PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe and First Lady Grace, in the run-up to the July 31 election, dished out food handouts during the 10 campaign rallies they addressed in provincial capitals, raising a lot of dust in the process.
There were questions if the gesture was just vote-buying or a genuine way to alleviate the suffering of millions of people who cannot afford three square meals a day following poor harvests in most parts of the country last year.
Two months after the elections and after Mugabe secured a seventh term in office, the government is yet to respond to the crisis in a concrete way.
People are only being fed the rhetoric that no one would die of hunger, yet the situation on the ground shows that this country is sitting on a time bomb.
Yesterday we reported that severe food shortages in Matabeleland South Province were threatening the lives of HIV and Aids patients.
National Aids Council provincial Aids co-ordinator Isaiah Abureni said most of the 46 000 people in anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs in the province required nutritional support, especially in rural areas.
He said NAC was worried because the patients did not have enough food to support the treatment.
Malnutrition can cause people living with HIV to develop Aids faster and decreases the effectiveness of ARVs to those receiving treatment resulting in many succumbing to death.
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Most people have reportedly abandoned taking drugs due to the widespread food shortages in the province as a result of incessant droughts over the years.
Matabeleland South is facing acute food shortages with reports that some families in Gwanda South are going for days without eating.
Elsewhere, in this paper today, we report about the dire situation in Tsholotsho district where people last received food relief from the government last year.
The situation is even more alarming among the San community still struggling to transform from being hunter-gatherers to subsistence farmers.
It is high time the government moved beyond rhetoric and started moving food relief to needy areas as a matter of urgency. The little resources must be used to ensure people do not die of hunger.
