MAFETENG, Lesotho, May 24 (AFP) - Withered crops, a gaunt pensioner and a bony donkey in southwest Lesotho tell of the starvation threatening 80 percent of the tiny kingdom as voters on Saturday go to the polls after the government failed to act on famine warnings.
Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili on April 19 declared a famine and promised 23 million rand (2.3 million dollars) of emergency aid, but warnings of Lesotho's worst crop failures were sounded six months ago.
"All parties pay lip service to us but nothing goes into our stomachs. The promises of food are not coming to us," Mathabo Moepo, an emaciated pensioner from Lekoatse in Mafeteng district southwest of Maseru, told AFP.
Moepo said she would vote for the Basotho National Party, the main opposition to Mosisili's ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD), in the weekend parliamentary elections.
UN World Food Programme (WFP) deputy representative in Lesotho Viney Jain said severe shortages were reported in November by non-governmental organisations doing distribution.
The WFP started feeding some 36,000 people in five out of Lesotho's 10 districts last year, after heavy rains, hail and, in some areas drought, devastated crops.
"This is far less than those needing assistance," WFP representative Techester Zergarber observed.
While 36,000 is a fraction of the 2.6 million people the WFP is assisting in southern Africa, the country with its 2.2 million people has been worse hit than others by the drought.
"The effects of the drought and rains in Lesotho are much more dramatic than in any neighbouring country," said Zergarber, explaining that only nine percent of land in Lesotho is arable.
Another problem for the country, landlocked by South Africa, is that many Basotho working in South African mines were retrenched over the last decade, depriving it of a major source of income.
"Almost three-quarters of miners have come back and there is huge unemployment of at least 30 percent," Zergarber said.
"Also a number of migrant workers who were helping their families are now a burden as there is a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS."
It is estimated that 33 percent of the people in Lesotho aged between 15 and 49 years have HIV/AIDS.
Malebohang Machachamise, from Thabana-Morena in Mafeteng, said there are very poor and sick people in her village.
"One is unable to walk and relatives help him," she said. "Sometimes children go to sleep without eating even pap (maize porridge) or cabbage."
Lesotho has suffered a steady decline in crop production and has not been self-sufficient in cereal crops since the 1970s, David Hall, the director of Maseru-based socio-economic consultancy Sechaba said.
"When there is a downward trend and on top of that there is poor weather, there is bound to be a disaster."
He said damaging agricultural practices such as monocropping and overuse of chemicals have exarcerbated the crop decline over the past 30 years.
In Lesotho, 80 percent of the population relies on subsistence farming for survival.
When he announced the famine, Mosisili said the country needed 200,000 metric tons of maize to feed people.
He promised food parcels to the most vulnerable groups, including the elderly and orphans, and a 20-percent subsidy on maize-meal to the rest of the population.
The government failed to be proactive about this crisis, charged Rok Ajulu, a professor in political economics, at Rhodes University in South Africa.
"Today with modern technology there are early warning systems, why were they not put in place? Famine can be a political tool."
The weekend vote is Lesotho's third since independence from Britain in 1966. It is hoped it will consolidate democracy after the results of the last election in 1998 were violently disputed.
The unrest led to military intervention by South Africa and Botswana which in turn provoked clashes that left 75 people dead.
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