The military has taken control of food production by small-scale farmers in parts of southern Zimbabwe, a rights NGO headed by church leaders claimed recently.
The Solidarity Peace Trust alleges that, under the guise of Operation Taguta/Sisuthi (eat well), launched last year to help revive the agriculture sector, army units have “hijacked” plots and maize harvests in the southern province of Matabeleland, leaving smallholder farmers with no income or food.
“The fact that they have taken away the farmers’ food, which is rightfully theirs, produced by their hard labour, is a hugely immoral issue,” said South African Anglican bishop of KwaZulu-Natal Rubin Phillip. Phillip chairs the trust, together with the Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube.
Phillip visited Matabeleland last week with Bishop Kevin Dowling of Rustenburg to investigate the impact on rural communities of the deployment of the army. They released a report, and video interviews with some of the farmers at a press conference in Johannesburg.
The church leaders described the operation as “command agriculture” and claimed that soldiers seized early maize harvests on some farms and threatened to take produce that is due in the next few weeks. This, they said, is a violation of the Grain Marketing Board Act, which allows producers to keep output needed for household consumption. The trust has asked the Zimbabwean government to respect the rights of small-scale farmers.
“Plot-holders perceive that they are being treated as indentured labour, with no rights and no claim over the produce they have laboured all summer to produce,” the report said.
Soldiers insist that only maize should be grown on plots and have destroyed vegetable gardens and fruit trees that supplement the incomes and diets of small-scale farmers in the lean season, said Dowling. “This destruction has turned plot-holders into paupers overnight.”
Soldiers, whose knowledge of agriculture is limited, have spent more than a month tilling the land for the farmers. This delayed maize planting, the church leaders allege. In some cases, the farmers were unable to make use of the good rains this year — “the best in 20 years” — and some failed to plant at all, Dowling said.
One of the farmers interviewed claimed soldiers had threatened to beat him if he refused to obey them. Phillip said they had also received complaints of soldiers sexually abusing schoolgirls in some of the villages. “The presence of soldiers … has disrupted the social fabric and left people angry and afraid,” the report noted.
The church leaders claim that the army was deployed to rural areas ahead of the rural district elections in September. The plan, they said, was to take produce from the rural areas to ensure that the urban population was fed and thus prevent unrest over food shortages.
Minister of National Security Didymus Mutasa, who chairs the National Taskforce on Food Security, dismissed the allegations as “lies”. He confirmed that the army had been deployed under Operation Taguta/Sisuthi to revive the agriculture sector. “They are going to help small-scale farmers till their land to grow maize — they will also grow maize on other state-owned land in the country to boost our maize production. As you know, we do not have enough maize and we have to buy from South Africa, which is very expensive.”
The maize is sold by the army, which deducts a share of the profit for its services, and the remainder is be given to the farmers, he explained.
News reports suggest that the government launched Operation Taguta/Sisuthi last year, but had been unable to raise the full United States $151-million required. Quoting a Zimbabwean parliamentary report, the privately-owned the Zimbabwe Independent said the initiative aimed to produce 2,3-million tons of maize.
However, despite a good rainy season, the national maize output is only expected to reach about two-thirds of the country’s requirements, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.
Zimbabwe has experienced food shortages for the past four years, mainly as a result of erratic weather conditions, the impact of the chaotic land-reform programme and a lack of foreign currency to import inputs, such as fuel and fertiliser. — Irin News Service