In the face of a Zimbabwean economic meltdown – inflation at 62%, the fuel crisis expected to worsen in December – haphazard land invasions continue
Mercedes Sayagues
A red combine is harvesting the last of David Jenkins’s winter wheat. At the harvested end of the field, settlers are digging holes to plant maize.
Never mind that the wheat will suffocate the maize unless it is treated with expensive chemicals the settlers can’t afford. After four days of rain, green wheat shoots are already sprouting. When Jenkins points this out, the settlers shrug it off: “We don’t care. This is our land and we do as we wish.”
Jenkins’s 480ha farm among the lush hills of Mazowe, 64km from the capital Harare, was not among the 3 000-odd commercial farms listed for confiscation. Jenkins was never notified the farm would be resettled. Unluckily for him his farm is called Virginia, the same name as a section of a nearby citrus estate earmarked for resettlement.
Two weeks ago, when district authorities in a police Land Rover and about 100 people showed up at Jenkins’s farm, he explained the mistake. When the farmer produced his title deeds, the angry crowd promptly snatched them. A scuffle followed. Jenkins and his labour fled. “We would have been killed if we stayed,” he says. His lawyer met the governor. He wouldn’t budge.
At a ceremony on October 27 the provincial governor allocated 240 plots. A government tractor ploughed a bit of land, broke down, left and never came back.
Two days later, when farm workers tried to plant cotton, the occupiers pelted them with stones and tried to burn the tractor. Jenkins was told to harvest the wheat and stop all farm operations except the export rose scheme. The farm employs 250 workers.
One week later not more than two dozen settlers remain. A lot are women. In small groups, they toil half-heartedly. By lunchtime many head back to Glendale township, 6km away.
One settler has set up camp in a bright pink Kombi under gum trees. With two oxen he has ploughed half of the 1,2ha allocated, but has yet to plant.
Across Zimbabwe, haphazard resettlement and new invasions are rife with violence.
In the past week, the Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU) reports dozens of assaults on farm workers and farm guards, stoning of farm vehicles and three attacks with axes. Fearing eviction, some farm workers fight the occupiers.
Settlers are pegging, ploughing and building huts on prepared land and on seedbeds. On some farms they destroy standing crops and pull out tobacco seedlings to plant maize.
Jenkins and his neighbours tried gathering all the labour of nearby farms to plough but desisted when the invaders became aggressive.
‘There is no point in risking lives,” says Jenkins.
It is raining daily and good soil will keep the moisture. But who will provide the settlers with seeds, fertiliser, tractors and fuel? Not Zimbabwe’s bankrupt government, which lives from hand to mouth.
This week the National Oil Company, Noczim, warned that the fuel crisis would get worse in December. Tankers are docked in the Mozambican port of Beira but there is no foreign exchange to pay. When the tobacco sales end in mid-November, the trickle of forex will dwindle further.
The local press reports that soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo are now paid in Congolese francs and some embassy staff are stranded abroad, unable to ship back their belongings. Inflation is 62% and rising. Government spending is out of control. The economy is in meltdown.
The government has abandoned any pretence of a planned, guided resettlement. Listed and unlisted farms are occupied daily. Different authorities issue confiscation orders, often contradictory. The army enforces resettlement. Police, soldiers and civil servants are allocated plots.
Police mostly remain inactive, although in Manicaland province officers have driven invaders off non-designated farms. “It’s a shambles,” says Jim Sinclair, a farmer in Norton, 80km from Harare.
Every province, every farm is a different story. Sinclair’s farm is listed for acquisition but he can plant crops. A nearby farm was resettled but two-thirds of the people left after the handing ceremony.
Down the road, militant war veterans stopped all planting on Peter Zeigler’s farm. A vigilant helicopter circles over seedbeds and fields. Why this zeal and where does the fuel come from? It is rumoured that an Air Force commander covets this farm.
The situation is worse in Mashonaland Central and quieter in Matabeleland. Overall, says Dr Jerry Grant, CFU regional director: “The fast-track resettlement is chaos promoted by top ministers.”
A United Nations technical team, which last month assessed Zimbabwe’s land reform, concluded that there is no coherent plan and no institutional capacity to make it work. Its draft report says that provincial governors do as they please, often in disregard of the law.
The mission was sent by UN boss Kofi Annan, following his meeting with President Robert Mugabe in New York in September, in a last effort to inject some sense into this policy.
This week, the Supreme Court heard arguments about the constitutionality of farm seizures. Arguing for the state, the deputy attorney general conceded that the fast-track resettlement was chaotic. A ruling will follow soon.
The government keeps attacking the judiciary. Said a full-page Zanu-PF ad in the papers: “Don’t let them [whites] use the courts and the Constitution against the masses.”
Neither UN criticism nor court rulings deter Mugabe. “This is our land and we will do what we want with it,” he said on national TV.
Although the government promised 20% of land to women, the Women’s Land Lobby this week criticised random settlement. So did the Indigenous Commercial Farmers’ Union.
So do most Zimbabweans. Nearly two-thirds believe the land invasions have nothing to do with land reform, according to a recent survey by the Johannesburg-based Helen Suzman Foundation.
Since its last survey in January support for land invasions has dropped even among communal farmers and Shona-speakers, Zanu- PF’s traditional power base. Almost half of communal farmers and one-third of Zanu-PF voters want white farmers to stay on the farms.
Overall, only 21% say farm invasions are justified, while 70% think the war veterans are “criminals who should be charged with their crimes”. Even among rural dwellers, communal farmers and people in the Zanu-PF heartland of Mashonaland, a large majority want to end farm invasions and charge the war vets with crimes.
Only 6% say that land is the most important issue – down from 9% in January.
Skewed land ownership in Zimbabwe is, however, an issue that must be addressed. About 4 000 commercial farmers own 70% of arable land. In 1998 all stakeholders agreed on a reasonable, step-by-step programme with donor support but it never took off.
Mugabe ordered the farm invasions after losing the constitutional referendum in February, not as a tool for rural development, but to regain momentum and popularity. Never mind the cost to Zimbabwe’s agro-based economy.