San people face severe food crisis

TSHOLOTSHO - The NewsDay reports that the one-time hunter gatherers in the Mazibulala and Dlamini villages in Tsholotsho North under Chief Tategulu area are facing a severe food crisis.

According to the newspaper a number of San families are "literally living from hand to mouth."

Mazibulala village head Gideon Moyo said although the entire village was currently plagued by food shortages, the San had been hardest hit because they were finding it difficult adjusting from their life of hunter gatherers to that of farming.

"These people are starving," said Moyo. "Even if you give them work to do, they are not used to the kind of hard work we do."

Moyo said sometime back, San people used to hunt kudus and barter-trade the game meat for maize with villagers, but since hunting was now illegal, they had been struggling to survive.

When Moyo took the news crew and Creative Arts and Education Development Association director Davy Ndlovu on a tour around several homesteads of his San subjects, an elderly woman Kudukwa Mvundla, who does not know her age and only said she was born during the Sindibhuzwa or Mgarapasi years, told the crew that her life had become a living hell.

Mvundla, who stays with her son Mahwitha (54), said she sometimes went for up to three days without eating anything as hunger stalks the district.

"As we speak, I have not eaten anything since sunrise," Mvundla said. "Men used to hunt and bring meat for the family when I was still young, but that is no longer the case these days," she said.

Mvundla has eight grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren.

Mahwitha said their fields have turned into bushes as they have no implements draught power.

He said they were sometimes abused by other villagers with draught power who made them work in their fields during the tilling and planting season only to be given resources in the dry season as a form of payment.

"We fail to harvest as a result," Mahwitha said. "We survive through begging and doing piece jobs. Can the government and donors please assist us? Life is just a nightmare here," he said.

At another homestead, Elizabeth Ncube, who stays with five orphaned grandchildren, said she survives through selling thatching grass although customers are few.

"You see this grass! It has been here since June and no one is buying it," said Ncube. "We now only get food when someone gives us."

She said they used to buy maize from the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) grain loan scheme after selling chickens, but since they no longer have any chickens left, they just starve with the rest.

Village head Moyo revealed that his subjects last got the GMB maize supplies last year.

Ncube said she struggles to pay fees for her five grandchildren enrolled at Bayane Primary School.

Kuhle Leonard Ncube (71), who stays with his wife Babili Mpofu, said they had not had anything to eat on Wednesday and "we will just sleep and wait for our death".

He said it was a nightmare just to get a single meal.

Nduna Tshuma (72) and his wife Juliah Masuku (72) said they only get a little food when they work for other people.

"We have six orphaned grandchildren. I sell axe and hoe handles or do piece jobs to try and sustain the family," said Tshuma.