Zimbabwe Absurdity

The car thermometer read 1⁰C but I was determined to get the photograph that I’d seen on several early morning trips to walk the dogs on ART farm on the northern boundary of Harare. There was nothing for it but to just put up with the cold. Yes, it’s winter here in the southern hemisphere and we expect it to get cold, with the occasional frost in low-lying areas, but this winter has been unusually warm during the day.

We get our rains in our summer and this last season was marked by an El Niño event in the south Pacific Ocean (unusually warm temperatures) which kept the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), the source of most of our summer rain, well to the north over Kenya and Tanzania. Zimbabwe went dry and consequently hungry. Most of the staple crop of maize grown in the country is rain-dependent and there was widespread crop failure. Farmers desperate to sell their cattle while they were marketable, swamped the abattoirs who eventually refused to buy any more. I’m told by my commercial farmer customers that what maize has been grown has been subject to widespread theft.

Droughts are nothing new in this part of the world – in 1992 when I was living in the east of the country we had a similar one and I took the photo below near where I was living. The next year the rains returned and the grazing recovered.

El Niño has relinquished its grip and been replaced by La Niña, which is characterized by cooling of the Pacific Ocean, which is good news for our weather pattern – we can expect a more normal rainy season this year. This unusually warm July is merely that, unusually warm due to the barrage of low pressure systems hitting the Cape in South Africa which draw warm air down from central Africa. La Niña has no effect on Zimbabwe’s winter temperatures.

From my business’ point of view I am not complaining – the warmer temperatures help us to get the seedlings through the nursery quicker and reduce costs. We really do need the prospect of a good wet season though as we rely entirely on boreholes for our water supply and despite the La Niña event of 2020 to 2022 we didn’t get the good rains the rest of the country experienced so they will need replenishing.