Senior Zimbabwean officials, including the two vice-presidents and relatives of President Robert Mugabe, have taken farms under the government’s land reforms, according to the country’s Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU).
The reforms were initially promoted as a scheme to benefit landless farmers in overcrowded communal areas.
The list of 181 government officials, top Zanu-PF members, war veterans, intelligence officers, journalists for state media and others was extracted from the government’s own lists of beneficiaries and combined with information gleaned from farmers on the ground.
Vice-President Joseph Msika has taken land near Nyamandhlovu belonging to the parastatal Cold Storage Company, which he is allegedly leasing for grazing. Vice-President Simon Muzenda has taken two farms in Gutu, according to the CFU. Muzenda is apparently involved in cordial negotiations with the farmers, who could receive about $272 000 for improvements to the farms.
Other beneficiaries include Mugabe’s sister Sabina, his brother-in-law Reward Marufu, army commander Constantine Chiwenga, Security Minister Sydney Sekeremayi and MP Elliot Manyika. Rights groups have blamed Manyika for training the youth militias implicated in much of the pre-election violence earlier this year.
The linking of farm seizures to Mugabe’s inner circle — many of whom were responsible for organising the scheme — came as a new law effectively ordered about 2 900 commercial farmers to lay down their tools by the end of Monday.
The farmers are allowed to stay on their land for 45 days.
The move was a bad start to a week when the G8 met in Canada and where leaders of the world’s richest nations were due to consider funding President Thabo Mbeki’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development.
The order will make it difficult for Mbeki to convince Western leaders that he has persuaded Mugabe to moderate his more extreme policies.
Most Zimbabwean farmers have ignored the order. On Wednesday two farmers launched a new legal battle against the land reforms — not opposing land resettlement but the arbitrary manner in which it has been carried out. One, Andy Kockett who farms in Tengwe, asked a high court judge to invalidate the government’s orders, arguing that Mugabe’s regime bypassed its own laws in earmarking farms for resettlement.
”What we were seeking was an order saying that because the process is null and void, he can continue farming,” his lawyer Raymond Barretto said.
The court is still considering the case.
The price for defiance could be high. The law — which was forced through Parliament last month in a special session — says farmers can be imprisoned for up to two years if they do not stop working.
The war veteran-led militias that began invading farms two years ago are still spread out around the country, prompting fears that the situation could explode at any time.
Not much farming is happening in Zimbabwe — partly because it’s winter, partly because the instability and the ever-worsening economy make it difficult to get any work done.
The CFU estimates that about 27% of farms have already stopped working entirely. If enforced, the new order will shut down 60% of the farms that had been opeating when the land invasions began two years ago.
About 24 000ha of wheat is still in fields — a crop Zimbabwe desperately harvested to alleviate the devastating food shortages.
”A lot of people are carrying on with seedbeds to prepare that first step for the next crop,” said one farmer in Karoi.
”Our big concern is that a lot of people are finishing up their tobacco and then leaving the country. Economics is causing as much of [the exodus] as politics.”
The exchange rate on the parallel market has tanked during the past month, falling from about Z$300 to US$1 in May, to more than Z$700 to US$1, making imported supplies, such as fertilizers and machinery, enormously expensive.
If Mugabe’s order is enforced on all the farms, as many as 232 000 farm workers — working on the assumption that an average farm employs about 80 people — could lose their jobs. If their families are taken into account, more than 1,1-million people would lose their livelihoods just as the food shortage is beginning to pinch.
Even in urban shops basic items — such as salt, sugar, cooking oil and mealie meal — are hard to come by. In rural areas the problem is worse. Zimbabwe needs about 1,3-million tonnes of maize to feed the nation until the 2003 harvest.
The World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that six million Zimbabweans — almost half the population — will need emergency aid.
The food crisis is owing to a combination of dry weather during the growing season and the disruptions on the commercial farms, which are about five times more productive than small farms, the WFP said.
According to the General Agriculture and Plantation Workers’ Union, about 70 000 farm workers have already lost their jobs because of the land reforms. Including their families this means about 350 000 people have lost their livelihoods.
Only about 10% of workers have been assigned land on farms earmarked for resettlement, leaving the majority with no income or health care and no way to buy or grow food.
Workers’ advocates say no one is sure where they have all gone. A lucky few found NGOs that have either set up camps or lined up other temporary housing and provided food.
”The degredation these people have suffered is horrific. But now their problem is going to be starvation,” said Reverend Tim Neil, who works with a group that cares for displaced workers.
”Kids [are] not going to school. [They are] too hungry to attend [and] there’s no school fees,” he said. ”There’s going to be a whole section of our community that are not going to be literate.”
At a camp outside Harare, the 37 people forced off a Marondera farm — including two orphans cared for by the worker community — saw little hope of ever returning to their homes and jobs.
”The farm owner is not there and our houses are now occupied,” one said.
The new order shows Mugabe is determined to dismantle the white farming community whatever the social cost and has opened his government to a fresh barrage of criticism.
”We think the government of Zimbabwe’s land policy, including the chaotic and the often violent seizure of privately owned farms has greatly compounded the country’s worsening social, economic and political crisis,” United States State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher said on Monday in Washington.
”It has also greatly exacerbated the food crisis in Zimbabwe, and Southern Africa more broadly.”
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw gave his Parliament a similar assessment on Tuesday, saying the food shortages were caused by ”deliberate decisions of the Mugabe regime” and that forcing workers off farms was a ”man-made tragedy” when the country is facing starvation.
On Wednesday Amnesty International issued a new report on rights abuses in Zimbabwe, blasting Mugabe’s policy of impunity ”where state and non-state actors commit widespread human rights violations without being brought to justice”.