Harare | Wednesday
STEPPING up the pace of their land ”reform” process, the Zimbabwean government has ordered 1 000 white commercial farmers off their land. Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa was quoted as saying that a further 3 500 white farmers who had received preliminary warnings their land would be seized would soon receive seizure notices.
The farmers face prison sentences of up to two years if they do not comply with the government decree and many have now started dismantling their farming equipment and packing up their homes.
As the stunned farmers tried to absorb the new mass eviction bid, their union warned them not to make immediate decisions for their future.
Commercial Farmers’ Union president Colin Cloete said in a statement on Tuesday night that a decree issued by Mugabe last week that gave the owners of about 800 farms immediate notice of 90 days to get off their farms, had ”widespread implications.”
The issue would be discussed by union leaders before it could give any advice.
Union officials said a series of meetings would be held around the country later this week.
”I don’t know what to do now,” said one senior official. ”What are we supposed to tell people, plant at the risk of being thrown off before they can reap, or pack up and go and abandon everything, their whole lives. This is too horrible for words.”
On Monday senior cabinet ministers confirmed that the decree issued by Mugabe under his sweeping presidential powers meant that confiscation orders that previously could come into effect only after being approved by a court, now gave farmers three-months notice from Friday when the decree was issued, and side-stepped the judiciary.
They said that the owners of another 3 700 farms – making a total of 4 500 properties, or 90% of the more then ten million hectares owned by white farmers – would receive the same eviction orders.
The move would probably have the most devastating effect of everything that has happened since thousands of ruling Zanu-(PF) party militias began invading white-owned farms in February last year, observers said.
Since then 39 farm workers and nine white farmers have been murdered, while police took scant notice of appeals for protections from rampant violence, destruction of property, harassment and theft by squatters.
With the beginning this week of the summer rainfall season, usually welcomed with joy by farmers, economists forecast that Mugabe’s move would immediately force farmers to abandon all their plans to plant for the summer cropping season.
Several farmers contacted around the country said they had been dismantling irrigation equipment on their farms. ”What the hell is going on?” pleaded one farmer who asked not to be named. ”I produced 12 000 tonnes of wheat this year and the government is asking for food aid. There is no sense.”
Said another: ”We have been producing through 18 months of anarchy and lawlessness. But how can you survive this? You wonder what we have been doing here.”
The United Nations was expected this week to give its response to an appeal by the government two weeks ago for $365-million emergency relief, including food aid.
Aid agencies say already nearly one million people are in ”dire need” of food aid and that stocks of maize are expected to run out in January.
In a radio interview on Wednesday morning, Chinimasa denied there was a food shortage and said it was ‘propaganda’. Observers say Mugabe’s goal to hand over millions of hectares of white land to blacks is his most important strategy to retain power in elections due by the end of March next year. – Sapa