The Zimbabwean government has cracked the whip on an errant deputy minister for violating government policy and has ordered the minister of anti-corruption and anti-monopolies to launch an investigation into his activities.
Deputy Information Minister Bright Matongo has been personally instructed by President Robert Mugabe to vacate land owned by Tom Beattie.
Matongo and 15 war veterans invaded Chigwel farm in Chegutu in the prime commercial farmland in Mashonaland west, about 100km outside Harare, in May. The estate employs 1 200 workers and exports produce to the Middle East, Russia and Europe, raking in more than $1-million a year.
Two weeks ago the Mail & Guardian reported that on August 31 2004 the Administrative Court of Zimbabwe issued a ”notice of withdrawal” by the minister of lands, agriculture and rural resettlement from interests in ”Tom Beattie family farms”.
Beattie claims he has already voluntarily allocated a ”sizeable portion” of his land for resettlement purposes.
A government source said: ”Beattie is a Zanu-PF supporter and had brought his problem to the attention of the party and government.”
Beattie has obtained a new court order preventing Matongo from coming within 100m of his property. The police have also removed the war veterans from his farm. Beattie told the M&G that he would be suing the deputy minister for damages and loss of production totalling Z$25-million.
Workers have started repairing damage to the farm and production has resumed.
Several studies have pointed to the government’s fast-track land redistribution programme as the main reason for food and nutrition insecurity in Zimbabwe. A recent country-wide survey of communities indicated that 82% of districts reported widespread crop failure after poor rains in the last growing season.
Mugabe this week told the United Nations humanitarian envoy and World Food Programme (WFP) director, James Morris, that he would welcome help in feeding about one-third of the population.
”We want to see that hungry people will get the food they need,” Morris said in Johannesburg, after leaving Harare on Wednesday. Extra food supplies are expected in about two months.
The WFP will not distribute food directly to the general population but will be limited to school feeding programmes, home-based Aids care, and food for work schemes. The restricted scope of the aid will leave the Mugabe government in charge of providing food for the general population.
Food security concerns have escalated in the past two weeks after a crackdown on informal traders and illegal shacks in urban centres, forced thousands of people to flee to rural areas where local chiefs have complained to Mugabe that rural folk are starving. More than 22 000 people have been arrested in police raids since last week.
Meanwhile, the first session of Zimbabwe’s Parliament since the March elections will be held on Thursday. The ruling Zanu-PF is expected to table a proposal to create an upper house of Parliament for the first time since independence in 1980.