A senior board official, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions, said that right down to the district level, food distributions, the only source of maize, had been run by the army, the Central Intelligence Organization, the police and the district administrator.
"It was more like a campaign tool. Those who were actually supporting the opposition were getting nothing because the CIO wanted to give the grain directly to their supporters," he said.
One diplomat who saw a distribution of food several months ago described a Grain Marketing truck surrounded by ZANU-PF youths wearing party T-shirts and bandannas.
"It was clearly a ZANU-PF food distribution, not a GMB distribution. The two are merged into one," the diplomat said.
With the election over and the food handed out to supporters, the silos are empty, the board official said. And the harvest was 5% of the expected level in some areas.
South of Harare, the countryside gets drier. The landscape is dusty, with red earth and dried yellow grass. Huge oval rocks protrude majestically, balanced one upon another like some geological magic trick.
In the villages, the hunger is so severe that few talk of anything else. In one, the head man -- the traditional elder and ZANU-PF official -- who identified himself only as Isaac, 76, said that in past droughts there were shops to fall back on. But with no harvest, empty shops and no transportation to go and buy elsewhere, people are forced to eat raw wild fruit. He requested anonymity, fearing repercussions.
"In my life I have never known a situation as serious as we are having now," he said.
An 80-year-old woman, Tsungirirai, caring for nine grandchildren, feeds them nothing but green vegetables. She has run out of salt and cannot sell her last few cattle because she needs them for plowing. She recently sold her last goat to buy food.
"There's nothing I can do. I feel as if we are on the road to death. We can't survive eating only vegetables," said the woman, who disclosed only her first name. "Sometimes I cry when I'm on my own in my little hut. Sometimes the children see me crying. The young ones cry with me. The older ones say, 'How will crying help?' "
Isaac, the head man, says villagers come to him for help, but all he can do is send them to the Grain Marketing Board depot, even though he knows there is nothing there.
