Some 12 million people in southern Africa, mainly in Zimbabwe and Malawi, need emergency food aid, the United Nations said on Tuesday, saying the situation in the region was serious despite South Africa's bumper harvest. In its latest Africa report, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said good harvests were expected in the Sahel region below the Sahara desert, after a severe food crisis in 2004/05 which hit income and nutrition levels hard.