The declarations will allow national emergency funds to go to the areas in the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal (east), Eastern Cape (southeast), Mpumulanga (northeast), Free State (centre) and Northern Cape (south) a government statement said.

A cabinet committee on disaster management met on Thursday to consider the situation and will present a report next week, it said.

The statement noted that the government had allocated 250 million randmillion dollars) for drought relief in October.

"Various government departments have been active in dealing with the effects of these disasters ever since the first signs appeared," it said.

Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe have also reported droughts recently.

In mid-December, a South African weather specialist said there was just three months' supply of water for human consumption and irrigation left in the country's "critically empty" dams.

In the other nations, large proportions of populations are already dependent on food aid.

"The food security (until April) remains precarious," the Famine Early Warning Systems Network said recently in a report on Zimbabwe.

"The humanitarian community is urged to plan for the worst-case scenario," it added.

The number of people in need of food aid in Zimbabwe's rural areas is expected to increase from 4.8 million to 5.1 million by March.

The shortages there have been attributed partly to the drought, but also the government's controversial land reform programme of taking white-owend farmland and redistributing it to blacks, which brought commercial agricultural production to a virtual halt.

Zimbabwe's neighbour Botswana is experiencing its worst agricultural performance in 10 years -- its total production enough to meet only 13 percent of national cereal requirements.

"The drought situation has seriously affected the animals' birth rate and worsened their mortality rate. The impact of drought is clearly visible accross the country," said Musa Fanakiso, deputy director of animal health and production.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) warns that Lesotho, an enclave surrounded by South Africa, is "heading for its worst drought in memory".

"People are already talking total crop failure in Lesotho. We will need continued international assistance in the forseeable future," said WFP spokesman Michael Huggins.

In Namibia and the tiny kingdom of Swaziland, about a third of the people will need food assistance next year, aid agencies said.

The majority of Swaziland's 1.1 million people live in rural areas where subsistence farming is the main source of income.

The WFP will next year start distributing seeds in an attempt to encourage Swazis to grow crops that can withstand severe weather conditions.

Namibia's deputy director of emergency management, Gabriel Kangowa, said in December that the Windhoek government had raised less than half the funds needed to cope.

Zambia, where more than two million people were at risk of famine last year, is steadily recovering from that crisis, but is still grappling with chronic poverty.

This year, Zambian farmers have produced enough to feed the country, the WFP says, with maize production doubling to 1.2 million tonnes, and Zambia has even exported maize to Zimbabwe for the first time.

But "areas of chronic food insecurity" remain and about 500,000 people, including farmers and their dependents, as well as AIDS orphans, still require assistance from the WFP, the agency says.

TERRA.WIRE