Ninety-eight percent of households in Matabeleland South province will spend World Food Day hungry, according to international relief and development agency World Vision.

The agency, which is providing food and nutritional support to more than 720,000 people during  the peak of the hungry season between now and January, said Zimbabwe is facing a  countrywide food crisis that is affecting both rural and urban households.

World Vision is also working with children under five who are severely malnourished providing nutritional care which enables them to stay in their homes and receive nutritional supplements within their own community. The agency is training community members to identify early signs of malnutrition and training local health workers in nutritional care.

World  Vision  Zimbabwe’s Humanitarian  Emergency Affairs Director, Daniel Muchena  said:  “We have scaled up relief efforts to curb hunger due to increased vulnerability in households in  food insecure districts. Communities have exhausted their coping mechanisms and have resorted to barter trading their livestock for grain. In some areas, the  most vulnerable households are relying on wild fruits for survival.”

Forty-five-year-old Tsidi Mokoena, a mother of seven, is awaiting registration with a feeding programme in Gwanda District, Matabeleland.

“Due to the chronic food shortages we are experiencing because of very poor harvests, we have resorted to eating one meal a day,” she said. “This is not good for the children, but I have no choice as a mother but to ration the little I have to ensure that there is something for the younger
children to eat.

"To survive until now, I have been exchanging one goat for a 20kg bucket of maize grain from traders from Gwanda town. In July I had seven goats, but now I am left with only three. I am afraid of what my children will eat when I trade off the last goat.”

“Despite the fact my livelihood depends on a vegetable garden, I can neither grow enough food for my family or raise the exorbitant R300 (£17) that 50kg maize meal is sold for by local wealthy shop owners who import it from South Africa.” - AFP.