Zambia: the threat of famine
Charles Douglas-Home
When Zambia became independent in 1964 there were several thousand white farmers in the country, a prosperous agricultural sector and more good agricultural land under cultivation than there was next door in Rhodesia. Today — with Commonwealth heads of government about to assemble in Lusaka — Zambia faces the prospect of imminent famine. The white farmers have dwindled to a few hundred, though even they still produce 90 per cent of Zambia's homegrown food products. Zambian tobacco has more or less vanished, while tiny Malawi across the border has retained white farming skills to create one of the most prosperous tobacco sectors in the world.
It is ironic that President Kaunda can now only alleviate the starvation of his people by securing the cooperation of South Africa and Zimbabwe-Rhodesia — the very countries whose systems he excoriates and against whom he wages a proxy war by extending sanctuary and assistance to guerrillas who want to bring them down. The arguments rage on about constitutional niceties in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia or the validity of its one-man-one-vote election, while black leaders try to conceal the much more serious situation of the food shortage in central and southern Africa. Whatever its critics say about Zimbabwe-Rhodesia cannot eliminate the fact that it is the only country in the area which can provide enough food both for its own citizens and for those citizens of the five or six neighbours whose policies have created famine in their lands.
Southern and central Africa is, in fact, suffering the worst drought for 80 years. The food situation is critical in Mozambique, Angola, Botswana, Zambia and Zaire. But it is most critical in Zambia. If famine is to be avoided there, some 300,000 tons of maize will be required before next January. This requirement is in addition to the 100,000 tons which have already been promised by Kenya. That promise may be hard to realise since it assumes that the
maize will be transported from Kenya along the Tazara railway. Before that can happen President Nyerere of Tanzania will have to give permission for the maize to cross his border from Kenya, though he has kept the border shut for nearly three years. In addition, the Tazara railway's record of serviceability does not suggest that it can transport such a load in the time required.
So Zambia can only expect to receive the other 300,000 tons of maize from the south. President Kaunda will therefore require the cooperation of South Africa and Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. At a recent meeting in Pretoria representatives of Zambia, South Africa and Zimbabwe-Rhodesia identified the logistics of the crisis, and reached some preliminary and, for Zambia, painful conclusions. South Africa agreed to supply all the maize that Zambia requires. This had to be done because, for the last five years, Zambia has refused to take maize from Zimbabwe-Rhodesia for political reasons, though that refusal has resulted in her paying often twice as much for foreign grain (from Australia, for example) than she would have had to pay for the surplus Rhodesian product.
But, even though South Africa can supply the maize, can it be transported? The railw ay from South Africa through Zimbabwe-Rhodesia to Lusaka can only, at the Zambian end, handle 35 wagons per day. Not all of those wagons could be preempted for maize, since at least half of them would be required for general goods, coke for power stations and fertilisers. Moreover even without any further interruption to rail movements, and no increase in the traffic handling above 35 wagons per day, only 100,000 tons of maize would get through to Zambia by January, leaving a shortfall of 200,000 tons.
The only alternative overland route is the road from Salisbury via Chirundu. That road could not be adequately prepared for such traffic before the end of August and even then the effort required to transfer 200,000 tons of maize — without any inter ruption from mines or guerrillas — would demand 32 trucks per day, seven days per week. This task would need a pool of 270 20-ton trucks. Where are they to come from?
It seems, therefore, that even allowing for the fullest cooperation between Zambia, Zimbabwe-Rhodesia and South Africa and for the fullest use of the overland routes — road and rail — starvation in Zambia is only going to be prevented by an additional airlift. Where will it be mounted from? Who will fly the planes? Will President Kaunda be able to ensure they are not shot down by Joshua Nkomo's ZIPRA guerrillas who aim their weapons at so many incoming aircraft? These are the questions which should exercise the minds of President Kaunda's guests at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers meeting, not the niceties of democratic constitutions which so many of them have torn up themselves in the past.
But the imminence of Zambian famine is only the most immediate aspect of central Africa's long term future. The decisive contribution which can be made by Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, for example, cannot be discounted simply because the Bishop's support comes in large measure from the white comm unity there. Of course it does. Zimbabwe-Rhodesia itself would starve were it not for the white farmers, who provide 94 per cent of the grain traded through the monopoly Grain Marketing Board, Over the past eight years—in spite of the so-called sanctions — Zaire, Zambia, Botswana, Mozambique and Malawi have all received substantial quantities of food from Rhodesia. Given stable political conditions, the white farmers in ZimbabweRhodesia would be able to provide enough food for their own citizens and of all those other countries, which for the foreseeable future will remain major food importers with no home based agricultural sector worth the name.
It is — to say the least — whimsical of President Kaunda and his colleagues, whose policies towards their white farmers have produced this threat of famine, to want to impose the same kind of bankruptcy on Bishop Muzorewa; especially when it is only security and stability for the Bishop's white farmers to carry on farming which will prevent famine occurring on a subcontinental scale.
It is only because of the hypocrisy of sanctions that the importance of Rhodesia's vital food exports to its neighbours has been concealed. It may be inconvenient for President Kaunda to have to face up to these realities now — and the guests at his Prime Ministers' Conference may not notice any privation in their own menus since most of Zambia's effort for the last few months has been dedicated to providing food for the conference delegates rather than for its people. Inconvenient or not, the facts about food are much more urgent than the arguments about whether or not the Bishop is any less legitimate an African leader than the rest of them.
Previous page
