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News from Malawi
Malawi famine set to continue
Tuesday, 14 May, 2002, 09:38 GMT 10:38 UK
Malawi famine set to continue
Food shortages are killing Malawians
By the BBC's Raphael Tenthani
Blantyre
For Chief Dzobwe, the traditional leader of a small cluster of settlements outside the central tobacco heartland of Kasungu, some 100 kilometres north of the capital, Lilongwe, this year's famine is historic.
"I was a young boy in 1949," the 71-year-old former miner says, "but this year's famine reminds me of the one we had then."
We did not think things would be this bad
Vice-President Justin Malewezi
"The difference is that while in 1949 we could walk long distances to find food," says the chief, who claims he lost two to three of his villagers a week at the height of the famine between January and March, "there is now nowhere to go to find food."
Kasungu, where officially more than 100 people starved to death by March, is the worst affected of Malawi's 27 districts.
But government officials say the picture is just as bleak in other parts of the country.
Vice-President Justin Malewezi says warning signs that there was an impending famine started flashing as early as August last year when it was noted that the country, which requires at least 1.8 million tonnes of the staple crop, maize, per year to feed its 11 million people, had a deficit of 400,000 tonnes.
"But we did not think things would be this bad," he admits.
Slow to act
Indeed the government's belated admission that a human catastrophe is looming in the country has caught donors unprepared.
A senior World Food Programme official says it was difficult to convince rich governments to release emergency funds for Malawi without the government acknowledging there was a famine.
Maize from grain warehouses has been in short supply
When the government finally did, more than seven million people, or three-quarters of the country's population, were on the verge of starvation.
Lessons may have been learnt because, this year, although the entire maize crop has not yet been stored in granaries, the government has already asked for help.
The ministry of agriculture has published crop estimates, saying Malawi is set to record a 600,000-tonne deficit.
Lukewarm response
Secretary for Agriculture Ellard Malindi says the current lull in the famine is only temporary as people are currently eating maize grown in their gardens.
But most farming families do not harvest enough maize.
People queing for maize rations at an aid agency site in Salima
He says the government is therefore urging rich countries and aid agencies to assist the country with emergency food aid if a human catastrophe is to be averted.
The call for food aid, made when President Bakili Muluzi declared a state of national disaster in February, has received a lukewarm response from donors, fuelling fears that the crisis will continue.
Malawi needs at least .6m to avert a human catastrophe.
But so far less than have come through.
Rampaging hippos
Mr Malindi says a number of factors, including heavy rains in some areas and prolonged dry spells in others, have led to a drop in the harvest of maize.
He says other reasons for the drop in maize production include floods, as well as rampaging elephants and hippos, which have destroyed large tracts of crop fields in a number of lakeshore districts, especially in the southern district of Mangochi.
If we don't handle the food crisis well, it will be difficult to convince people to vote for us
Mekkie Mtewa
Mangochi MP
The United Nations Development Programme, UNDP, says that between January and April, UN agencies spent at least on emergency food aid for vulnerable groups in 19 of the country's 27 districts.
UNDP representative Zahra Nuru says UN experts are currently assessing the situation to release more aid.
Malawi's former colonial master, Britain, has so far also released £2.6m of food aid for 255,000 households.
A number of church organisations have come in to help, but the scale of the disaster is just too great.
Shelf-life
Some donors say the donor fatigue is due in particular to the fact that last year's maize reserves where mismanaged.
Some of these stocks were sold to Kenya despite warnings that a famine was looming.
Trying better varieties of maize to improve production
But Ellard Malindi, the Secretary for Agriculture, says the government sold the maize to Kenya because it had reached the end of its shelf-life.
The country's Anti-Corruption Bureau is still investigating the controversial sale to check whether there was any corruption involved.
The food crisis has also affected the country's social strata.
In hospitals, the orthopaedic wards are full of amputees who received mob justice after being caught stealing.
It was pumpkin leaves that we survived on
Anifa Matebule
School attendance has also dropped significantly.
President Muluzi has again assured Malawians that the government will make free food available to the most vulnerable.
But Anifa Matebule, a grandmother in the southern tea-growing district of Thyolo, says she has heard it all before.
"In January the government said we would get free maize, but it was pumpkin leaves that we survived on," she says, brandishing a ration card for a World Food Programme food distribution exercise which she says has come too late.
Political pressure
She lost a daughter and a grandchild to the famine.
Mekkie Mtewa, the MP for Mangochi, who has just been dismissed as deputy agriculture minister for revealing that senior politicians were hoarding maize in order to sell it at higher prices, says the famine may be a political barometer.
Those without money beg outside department stores
"2004 (when the next general elections will take place) is not too far so if we don't handle the food crisis well, it will be difficult to convince people to vote for us," he says.
But in Kasungu, Chief Dzombe says he has no time for the politics of 2004. Having buried two of his teenage nephews, what he needs is for the politicians of today to deliver.
"The crops have failed again this year and, if we don't get help, we will perish," he says.
Spectre of starvation in Malawi
Wednesday, 6 March, 2002, 17:57 GMT
Spectre of starvation in Malawi
For some children help comes too late
By Hilary Andersson
BBC Southern Africa correspondent
In Malawi's commercial capital Blantyre people are starving to death in hospital. By the time they get there, many are too far gone.
For one little boy, every breath is an effort. He's managing to stay alive, just. Disease is feeding on his hunger. And he is not alone.
Kingsley has been watching his family starve. They swell up as if they'd eaten too much, he told me, then they waste away
In the rural areas, it is worse. This calamity is happening in one of the poorest countries on earth. There are no doctors for miles.
A few people have managed to crawl to a shed for church handouts. Some were so weak they fainted on arrival.
One woman has been walking for three days to get here carrying her children on her back. They are both one-and-a-half years old, but weigh a fraction of what they should.
Some people have been eating wild leaves for months
Many have been surviving on nothing but wild leaves for months and they are on the brink of starvation. Some others have been eating pig food to survive, but even that has now gone. The strongest may survive this, the others won't.
Disaster
Malawi looks lush, but seven million people here face starvation - thanks to politics and floods.
People walk or crawl for miles to reach help
Erratic weather has ruined the region's crops. The troubles in nearby Zimbabwe have made matters worse. There, the land crisis has destroyed food production and the demand is for food imports.
Now the whole of southern Africa is short of maize. Even food destined for Malawi often cannot get through, with vital transport routes being disrupted by Zimbabwe's crisis.
Wasting away
No-one has calculated the scale of what is happening here. But what we found in one village was frightening. Only a handful people live there. Three have died in the last week.
Kingsley took me to his grandson's grave. He's been watching his family starve. They swell up as if they'd eaten too much, he told me, then they waste away.
The strongest may survive, others will not
Church groups say in this small area, death rates are running at a staggering 6%.
If that's true nationwide, thousands could have starved already.
Back at the hospital, a woman has just heard the unthinkable. Her baby is dead. The second to die here in an hour.
It is impossible to bear. And all the more so because this tragedy is partly man-made.
Malawi declares famine emergency
Wednesday, 27 February, 2002, 15:57 GMT
Malawi declares famine emergency
By Raphael Tenthani in Blantyre
Malawi's President, Bakili Muluzi, has declared a state of national disaster because of widespread famine and reports of increasing deaths.
With 70% of the southern African country's population reported to be on the verge of starvation, the president said traditional leaders had told him that food shortages were becoming critical, particularly in rural areas.
The children shall starve to death if I keep them. They stand a better chance of surviving with other people.
Mother-of-five Margaret Phiri
Parents are reported to be selling their children to avoid the responsibility of having to feed them.
In a national address broadcast on television and radio, the president also warned that the food crisis was likely to continue into next year.
He said the crop harvest would be significantly reduced because people had begun eating "green maize" - or unripe corn - instead of keeping it for planting.
'One death a day'
In one desperate case, a mother in central Malawi is reported to have offered to sell her five children to raise money for food. Her sixth child died of malnutrition.
"The children shall starve to death if I keep them," Margaret Phiri, 30, told the state-run Malawi news agency. "They stand a better chance of surviving with other people."
Children are particularly vulnerable
In the southern town of Balaka, police say at least one person is starving to death each day.
Reports from rural areas say people are dying almost daily after eating tubers or leaves.
Old people are simply starving to death.
Vice-President Justin Malewezi told visiting officials from the International Monetary Fund on Wednesday that the government needed an estimated .6m to avoid disaster, but has secured only $1.6m.
Government blamed
The United Nations World Food Programme says it is targeting 2.4 m hungry people in southern Africa - in Zambia and Zimbabwe as well as in Malawi.
Malawi's Government appealed to donor countries, private companies and non-governmental organisations for urgent assistance earlier this month, warning that thousands could die if food did not reach them in time.
Children join parents in search of food
Food distribution has been hindered by heavy floods in two successive years, damaging Beit Bridge on the South Africa-Zimbabwe border and a section of railway-line on the Nacala Corridor in Mozambique.
The government has also been accused of mismanaging the country's food stocks, having sold a large quantity of corn to Kenya last year when there was a surplus.
Several Western governments have cut aid to Malawi, accusing the government of corruption and overspending.
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