A state newspaper in Zimbabwe said on Friday the government had taken a radical move of banning all food handouts by NGOs. The decision was announced by Agriculture Minister Joseph Made  and will arouse suspicion that it is politically motivated.

The official Manica Post newspaper said NGOs would no longer be allowed to doll out free food despite more than 2 million people requiring food aid, according to a forecast last month by the US-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network. Made said the government was reintroducing food for work programmes. He said the main motivation was to ensure the rehabilitation of farmland.

The MDC's agricultural spokesperson Renson Gasela told Eyewitness News the decision, if true, was inhuman. Made is from President Robert Mugabe's party, which in the past claimed NGOs were campaigning for MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai. NGOs were banned from operating in the rural areas during the 2008 elections  and both Zanu-PF and the MDC hinted another poll could be held sooner rather than later