Unexpected drought has left Southern Africa facing the threat of serious food shortages from June, aid workers say, with Robert Mugabe?s Zimbabwe likely to be worst hit. Mugabe?s government had talked of bumper harvests and scaled back food aid distribution in the country, but in recent days the veteran president has told crowds ahead of March 31 parliamentary polls the country will need help to feed itself.

?The rhetoric is changing?, said one aid worker. ?The government has been indicating that they?ve had poor rainfall. There?s an assumption they may call for food aid after the elections or Independence Day in April.? Aid workers say Zimbabwe?s government has been reluctant to talk of shortages, which critics partly blame on the chaotic redistribution of white-owned farms to landless blacks that coincided with an earlier drought in 2001 and 2002.

Now, poor rainfall and a lack of seed and fertilisers ? blamed by some aid workers on incompetence and others on a deliberate plan to cut food for opposition areas ? has seriously hit the crop due for harvest in coming months. ?The main problem we are facing is one of drought and the shortage of food?, Mugabe told last week. ?We are going to work out a hunger alleviation programme. No-one will starve.?

Zimbabwe, once the region?s breadbasket, looks unlikely to be alone in suffering shortages this year, with drought late in the growing season stretching from northern Botswana to Zambia, Malawi and parts of Mozambique. ?Up to February, the rainfall patterns looked fairly normal?, said Southern African Development Community food security advisor Gary Sawdon. ?Now we?ve had this unusual dry spell. The indications are it is quite bleak.?

In 2002, drought left some 16 million people across the region facing shortages, but harvests have since improved and areas with shortages have survived by importing from regions with surplus, such as northern Mozambique and Zambia. Now, Zambia has declared an export ban and says it will need to import 300,000 tonnes of maize. Only South Africa and Namibia anticipate better crops than last year, aid workers say. South Africa, which is outside the drought belt, is expecting its largest crop in over a decade.

In the rest of the region, some food will be harvested in the next few months but will likely run out much earlier than usual ? possibly as early as June or July, Sawdon said. Many families in the region sold off assets such as furniture and cattle to survive the last drought. Unemployment as textile factories and mines fire workers together with over 100 percent annual inflation in Zimbabwe will likely stretch many to the limit, aid workers say. They suspect opposition reports of frequent hunger deaths in Zim-babwe are overstated, but say there are deaths across the region and warn that lack of food will also hasten death from AIDS.

Aid agencies such as the United Nations World Food Programme may see their food need rise well above what they currently use to feed some 3.5 million people in the region ? although they must wait for invitations from governments such as Zimbabwe to conduct detailed assessments. ?We?re sending out teams. We need to know by the end of April?, said WFP senior regional advisor George Aelion.

<B>Peter APPS</B>