa.

The manipulation of food is a form of violence, particularly in a country where staples have

become scarce and food imports essential. Yet Government is abusing the Grain Marketing Board

monopoly over grain and cereals to whip vulnerable people into their direction. The UN estimates that

Africa has at least 500 million hectares; 150 million hectares by the Democratic Republic of Congo, of

marginal, unused and underused land and that will be used by energy-hungry and importing countries of

the North and their agribusiness partners to save the world from an energy crunch is corporate plunder

of Africa in the rush for African land (FAO, 2008:305).

Given the growing need for energy sources in Africa, there is the need to seek viable and

sustainable alternatives. Though the countries in Africa have oriented towards local production and

consumption rather than international markets. Some of these countries believed that they could meet

their energy needs through agrofuels (FAO, 2008:305) and still have more than enough to export.

Thus,the the imperative for alternative source of energy has made some to embarked on the production

of agrofuels,which is among the factors that has intensified food crisis as land is cultivated no longer

for human consumption. Nevertheless, this sets the rush for African lands.

Analysts have shown that there is simply not enough agricultural land on earth to grow agrofuels

crops to meet the huge energy needs driven by our current ways of living. Jumping into the agrofuels

boat thus has special implications for Africa. These crops, apart from gobbling up the land in order to

feed machines, also require a lot of water and falling water tables can trigger off famines. The fact that

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agrofuels have triggered a new scramble for Africa is no longer news. Millions of hectares are being

grabbed with little concern for the poor who are bound to face displacement and for the impact that this

will have on family farms and other small-scale farms and food production on the continent (FAO,

2008).

Julian Borger, (2002:2) noted that, in Madagascar a South Korean firm Daewoo Logistics plans

to buy a 99-year lease on over a million hectares for the production of 5m tonnes of corn a year by 2023,

and to use another 120,000 hectares for the production of palm oil. This deal, according to Billy Head, is

estimated to cost the company about $6bn over 25 years, is acclaimed as the biggest of its kind in the

world. The land to be parceled off to Daewoo Logistics covers arable land about half the size of

Belgium. For a mostly arid country with three food crisis situations in five years, this is a huge challenge

indeed (Billy Head, The Guardian, London, Saturday November 22, 2008).

The firm in the words of Julian Borger claims that thousands of jobs will be created and that it

will use a mainly South African workforce, but the produce will be mainly earmarked for South Korea.

In other words, that chunk of Africa would simply be a South Korean farm for South Korea. Although

the crops are said to be for food, the lesson for land and land rights is the same for agrofuels. The

London Guardian (2002:6), in its Madagascar land deal story presents us with additional reasons to

worry. We are told that in Sudan there are efforts by the state to attract investors for almost 900,000

hectares of its land, while the Ethiopian Prime Minister is reported to have been courting would-be

Saudi investors. Commentators believe that these negotiations are lopsided and may weigh against

Africa. A number of factors impact the quality and amount of arable lands available in many African

countries. In the case of Ethiopia, the pressure on natural resources has led to the burning of animal dung

for fuel instead of utilizing it as a resource for soil quality improvement. Over 600,000 tonnes are said to

be lost in crop production annually due to these pressures on the land. This loss amounts to double the

amount of yearly food aid requests from the country (Araya and Edwards 2006:5-6 ).The additional

pressures that use of land for agrofuels would bring to bear on food deficits in countries in similar

conditions are easy to imagine.

The FAO, in its Review of biofuel policies and subsidies, it noted that a further downside is that

small farmers without official land title are already on the losing end. Add to this is the fact that details

of these land deals are hard to come by. With a lack of transparency there is no assurance of safeguards

for the poor or even the overall long-term interest of the continent. The UN's Food and Agriculture

Organization (FAO) advocates an urgent review of agrofuels policies and subsidies in order to preserve

cxviii

the goal of world food security, protect poor farmers, promote broad-based rural development and

ensure environmental sustainability. Its head, Jacques Diouf, has clearly warned that the controversial

rise in land deals could create a form of 'neo-colonialism', with poor states producing food for the rich

(and their machines) at the expense of their own hungry people

(http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2008/).

The craze for agrofuels has been largely driven in Africa by the global North, to purportedly

address three main issues: climate-change mitigation, energy security and agricultural development. An

issue that we must repeatedly state is the wrong-headedness of seeing the market as the only route to

progress and development. The current economic spirals have eliminated any need for further debate on

this. It is also instructive to see that the global commodity market is not concerned with the overall good

of humanity but rather with profit maximisation.The importance of food security was underlined by no

less than then US President George Bush in 2001, when he said:

‗Can you imagine a country that was unable to grow enough food

to feed its people? It would be a nation that would be subject to

international pressure. It would be a nation at risk. And so when

we're talking about American agriculture, we're really talking

about a national security issue' (Quoted by Eduardo Galeano in

'The Eighth Commandment - Lies', New Internationalist, Issue NI

414, August 2008).

If the cheapest commodities are agrofuels crops - like oil palm, cassava, maize, groundnuts, etc -

cultivated on cheap African lands, what this means, according to George Monbiot, (2007:159) is that

we are not only stoking the fires of humanitarian disaster, but also building an environmental

disaster.

Benin decided to go into agrofuels production to solve the problems associated with climate

change and very high prices for petroleum products. Burkina Faso is currently at experimental stages of

production of agrofuels from cottonseeds and jatropha. Eighty per cent of the population of Burkina

Faso work in the agricultural sector, contributing about 32% to her income. The country reportedly pays

the highest for petroleum products and is said to pay the highest electricity charges in the whole world.

For some years now jatropha has been used in Mali as a source of fuel oil for cooking and lighting.

Senegal's effort to escape the clutches of a disconcerting energy crisis, including electricity cuts and fuel

price hikes, bore fruit in the 1980s when the country decided to go into agrofuels production

(http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2008/).

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This is an assault on the staples. While the case of Togo, Senegal and Mali are different in the

sense that, the production of agrofuels is aimed at local consumption and not for export, and food crops

are not targeted in these countries, it is a different ball game in Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Tanzania

and other countries, where staple food crops such as cassava, corn, groundnuts, sorghum, sweet

potatoes, etc, are being used or are being proposed to be used to produce bio-ethanol

(http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2008/). Nigeria provides a good example of a country where

staples are under assault for the sake of agrofuels production. Research and monitoring carried out by

Friends of the Earth (FoE) African group‘s show that cassava and other staples across the continent are

under severe attack by agrofuels giants and their biotech partners. In a newspaper interview, Dr.

Akinwumi, the Vice President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), in The

Guardian, Sunday, August 10, 2008 declared that Nigeria should 'turn cassava into a money-making

business' by processing the staple into 'ethanol, livestock feed, pellets and so on‘. However, he says he

feels sad that we (Nigerians) are unable to feed ourselves (The Guardian, 2008:17).

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and its foreign partners have acquired

large chunks of land, in almost all the 36 states of the country, for the production of ethanol. The crops

of choice include staples like cassava, sorghum and sugarcane. Some of the agrofuels plantations and

production plants are already sited in communities with water shortages, leaving the community with an

acute water scarcity. Researchers from Friends of the Earth Nigeria on a field visit found that the local

people neither had an idea of the actual land uptake nor were they consulted by the state government

before community lands were appropriated (The Guardian, 2008).

Also the Friends of the Earth Sierra Leone field report, 2008, noted that Chinese companies

operating in Sierra Leone have acquired large parcels of land in the country to produce ethanol using

sweet potatoes, corn, cassava and fig-nut. Villagers interviewed complained that there was very little

land available for them to farm and they could thus barely sustain their families. They also complained

that they were being coerced into planting corn not for their local consumption but to sell to the Chinese

merchants. All the local people hold on to are promises that they would buy their produce at a good

price. It is obvious that where local farmers are made to use their lands to cultivate crops for export,

there is a serious threat to food sovereignty. Considering the fact that Sierra Leone is a country just

recovering from war and still struggling to produce food to satisfy the needs of her people, this thinly

veiled land grab will aggravate the food crisis in the country (The Guardian, 2008:17).

In Ghana, the Norwegian firm Biofuel Africa secured 38,000 hectares for 'the largest jatropha

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plantation in the world' and began clear-cutting the land in preparation for cultivation. The major plank

on which jatropha is being pushed across the continent is that it does well on marginal lands. In this case

the so-called marginal land is a forest. The Ghanaian Environmental Protection Agency eventually

halted the clear-cutting after 2,600 hectares of forest had been destroyed. The story is one of glittering

promises of jobs, rapid deforestation, and use of neo-colonial methods. The chief who signed the so-

called contract documents could neither read nor write (Horand K. in BusinessWeek, 8 September,

2008). According to RAINS/ABN, cited by GAIA Foundation in The Myth of Marginal Lands,

Agrofuels companies take land from rural communities with much ease (www.gaiafoundation.org).

Field reports on Cameroon by Centre for Environment and Development/Friends of the Earth

Cameroon (CED/FoE C), reveal that some of the projects are concentrated in the heart of the forest of

the Congo Basin. Large tracts have been deforested. Complaints abound from the people that wildlife

and the source of livelihood of the locals are threatened. European companies are in the top league of

those who have grabbed over 600,000 hectares of land for the cultivation of agrofuels crops (The

Business Week, 2008:6).

Aggressive agrofuels push by foreign multinational companies is a contributory factor. British

firm Sun Biofuels is at work in Ethiopia, where the government has reportedly set aside 24 million

hectares for the production of fuel crops. Other companies are known to try to secure century-long

farming rights for nothing but a promise to invest in local roads and schools. An Ethiopian minister

claims that such land is otherwise unusable, and officials in Tanzania claim that it's just marginal land.

'The whole thing is nothing but positive,' says the administrator of Tanzania's Kisarawe district, who is

responsible for the Sun Biofuels project in the district. 'We have convinced the people (Horand Knaup,

in Business Week, 8 September, 2008).While government officials gush over agrofuels and claim that

the lands being sought by agrofuels promoters are marginal lands, others perceive that 'the land grabs

and forced relocations are stirring ugly memories of colonialist exploitation.

In Mozambique too Sun Biofuels has acquired a large parcel of land from the people. Foreign

investors have their eye on 11 million hectares - more than one-seventh of the country's total area - for

growing energy plants. In April 2006, Sun Biofuels claimed that it had received formal approval for

cultivation from 10 of 11 villages whose lands had been allocated to it in Tanzania. At the time they

made this claim most of the villages were not even aware of any move to give their lands to Sun

Biofuels. According to reports, one village head sent a letter to the district administration complaining

that Sun Biofuels had cleared and marked off land without even contacting the village elders (The

cxxi

Guardian, 2008).

Land rights issues in Tanzania also extend to actions in the mining sector. For example, the

mining policy states that the Land Act (1999) and the Village Land Act (1999) provide a legal basis on

ownership and compensation on land matters (The Guardian, 2008:17). These laws are not evenly

applied and multinational mining companies take advantage of the locals who are not aware of

compensation processes, their rights and the fact that the new landowners have a duty to compensate

them where the lands are transferred legally. It is said that 'sometimes the companies use administrative

and other corrupt measures to avoid making payments‘. In Swaziland the aggressive agrofuels push has

come from the British multinational D1 Oils. The company engaged about 2,000 outgrowers to plant

jatropha on over 3,000 hectares in various parts of the country in addition to over 1,000 hectares at D1

Oils-operated farms. Following mounting pressure from civil society groups, D1 Oils Swaziland has

been ordered to suspend any new planting of jatropha by the Swaziland Environment Authority (SEA),

who has also ordered D1 Oils to conduct a strategic environmental assessment

(http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2008/).

Ethanol production also affects food prices: Any spike in food prices must worry Africa, as the

impacts are grave (http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2008/). Two years ago, the International Food

Policy Research Institute published sobering estimates of the potential global impact of rising demand

for agrofuels. They predicted that given continued high oil prices, the rapid increase in global agrofuels

production would push global corn prices up by 20% by 2010 and 41% by 2020. The prices of oilseeds,

including soybeans, rapeseeds, and sunflower seeds, are also projected to jump by 26% by 2010 and

76% by 2020 while wheat prices were expected to rise by 11% by 2010 and 30% by 2020. In parts of

sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America, where cassava is a staple, its price is expected to increase

by 33% by 2010 and a startling 135% by 2020. The number of people suffering from undernourishment

globally could increase by 16 million for each percentage point increase in the real price of staple food

crops. This could mean that 1.2 billion people would be suffering from hunger by 2025

(http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2008/).

A statement by an American commentator provides a good lesson for Africa. He wrote, 'The

only economical way to make ethanol right now is with corn, which means the burgeoning industry is

literally eating America's lunch, not to mention its breakfast and dinner.', according to Crenson (2006:6).

The obvious downside of the investment in large-scale/commercial production of agrofuels has been

cxxii

variously documented. Shifting from fossil fuels to agrofuels following the same market paradigm will

not increase the poor's access to energy but would aggravate existing problems such as land grabs and

create particular challenges to food supplies due to a shift from food cropping to fuel cropping.

CHAPTER FIVE: SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

5.1 Summary

The humanitarian strategy adopted by the developed nations in their relations with the

developing countries, is such that the former exploits the later, through foreign aid, especially, when the

terms of the aid are set by the donor nations or group of nations, in a manner that is entirely

disadvantageous to one nation. Understood this way, food aid is an intersection of foreign policy,

government power and business deals, not only because, of its centrality to national power, but also,

because, states that do not have food sovereignty depend on other nations, not just for food, but also

for other agricultural inputs.

cxxiii

The origins of Zimbabwe‘s recent chaos are deeply-rooted and stem from at least three

interrelated long-term factors and one additional proximate cause: climatic, economic, and political. All

these have converged in causing the looming socio-political-cum food crisis in Zimbabwean. Thus, one

way of understanding the political and economic trends that has characterized the state of the

Zimbabwean nation without an inevitable sense of detraction from the political economy of the

Zimbabwean crisis, is by focusing the analysis on both the character and the contradictions in both the

domestic and international political system, and on the place which Zimbabwe the nation occupy in the

international division of labour, production and exchange.

To recapitulate, the character of political leadership contributed to the national development

crisis in Zimbabwe, and there is an organic interconnection between food insecurity in Zimbabwe and

food aid, and as well as the character of the governance of the global food system. The implication of

contradictions in both the domestic and international /global governance of the food system does not

encourage the achievement of the objective of the First Millennium Development Goal of eradicating

extreme hunger and poverty.

5.2 Conclusion

The simple existence of plentiful food either in a particular country or throughout the world does not

guarantee in any way that people will have access to adequate food supplies. Availability of adequate

food is one matter; access to that food is quite another. This is where social, economic, and political

factors play a major role in determining who has and who does not have food. In other words, there is no

such thing as an apolitical food problem. While drought and other naturally occurring events may trigger

famine conditions, it is government action or inaction that determines its severity, and often even

whether or not a famine will occur. The 20th century is full of examples of governments undermining

the food security of their own nations – sometimes intentionally. The controversy over the economic and

political imperatives of food aid for the developing nations is the question of whether the tying of food

aid to commodity purchases in the donor country (in-kind food aid) is the best way to deliver food aid.

More worrisome is even the politicization of food security, and manipulation of international food

markets for various political reasons. As a result, many countries do not "trust" international markets

because of the propensity of the High Food Sufficient Countries(HFSC) led by the United States and

other countries to apply economic embargoes against Low-Income Food-Deficit Countries (LFDCS )for

various political reasons. The distribution of food within a country is a political issue: food supplies are

cxxiv

manipulated as certain privileged and powerful groups restrict food supplies (directly or indirectly by

controlling distribution systems, etc) to segments of the population that are out of their favour.

At a higher strategic level, the politicization of food security, and manipulation of international food

markets for various political reasons could be achieved through international economic sanctions (or

embargoes), as in the case of Zimbabwe. Nations whose food security is jeopardized by such

international economic sanctions or embargoes tend to insist on pursuing ―self-sufficiency" policies

even when they lack of comparative advantage. The indispensability of food to human sustenance is

such that, food security is seen as national interest, hence, lack of food leads often to "food riots", often

instigated by urban residents; poorer rural residents rarely have a political voice. Similarly, the lack of

food security resulting from a sudden jolt (i.e. international embargo, poor climate) can lead to political

instability. "Food riots", when they occur, are often instigated by urban residents; poorer rural residents

rarely have a political voice. Thus, food security and political stability are often linked, although the

relationship is complicated and not necessarily direct or causal, and because of this, ―necessarily direct

or causal relationship‖ "Individuals without property are susceptible to starvation, and, according to

William Bernstein (1983), in his book The Birth of Plenty, it is much easier to bend the fearful and

hungry to the will of the state.

Food crisis has been greatly exacerbated by the character of food aid, and a series of political

factors. For instance, a number of regulations for the disposal of food aid imply that it has repercussions

on the commercial food and nonfood trade of the recipient countries. Also, a considerable share of food

aid is not provided on a grant basis but rather as long-term soft loans with related long-term foreign

exchange and fiscal implications. Food aid is an unstable and insecure source of supply. Food aid tends

to have an opportunity cost to the donor countries not only in the sense that it results from misallocated

agricultural resources but also in the sense that it partly replaces capital aid, which maybe used more

effectively in development. As result, recipient countries are continually facing policy dilemmas as to

how to optimize the use of available food aid in both the short and the long run and how to adjust

domestic price policies, given their economic, and possibly political, costs.

Nevertheless, food aid cannot be condemned in its entirety since despite its numerous

drawbacks; it still has some potential roles development: First, food aid can play a crucial role in

supporting increased employment in the early stages of growth. Food aid can supply a basic wage good

needed to back a rapid growth in employment when agricultural growth initially lags and foreign

exchange is too scarce to maintain a labor-intensive growth strategy. Food aid may also play a

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favourable role in maintaining basic food consumption in the wake of policy reforms for restructuring

the economy, which may require drastic measures be taken to cope with debt servicing and foreign

exchange problems.

In terms of nexus between food and politics, the land reform in Zimbabwe has provided the best

example of the relationship between hunger and politics. The land reform in Zimbabwe was in the main

used for political expediency and it is obvious that it was not properly thought out and planned.

Government‘s often negative economic policies and bad governance have also exacerbated the food

insecurity being faced by the country. In an attempt to win the support of the urban voters, government

has introduced price controls which have worsened rather than improve the situation.

The situation in Zimbabwe should be taken seriously because it may have a boomerang effect on

the region as has already been witnessed. It appears Zimbabwe is becoming a serious threat to the

stability of the whole Southern African region. As such changes to the current policy mix are essential

which will include a return to the rule of law based upon acceptable property rights, and a reversal of

provisions in the land reform programme that made land free and distributable by political patronage. It

is, however, only a moot point whether politically; the ruling party could meet these demands. Finally,

to achieve the First Millennium Development Goal objective of eradicating extreme hunger and poverty

requires an understanding of the ways in which these two injustices interconnect.

Findings of the Study.

Arising from the literature review and the analysis in the testing of the hypotheses, the following

findings are evident:

I. The character of political leadership contributed to and national development crisis, and food

insecurity in Zimbabwe;

II. The incorporation and institutionalization of the military in Zimbabwe; has led to the expansion

of the corporate identity of the military as an explicit class ;

III. There is a relationship between the character of the governance of the global food system, and

food insecurity in the developing in general, and Zimbabwe in , particular ;

IV. The conditionality of contracting foreign aid has deepened the crisis of national development in

Zimbabwe, and predisposed the Zimbabwean government to implement economic, and land

reforms;

V. Food aid is characterized by short-term relief and long-term burden of food aid/confessional

imports;

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VI. Developed nations are contracting large arable land in developing nations for the production of

Agro-fuel. The opportunity cost of this is that agricultural commodities that would have been

used for human consumption id now being used for ―feeding of machines‖

VII. Food aid is not provided on a grant basis but rather as long-term soft loans with related long-term

foreign exchange and fiscal implications, and food aid, is an unstable and insecure source of

supply which tends to have an opportunity cost to the donor countries not only in the sense that it

results from misallocated agricultural resources but also in the sense, that it, partly replaces

capital aid, which may be used more effectively for development.

VIII. The usurpation of land by Agro-multinational corporations in Zimbabwe, for the production of

agrofuels has intensified food crisis as land is cultivated no longer for human consumption

IX. Food insecurity exists when people are undernourished as a result of the physical unavailability

of food, their lack of social or economic access to adequate food, and/or inadequate food

utilization, and depend on others for sustenance.

5.3 Recommendations

In the light of the findings, the following suggestions are made:

I. Against the prevailing character of political leadership that contributed to national development

crisis, and food insecurity in Zimbabwe; efforts must be made to restore and consolidate democracy

in Zimbabwe. The imperative for this is inherent in the fact that democracy represents a fulcrum in

the accepted values of contemporary international system. This will involve demilitarizing

Zimbabwean politics;

II. Instead of the productivist commodity production and exchange which make most developing

nations to relying on imports, there is need to shift emphasis back to the traditional concept of

greater self-sufficiency through increased local food production in developing countries, instead of

relying on (international markets )the High Food Sufficient Countries(HFSC) led by the United

States and other countries;

III. In view of the implications of the above observation, African states should adopt measures of

synergy, in the form of intra-industry trading so as to enable Africa to extract more trade returns

from her industrial raw materials. This is critical because instead of relying on commodity markets,

Africa (primary commodity producer) should support the initiative by some international

organizations (NGOs) aimed at developing alternatives to forge direct links with the consumers

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under''fair" trade arrangements, that can enable African countries of primary commodity producers

enjoy returns of about 200% above the same time, have a stake in the companies that process the

African raw materials into finished goods. In order to reduce developing nation‘s extremely

externally dependent food aid, the African government in particular and the developing countries

should, establish institutions and create mechanism for mobilizing and collocating development

funds from their nationals in Diaspora .This could be induced and facilitated by granting of dual

citizenship to persons who are citizens of Africa by birth but have become citizens of the developed

countries through other ways. The ability to harness any such potential in the case of Zimbabwe is

critical because nearly one-third of the Zimbabwean population is now estimated to be living

elsewhere the majority of these people driven out by the on-going political and economic crisis in

Zimbabwe;

IV. To enhance sustainable food production for food security, more sustainable agriculture is required

for long term food security and, an agricultural ecosystem approach (agro ecology), rather than

narrow production/yield objectives, is critical for resource-poor farmers ,local and regional rural

development goals must be linked with sustainable agriculture ,urban agriculture should be

encouraged to help the urban food-insecure needs

V. Food production should be increased at a greater rate than in recent years so as to provide enough

food for everyone,

VI. The agriculture policy paradigm in developing countries must be allowed to change. Countries

should have the policy space to expand public expenditure on agriculture. The imperative for this is

inherent in the fact that The economic and trade policies followed by many developing countries,

often at the advice of international financial institutions, or as part of multilateral and bilateral trade

agreements, have contributed to the stunting of the agriculture sector in developing countries. The

developing countries must be allowed to provide adequate support to their agriculture sector and to

have a realistic tariff policy to advance their agriculture, especially since developed countries‘

subsidies are continuing at a high level;

VII. The developed countries should quickly reduce their actual levels of subsidy. The actual levels (and

not just the bound levels) of agricultural domestic subsidies in developed countries should be

effectively and substantially reduced. There should also be new and effective disciplines on the

Green Box subsidies to ensure that this category does not remain an ―escape clause‖ that allows

distorting subsidies that are detrimental to developing countries.

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VIII. The developing countries like Zimbabwe should be allowed to calibrate their agricultural tariffs in

such a way as to ensure that the local products can be competitive and the farmers‘ livelihoods and

incomes are sustained, and national food security is assured;

IX. To improve the incentive effects of food aid, recipient countries should focus on efficient systems of

dual markets, while donors should emphasize more stable flows of food aid under long-term

commitments which do not preclude an effective variable emergency component.

X. Against the background of cultivating land for the production of agrofuels, land should be cultivated

for human consumption. Shifting from fossil fuels to agrofuels following the same market paradigm

will not increase the poor's access to energy but would aggravate existing problems such as land

grabs and create particular challenges to food supplies due to a shift from food cropping to fuel

cropping.

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APPENDIX

Appendix I :List Of Political Parties – in Zimbabwe

Major parties

Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF)

Movement for Democratic Change – Tsvangirai (MDC-T)

Movement for Democratic Change – Mutambara (MDC-M)

Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) - Revived

Minor parties

International Socialist Organisation

Movement for Democratic Change-Mutambara

National Alliance for Good Governance

Patriotic Union of MaNdebeleland

United People's Party

Zimbabwe African National Union - Ndonga

Zimbabwe African People's Union - Federal Party

Zimbabwe People's Democratic Party

Zimbabwe Youth in Alliance

Defunct parties

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Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe - At one time the former governing party, the Rhodesian Front

Forum Party

Patriotic Front

United Party

Rhodesian Action Party

Rhodesian Front Party

United African National Council

Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU)

Source: The Global Politician Magazine, May 6

Appendix II: Government Domestic Debt, 5 November 1999 to 31 January 2003: Z$’m

Governing parties Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) - Movement

for Democratic Change – Tsvangirai (MDC-T) - Movement for Democratic

Change – Mutambara (MDC-M)

Minor parties Zimbabwe African National Union - Ndonga (ZANU-Ndonga) - National

Alliance for Good Governance (NAGG)- Zimbabwe People's Democratic

Party - Zimbabwe Youth in Alliance (ZYA)- International Socialist

Organisation (ISO) - United People's Party (UPP) - Patriotic Union of

MaNdebeleland (PUMA) - Zimbabwe African People's Union - Federal Party

(ZAPU-FP) - Zimbabwe Development Party (ZDP)

Defunct Parties Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) - Zimbabwe African National

Union (ZANU) - Rhodesian Front (RF) - Responsible Government

Association (RGA)

President Robert Mugabe (ZANU-PF)

Prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai (MDC-T)

Key People Ndabaningi Sithole (ZANU, ZANU - Ndonga) - Joshua Nkomo (ZAPU) -

Arthur Mutambara (MDC-M) - Ian Smith (RF)

Armed Factions ZANLA (ZANU, ZANU-PF) - ZIPRA (ZAPU)

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Source: Robertson Economic Information Services Apr 16 2003.

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Appendix I1I:Retail Fuel Prices, January 1997 to April 2003

Source: Robertson Economic Information Services Apr 16 2003

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Appendix IV: Electrical energy produced and distributed

Key: 2001 based on 1st 10 months Source: Robertson Economic Information Services Apr 16 2003

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Appendix V: Manufacturing: All Groups Annual Indices

Source: Robertson Economic Information Services Apr 16 2003.

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Appendix VI: Manufacturing: 2001 and 2002 compared(Percentage Change)

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Source: Robertson Economic Information Services Apr 16 2003.

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Appendix VII: Metal and mineral production: 2001 and 2002 2001 2002 % Change

Source: Robertson Economic Information Services Apr 16 2003.

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