Johannesburg — An estimated 2.5 million Zimbabweans in four southern provinces have registered with the government for food aid, the 'Financial Gazette' reported on Thursday. The figure represents about one-fifth of the nation's 12.5 million people, and came from totalling the number of requests for food relief in the provinces of Matabeleland South and North, Midlands and Masvingo.

The hardest-hit province is Matebeland South, where 540,550 people out of a population of 900,000 have registered for food aid, the paper said. Aid agencies and government reports have attributed the food crisis in southern Zimbabwe on several factors, including a devastating cyclone in early 2000, a January drought which destroyed this year's maize crops, and ongoing disruptions to agricultural activity due to land invasions by liberation war veterans.

Violence tied to the government's land reform scheme prevented both commercial and small-scale farmers from producing a full maize crop. Zimbabweans consume between 1.8 million and two million mt of maize per year, but government officials have estimated that only 1.4 million mt would be harvested this year, while the nation's reserves were nearly empty.