REBELLIOUS MOOD IN RURAL ZIMBABWE!

By Peter Tinona Chikwaka, Eastern Zimbabwe.

People living in rural parts of Zimbabwe may have benefited from President Robert Mugabe's land reform programme but that does not mean he can count on all their votes in the 29 March elections.
The government has given out bags of seed - but not to everyone. In previous years, rural Zimbabweans in the north and east have mostly backed Mr Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party but now the mood has changed.
Free land is of little use when you cannot afford seeds or fertiliser and rural people and their families are also affected by the collapse of the economy.
Giles Mutengwa, a 51-year-old father of four from Chikwaka, in Mashonaland East province, says his family will not vote for Zanu-PF this time.
"We want change. We want jobs for our children and food and basics in the shops," he said.
"The ruling party has failed to deliver and I think its time to let someone else lead the country," said Mr Mutengwa, who lost his job three years ago.

Edgar Tawanda, 52, was given a small plot of land just north of Harare and last year some seed and fertiliser under a new scheme to boost food production.
In previous years, he always voted Zanu-PF voter but he now complains about the poor planning and alleged corruption in the Maguta (Time of Plenty) scheme which is being run by the army.
"We got 50kg of maize seed and six bags of fertiliser but it was not enough for our land. We had to buy to supplement the hand-outs," he said.
He said that army officials involved in the scheme kept much of the hand-outs for themselves - similar accusations to those which dogged the redistribution of land in recent years.
The mood in rural areas has also been hit by non-stop rains which have badly hit farmers like Mr Tawanda, leaving fields water-logged.
"The rains have adversely affected my crop and I think I am not going to harvest as much as I anticipated," he said.
The vagaries of the weather are beyond Mr Mugabe's control but he is once more using his redistribution of land as a campaign tool.
The president raises the prospect that the land would be seized back under an opposition government and promises that rural living standards will soon start to rise, with the help of schemes like Maguta - messages that may still work for many rural voters.

Officials say that up to 750,000 people have been given land seized from white farmers since 2000 but critics say most beneficiaries have been top civil servants and ruling party cadres.
Mr Mugabe has been distributing tractors and ox-drawn ploughs to boost agricultural production - bribes, say his critics - but even such largesse may not necessarily be a net vote-winner.
Many people, like Mr Tawanda, were bitter at being left out.
Mr Mugabe's main challengers - former Finance Minister Simba Makoni and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai - have both said the land reforms have been at the heart of Zimbabwe's economic collapse and promise to turn things round.
Mr Makoni says he would take back land from those who do not use it or who own more than one farm.
Mr Tsvangirai says the land question must be resolved once and for all, so Zimbabweans never go hungry again.
"We shall be the bread basket of Africa again and not its basket case any longer," Mr Tsvangirai says in his manifesto.
When Zimbabwe's land reform programme was speeded up in the late 1990s, the government said that food production would increase, even if production of cash crops such as tobacco could suffer, as white-owned commercial farms were divided up and redistributed to poor black families.
But instead harvests of the staple food maize declined, leading to widespread hunger.
In 2006, the military launched the Maguta programme to try to boost maize production.

Maize production has been hit by heavy rains - and poor planning.
One of the top officials behind the scheme, Brigadier-General Douglas Nyikayaramba said it had helped place an extra 20,000 - 25,000 ha of land under maize around the country - both commercial farmers (A1) and in communal areas, where land is allocated by local chiefs.
"A1 and communal farmers can produce a lot to supplement the national needs and since the programme was launched these farmers have done well," he said recently.
But this year, the maize harvest is predicted to be just 500,000 tons - far below the 850,000 tons produced in 1998-99.
Tobacco yields are also sharply down - just 60,000 ha was planted this season, just a third of the 180,000 ha planted in 1999-2000, when it was Zimbabwe's main foreign currency earner.
The World Food Programme says it is distributing food aid to some 2.6 million people this year - about a quarter of the population.
The opposition says the government has not only used land, seeds and tractors to buy votes but also food aid.
Only people carrying Zanu-PF membership cards get hand-outs from the state-owned Grain Marketing Board in some areas, they say.
These accusations have been denied by government officials.
The WFP does not want to get drawn into Zimbabwean politics but insists that the aid it distributes is free from political interference.
The author's name has been changed as BBC reporters have not been allowed to cover the elections. The names of the interviewees have also been changed.

BBC NEWS REPORT.