Harare | Saturday
ZIMBABWE’S 79-year-old vice-president Simon Muzenda has become the latest beneficiary of the redistribution of white-owned land and equipment, according to farm union officials.
The Commercial Farmers’ Union claimed in its latest bulletin issued on Friday that Muzenda had led a delegation of officials to Chris Nel’s Chindito farm in the Gutu district about 200km south of Harare and gave him and his family a week in which to leave.
Muzenda told Nel he could ”take his household goods and furniture but nothing else,” the bulletin said. Nel was told ”he was not allowed to move any implements or irrigation equipment as he (Muzenda) would make use of them next week when he began preparations for wheat”.
Neither Nel nor Muzenda could be contacted for comment.
The bulletin said Muzenda told Nel he would be paid for his equipment.
Earlier this week the Daily News reported that Joseph Msika, the other of the country’s two vice-presidents, had seized the major part of a state-owned beef and game ranch in the western province of Matabeleland North, sharing the farm with the local governor, Obert Mpofu.
Constitutional changes by Mugabe two years ago have deprived white farmers of compensation for their land. A wave of illegal evictions by ruling party chiefs and their militias have recently seen at least 150 farmers forced off their farms and forcibly prevented from taking their equipment since the presidential elections in mid-March in which Mugabe was declared the winner.
Farmers have been forced to leave behind millions of dollars’ worth of equipment, from combine harvesters and fleets of tractors to large herds of cattle and tons of already harvested tobacco, according to farm union officials.
Police have set up roadblocks in many districts to prevent farmers from moving their equipment to safety off their farms.
Rampant looting by militias has followed the flight of the owners, but police action is rare, union officials say.
In the face of worsening food shortages, agriculture minister Joseph Made had declared that a new crop of wheat to make the country self-sufficient in the cereal will be planted by indigenous farmers taking over the land.
Nearly all the country’s 4 000 white farmers, who traditionally grow up to 400 000 tons of wheat annually, have been banned from planting any crops since the beginning of the summer cropping season in October last year.
Made ignored warnings early last year that insufficient maize had been grown because of drought and major interruptions of white farmers’ operations by state-backed squatters.
Two weeks ago Made announced that the regime would grow a winter maize crop to try and beat the shortages. – Sapa
29