Zimbabwe -- Nothing but destruction to show for land grab

Harare - “We never thought it would be as bad as it is," said former farm worker Albert Chanetsa, a veteran tractor driver.

Nor did anyone else, including the foot soldiers who ran the land revolution for President Robert Mugabe.

"There is no planting. There is no farming here," said Chanetsa , and a few former colleagues, now refugees, sitting on a ledge outside an old farm kitchen nodded in agreement. The air was thick with the promise of rain and frangipani blossom, but the conversation was as depressing as the deserted farm yards.

"They won't let us plant," said a health worker from another former commercial farm in the area. They, are of course, some war veterans and ruling Zanu PF supporters who have taken over the farm.

In the most fertile cropping province, Mashonaland West, along many kilometres of council and private roads, fields are bare and weeds the only greenery. Hundreds of hectares of young coffee is abandoned, and citrus orchards were burned in September and the blaze melted the drip irrigation pipes which watered the trees.

Footage shot from a light aircraft over the rest of the central provinces in the past three weeks is an equally bleak record of the results of nearly three years of agrarian reform.

In place of mechanical maize planters which put down 20ha of seed a day, thin old women bent double are planting pip by pip, about half a hectare in the same time.

Many of Mugabe's storm troopers have neither seed nor fertiliser. They are hanging about scratching at the soil here and there, and waiting.

At Lions Den, about 150km north west of Harare, there is an exception to the desolation, 50ha of young maize, at present overcome with weeds, planted by higher education minister and president of the Zimbabwe Red Cross Society, Swithun Mombeshora. Mombeshora, assisted by police from the provincial capital, Chinhoyi, finally chucked the owners off last month.

He had an easy start to the season, free land, free irrigation equipment, plentiful seed and fertiliser. Mombeshora said: "I don't know about planting in the rest of the province, but I am farming."

Ormeston, the farm he took, has for decades reaped 750ha of maize and soyas, 80ha of tobacco, and 15ha of export flowers, and in the winter season just ended, 600ha of wheat.

Contrary to what Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge told South Africans a couple of weeks ago that land reform was complete a productive farmer is chased off his land almost every day, including some who planted summer crops.

It is 33 months since Mugabe launched some veterans of the liberation war onto white-owned farms. There is nothing to show for it but destruction.

The drought was, in the scheme of things, a sideshow, as Zimbabwe has weathered worse before.

But what of the doughty, overcrowded communal farmers who are capable of producing 800,000 tons of maize in a year? The communal farmers are weakened by inflation, which will hit 200% by year end, and by shortages of inputs. They are also hungry, and their families are diminished by HIV AIDS. They have no access to dams or irrigation, and prospects for decent rain this season, are dim.

Mugabe's new farmers in Mashonaland West are largely businessmen or politicians who bark orders down the phone to managers from their suburban homes in the city.

In the Mazowe Valley last week, west of Harare, is first lady Grace Mugabe's farm, which she wrenched from a frightened old couple. She is growing a few hectares of maize, government tractors were ploughing for her last weekend at a dirt cheap price, and Mugabe's sister, Sabina, is trying her hand at seed maize on one of several farms she has taken.

But none of them will in the foreseeable future produce enough food, or enough foreign currency to import what was grown before.

SA maize was trading at R1840 a ton recently. In Zimbabwe, the monopoly trader, the government's Grain Marketing Board is paying the equivalent of R220 a ton to local producers who won't grow enough to feed even a quarter of the population, even in the unlikely event of normal rains.

While Maxine Waters and Jesse Jackson claim offense over Lott: Mugabe's thuggery has barely roused America's black elite - Only madness is taking root in Zimbabwe

'I thought my boss was a devil. Not now, He was my saviour. '*** Charles Mushambati had always regarded Thom Martin as being among those "devil" Zimbabwean white farmers who grossly underpaid their workers and kept them in squalor. With hindsight, he now believes he was wrong. More than 60 white farmers had been arrested around Zimbabwe by yesterday as President Robert Mugabe cracked down on 1,800 farmers who were refusing to leave their land. His confiscation policy is supposedly aimed at helping people such as Mr Mushambati, but the 59-year-old labourer, like most of the 80,000 farm workers who have found themselves unemployed and homeless after their bosses went out of business, has lost his illusions.

More Mugabe madness

"In the Mazowe Valley last week, west of Harare, is first lady Grace Mugabe's farm, which she wrenched from a frightened old couple. She is growing a few hectares of maize, government tractors were ploughing for her last weekend at a dirt cheap price, and Mugabe's sister, Sabina, is trying her hand at seed maize on one of several farms she has taken."

I'm sure Grace and Winnie Mandela have lots in common. They should do lunch. Winnie can give advice on how to torture old people with "tire necklaces" while running them off their farms.

In fact, Mugabe has recently praised militants and "young men who slugged it out on the farms'' during his program of land seizures over the past two years. They are the new war veterans ... not impostors but genuine fighters for their land,'' he said

NYC Councilman Charles Barron....Robert Mugabe's Biggest Fan

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