Two orphan children kneel on the side of a highway in Zimbabwe's drought-hit south, picking up kernels of the food staple maize which have spilled off a passing truck. "We hope to gather enough maize to boil for a meal for the two us and our grandmother, with whom we have lived since our parents died last year," says Thandiwe, an 11-year-old girl. Her 9-year-old brother Clever nods shyly.
Their desperate mission is testimony to escalating food shortages in southern Zimbabwe, which have worsened the plight of villagers grappling with unemployment and the scourge of HIV-AIDS.
After six years of recession, there are tentative signs of a recovery in Zimbabwe's economy, but analysts say its frailty will be a key issue in parliamentary polls on March 31.
President Robert Mugabe's government has insisted since last year that there is enough food in the country's reserves and from the current crop to cover districts with low harvests, but villagers in one such area say supplies are running short.
"Food has been a problem here because we have had erratic rains for the past five years," said Ishmael Ncube, traditional headman at Esiphezini village in Esigodini district.
"We have not seen people actually starve to death, but you can tell by looking at most of them that they don't get enough to eat," he told Reuters.
Most of the crop in Esigodini, 40 km (25 miles) south-east of Zimbabwe's second city of Bulawayo, has shrivelled after rains in the November to March season came too little, too late.
The latest dry spell has worsened the impact of four consecutive years of drought and disruptions to agriculture linked to the government's controversial land reforms, in which white-owned commercial farmland was seized for landless blacks.
But most international aid agencies have halted relief operations after the government said last year their services were no longer necessary, accusing some of using their work as a cover for furthering the agenda of the main opposition party.
This has put pressure on villagers whose only source of income is agriculture. They cannot afford to buy food from the state Grain Marketing Board (GMB), which is responsible for ensuring that the country has sufficient reserves.
"In the past we were buying 50 kg bags of maize meal at Z$15,000 ($2.42) but now the price has gone up to Z$30,000 and we understand that the next lot of grain will be sold at Z$42,000 a bag," Ncube said.
Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, denies that the seizure of white-owned farms has undermined agriculture. He blames a sharp decline in food output in southern Africa's former bread basket, largely on the drought.
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