BUHERA, Zimbabwe -- Zimbabwean teenager James Mamuka not only worries constantly about keeping his siblings in school, but also watches them slowly starve like half the country's population as another drought looms.

Mamuka, 18, joined some 5,100 villagers in Zimbabwe's eastern district of Buhera on Friday to receive meager food handouts from the United Nations' World Food Program (WFP), Reuters reported.

"Whatever I can get today is all I will have to feed my family. With this drought there is nothing else," said Mamuka, with the same sense of hopelessness as many of his neighbors.

Since his parents died within a year of each other, Mamuka has been the main breadwinner for his six younger brothers and sisters and the task is not getting any easier as drought grips the once bountiful nation.

Once the bread basket of Southern Africa, Zimbabwe is one of the countries hardest hit by food shortages which the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says threaten 40 million Africans.

Critics blame President Robert Mugabe's controversial seizure of land from minority whites for redistribution to landless blacks which they say has disrupted agriculture and slashed production, exacerbating food shortages.

The official Herald paper, citing the meteorological office, projected below normal rainfall for most parts of Zimbabwe between January and March.

"There are greater chances of below normal rainfall for the eastern and southern half of the country while northern areas are expected to receive normal rainfall," the paper said.

Mugabe's government denies contributing to the food shortages, which it says are due solely to the drought that has hit the small-scale black farmers who account for 70 percent of Zimbabwe's annual maize output.

Aid agency Christian care, the WFP's implementing partner in Buhera, distributed about 60,000 tons of food on Friday among 5,100 villagers in the Vhiriri area, many of whom have written-off their summer crop of their staple maize.

**** Crops Wilt in the Soil ***** Tracts of dry land lie unplanted along the highway to Buhera, 220km (135 miles) southeast of the capital Harare.

Villagers have planted maize and other commodities in places, but crops are wilting under the relentless heat or not developing properly, meaning they will not give a normal crop.

Bedraggled villagers sighed with relief as they loaded their food allocations into donkey-drawn carts and wheelbarrows, but many said it was still not enough.