Financial Gazette (Harare)
Staff Reporter
14 February 2002
RIOT police were this week deployed in some Harare high-density suburbs to avert food riots as customers jostled for scarce mealie-meal at supermarkets.
On Tuesday night, riot police were called in to disperse hundreds of residents who mobbed a supermarket in Harare's Glen View One, demanding to purchase a few packs of the staple that had been delivered at the shop.
Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena yesterday said police officers were being deployed in high-density suburbs to assist retailers besieged by large crowds to distribute mealie-meal, a foodstuff made from maize.
"The problem here is that of demand and supply so when retailers fail to control the people, they call us and we have always been willing to assist," he told the Financial Gazette.
In Harare suburbs where some residents have gone for more than a week without buying the commodity, it is no longer possible for retailers to distribute mealie-meal in the absence of riot police.
"We are no longer ordering mealie-meal from the millers because we will not be able to distribute it on our own," said the manager of a supermarket in Glen Norah, another Harare suburb. "Every time we receive it, we have to call the police to maintain order."
Maize is in short supply in Zimbabwe because of insufficient harvests caused by drought and the disruption of farming on commercial farms by ruling ZANU PF party supporters who have seized the land in the name of land hunger.
Severe food shortages which have left millions of Zimbabweans facing starvation have raised fears of food riots, last seen in the country in 1998 when thousands of people took to the streets to protest against escalating prices of basic commodities.
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