FROM THE PUBLIC EDITOR'S DESK : Hunger, people’s story, role of the media

At one point during shortage of food in the country, the minister for agriculture told citizens: “In fact there is no shortage of food; people are just being too choosy. They want to eat what they are used to eating. Now I tell them: Eat what you have!”

Message delivered. They must eat what they need—in order to survive; not what they want—to award their desires. Message received.

They must not complain about shortage; but if they want, they can complain about lack of choice which is neither lack of food nor presence of famine.

In such a situation, if the majority were to eat what they had; a good number of them would eat hunger, which is what they possessed.

Today, there are cries from almost all corners of the country: hunger here, hunger there. But the President has said there is neither hunger nor starvation.

The Prime Minister has said there is no hunger. The ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party publicity secretary is up in arms against anyone who says there is hunger or famine or acute food insufficiency in the country.

An ageing leader of one of the opposition parties has joined the Executive in denying there is hunger or famine and has reiterated the Executive’s opinion and wish that, if there were hunger it was only the President who would announce that; and not any other person.

What could this mean? That citizens affected by hunger keep quiet or whisper to local leaders without shouting about the matter on top of their voices; or just die in total silence?

Of late, local leaders and some politicians, even those who had been warned by the Executive that reporting hunger or famine in their areas of jurisdiction would be tantamount to “application for expulsion,” are engaged in a rigmarole of defining hunger: famine, insufficiency of food, lack of food, and, or starvation.

And meanwhile, the media continue to pour reports from far and wide in the country on the absence, insufficiency and completely lack of food at certain localities.

In the past two weeks, bishops have conducted prayers and ordered their subordinates elsewhere to organise specific prayer programmes, to ask for God’s “immediate intervention.”

The bishops have repeatedly said rains have not come in time in many places. Crops usually blossoming in September, October and November withered at very early stage.

They have insisted that there are no more food reserves as peasant farmers had thrown in for the next season.

They were now calling on the Lord God to rescue localities and the nation from the impending hanger.

I happen to like to see the role of media in such situations.

This time around, media outlets have collected and disseminated information from grass roots. They have not added a thing on what people in localities are saying or demanding.

This is alright. They have not engaged in definition and, or redefinition of words and terms in relation to hunger. But they have not done one thing: They have not shown the interest to tell the “hunger story” in its entirety – with full details, facts, figures and evidence although correspondents have gnawed on the giant source of the story to get us started.

But it demands well schooled, trained and thoroughly mentored scribes to be on spot—at specific areas where peasant farmers have a word to whisper to the world on what is happening to them.

The media must guard against engagement in the same rigmarole – defining and redefining “hunger” – 56 years after independence – while cries for help fill the air.

For whatever reason, let the citizens speak out and let media outlets be by their side to tell the story from the horses’ mouth—honestly, truthfully and accurately.

Hunger in the eyes of the rulers needs to shrink in definition and size; to hunger in the eyes and experience of the hungry and the needy.