Zimbabwe audits millers as food shortages bite Zim Online (SA) Date posted:Sat 11-Feb-2006 Date published:Sat 11-Feb-2006
Back to previous page		A nephew of Mugabe was last year brought before the courts facing charges of illegally exporting 30 tonnes of wheat Harare - The Zimbabwe government's Grain Marketing Board (GMB) has begun auditing the country's millers in the wake of worsening shortages of the staple mealie-meal and a looming shortage of bread. The GMB, the only company permitted by law to buy maize and wheat from farmers or to import the grains, is tasked with ensuring food security in the country but its silos are understood to be empty because it does not have hard cash to pay foreign suppliers. In a circular to millers on Friday, the GMB said its grain procurement and distribution team would visit milling factories in a new exercise to vet the companies and ensure wheat and maize were not being diverted to the illegal black market. "This notice serves to inform all millers that the task force on grain procurement and distribution will conduct a reverting exercise of all millers in the country in order to ensure compliance with the Grain Marketing Act and any other legislation," the circular reads in part. Zimbabwe has grappled severe food shortages since 2000 because of falling farm production after President Robert Mugabe expelled the country's white large-scale producing commercial farmers and redistributed their farms to landless black peasants. But he did not give the black villagers resettled on former white farms skills training or inputs support to maintain production. Food output has dropped by about 60 percent since Mugabe began seizing white farms. The grain shortages have worsened in recent weeks with for example, the second largest city of Bulawayo going for over three weeks without any supplies of maize-meal, the main staple for more than 90 percent of Zimbabweans. Milling firms earlier this week on Wednesday warned that the country would be completely without bread because they had run out of wheat to make flour. The GMB blames the millers for worsening the food crisis by diverting flour and maize-meal to the illegal but thriving black-market. Milling industry executives however say it is powerful government and ruling Zanu PF officials who are behind the food black-market. "There is really no need to investigate us because the GMB should know as everyone else does that the people who have been fuelling the black-market and even exporting wheat out of the country are in Zanu PF and the government," said a chief executive officer of a Harare milling firm who did not want to be named for fear of being seen as antagonising the GMB. A nephew of Mugabe was last year brought before the courts facing charges of illegally exporting 30 tonnes of wheat to Mozambique. But the nephew, Leo Mugabe, walked out of the court a free man after the state declined to prosecute. Meanwhile, police are probing Zanu PF legislator Douglas Mombeshora after they intercepted 140 tonnes of wheat that was being illegally transported to Zambia. The wheat is said to belong to Mombeshora.