White farmers who lost their land in Zimbabwe are helping neighbouring Zambia shore up its tobacco and maize production while steering clear of political controversy.
In the southern town of Choma, about 25 Zimbabwean farmers are leasing farmland to grow tobacco and maize for export and creating jobs for many poor Zambians and an ”outbreak of money”, officials say.
”Tobacco production has increased in the last three years because of the white Zimbabwean farmers who have introduced highly mechanised farming in Zambia,” says Finance Minister Ngandu Magande.
”There is an outbreak of money in Choma,” Magande adds.
The group is part of Zimbabwe’s 4 500 white commercial farmers who had been targeted by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s government since 2000 and whose prime land had been taken away and given to landless blacks.
Before the land invasions, white farmers, mainly descendants of British settlers, owned 70% of the most fertile land in Zimbabwe.
The Choma agriculturists are farming on long-term leases from individual Zambians who were unable to develop the land because of a lack of capital and equipment, and are being financed through $25-million in loans from United States tobacco company Universal.
”Each farm employs about 120 local people,” says Tim Carter (47), a Zimbabwean who owns Nkanga Farms, a tract of land of about 480ha west of Choma.
Carter left Zimbabwe in 1983, three years after Zimbabwean independence and 17 years before Mugabe let his supporters, led by independence war veterans, attack and take over white-owned farms.
Mugabe’s policy sparked an exodus, with farmers leaving for Zambia and Mozambique and a handful even going as far away as Nigeria to rebuild their lives.
Most farmers crossed into Zambia without equipment because the Zimbabwean government imposed a ban on the movement of farm machinery.
”The Zim farmers had to start from scratch,” Carter says.
Universal has provided loans to buy new machinery.
He says he hopes things will change for the better in Zimbabwe after the parliamentary polls on Thursday and is rooting for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
After the scathing experience of Zimbabwe, the white farmers are keeping a low profile in Zambia.
”We don’t even talk politics here. It’s sports and farming,” Carter says.
Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa last year sternly warned the Zimbabwean farmers that they will be thrown out if they use speech that is deemed to be racist.
”In Britain, you can tell [Prime Minister Tony] Blair ‘go to hell’, but if you tell [Zambia’s Agriculture Minister Mundia] Sikatana ‘go to hell’, you will be deported,” Mwanawasa warned.
The Zimbabwean farmers do not have permanent resident status in Zambia, but have been allowed to settle in the country as ”investors”.
”We have issued a total of 61 investment certificates to Zimbabwean investors in the agriculture sector since 1993,” says Sharon Sichilongo, spokesperson for the Zambia Investment Centre.
”Holders of investment certificates are allowed to stay in Zambia as long as they stick to the business for which the certificate was issued,” she adds.
On Nkanga, in a nearby field, several dozen women with babies tied to their backs are harvesting tobacco in the scorching sun, back-breaking work that pays farmhands an average of 180 000 kwacha (about R230) per month.
”The Zimbabwean farmers have really helped us,” says Amon Deman, Nkanga Farms’ Zambian manager. ”At least we now have jobs and a steady income to enable us to send our children to school.” — Sapa-AFP