Posted on 01/23/2007 3:38:42 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
BULAWAYO, 23 January (IRIN) - Zimbabwe's last remaining white commercial farmers have been told that a "lucky" few might be able to keep some land, but the future of farming was for blacks only.
Land minister Dydimus Mutasa's words were backed up with deeds as the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), representing mainly white farmers, disclosed that the ruling ZANU-PF government had recently increased the pace of dispossessing white-owned farmland, with eviction notices being served on 15 farmers in Chiredzi, a district in southeastern Zimbabwe, bringing to 90 the number of farmers ordered off their land in the past five months.
"There are black people still landless out there and, as long as those people remain, we will continue to take farms for resettlement," Mutasa reportedly told the local media. "White farmers do not represent the future of farming in this country, blacks do. At the end of it all, I don't expect to see any more white farmers, just successful black farmers. But of course, like with everything in life, there are the lucky ones; only the lucky ones among the outgoing farmers could remain."
According to Mutasa, "We are basically looking at those white farmers who have been relating well in terms of good human relationships. Their names will be submitted to me and, after vetting, some will get offer letters for land."
The minister's comments appear to indicate that President Robert Mugabe's government intends to get rid of most, if not all, the remaining white farmers, a process that began in 2000 with the fast-track land reform programme to redistribute white-owned farmland to landless blacks.
Food and agricultural experts warned that the removal of white farmers would be disastrous in a nation faced with chronic food shortages, brought about mainly by the upheavals in the agricultural sector. The government has blamed drought for food shortages in previous years, but more recently has denied that food was in short supply.
CFU spokesperson Emily Crooks told IRIN that the membership was unsettled by the lands minister's statement and warned that food security would be difficult to achieve if the responsibility to produce maize, the staple food, and other agricultural produce was left solely to black farmers.
"We are actually seeking further clarification about Mutasa's comments, because they seem to be contradicting government's latest policy of giving land back to white farmers who have reapplied ... But, in the event that all land is taken, I think food production will be heavily compromised because it is experience that is needed here," said Crooks.
Agricultural production in Zimbabwe, once known as the breadbasket of Africa, has slumped by more than 50 percent since the government instituted its land reform programme, which also ushered in an era of hyperinflation, now running at 1,281 percent a year - the highest in the world - and acute shortages of foreign currency, fuel, food, water, electricity and medical supplies, with unemployment touching 80 percent.
Before 2000, Zimbabwe had about 4,500 white commercial farmers, now there are fewer than 600. In late 2006 the government said it would return land to white farmers who were still interested in farming and issue them with 99-year leases. So far, 16 white farmers have reportedly received leases, along with hundreds more black farmers.
Edward Mkhosi, shadow minister for agriculture in the opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change, warned that the ongoing evictions of white farmers from their land could cause food shortages to persist, as black farmers were battling to produce anything on the farms allocated to them, as a result of the government's failure to supply new farmers with agricultural inputs.
"It is public knowledge that our own black farmers lack the capacity to produce anything, be it tobacco or maize. They are ill-equipped, they have no inputs or adequate knowledge to go about farming and this is having far-reaching consequences in the agricultural sector," Mkhosi said.
"Surely it would be detrimental if government was to go by what Mutasa is saying. Already we are grappling with food shortages due to lack of production in the farming sector, and it is a problem wrought by government through its land reforms. If we are serious, as a nation, about empowering our people with the land that we are distributing, we have to empower them with inputs as well, so that they can produce enough food, or we will starve as a nation," Mkhosi said.
Agriculture Minister Joseph Made was unavailable for comment.
Faced with drought, disruptions in the farming sector and an economy in freefall, Zimbabwe, once a net exporter of food, is battling to produce enough to feed itself, and instead relies heavily on donor support and food imports from other countries. Humanitarian aid agencies have warned that 1.4 million people will need urgent food aid this year.
Burn it all down and leave.
Put your wallets back, folks. Zim is saying it's not worried about food, since it can afford to evict the few remaining farmers. You can't reduce poverty without removing tyrants like Mugabe. Spend your funds somewhere that it may do some good.
Zorro - the gay blade?
the AVERAGE american?
education is still a huge issue
by observing others we can learn what NOT to do
MLK Jr.
Sounds a lot like most of our cities here, and how the Democrats keep getting back in. That is why I believe if you are on welfare, you should not be allowed to vote.
And a lot like Iran, and China, and Venezuela, and every place else in the world where dictatorship flourishes. Every dictator draws on support from the uneducated masses to stay in power - the Democrats have learned that lesson well. America didn't have uneducated masses fifty years ago...so they changed the school system to create them.
Yup. In the dole, off the role!
One reason my children are homeschooled..
Long before dawn I received a phone call with the news that an elderly man had died. For the family the pain and grief of the loss was almost immediately swamped with the horrific reality attached to dying in Zimbabwe in January 2007. Doctors have been on strike for over a month and hospital mortuaries are overflowing. The body of the deceased had to be moved, immediately. Petrol has increased in price from 2900 zim dollars a litre on Monday to 3400 dollars a litre by Friday. It was going to cost a whole month's pension for the new widow to have her late husbands body moved the few kilometres to the funeral home.
None of the man's family are left in Zimbabwe. The request was made for a cremation so that the ashes could be later given to the family. Cremations are undertaken in Harare but there is no gas in the country for the ovens.It may be three weeks, at the very least, before a cremation could be done. For each single day that the body was kept at the funeral home the widow would be charged half of her entire monthly pension.
A wood fuelled cremation could be done but only in Mutare, a town 180 kilometres away. The funeral home wanted 700 000 dollars to transport the body - the same as two and half years of the woman's pension. The quoted cost for the cremation, including the transport, was the same as five years of the widow's pension.
A simple burial in a local cemetery in the least expensive coffin now costs 400 000 dollars. This is the same as six months salary for one of the doctors presently on strike.
Hope the Zimbabweans enjoy starvation.
Well, there might be one. Check out Botswana.
Alfred Packer
Illegal immigration being experienced by the northern hemisphere is reverse colonization. Instead of imposing advanced govt on the backward countries, the citizens of those countries are seeking western government by fleeing to it. Better they should stay at home as colonies, but that well they poisoned themselves.
Amen! Albeit, they are like a person who swallows poison hoping it will hurt his enemy.
Because he is going to end up paying to feed and cleanup this mess.
IMHO, nothing will change --- period. Except for those vanishing old-timers who can remember life as a European colony, 99.9% of Africans have never known better, or different, from the way things are today. IOW, they would do the same thing(s) if they were in power.
"We are basically looking at those white farmers who have been relating well in terms of good human relationships. Their names will be submitted to me and, after vetting, some will get offer letters for land."
This is fairly straightforward - play ball with the party and you'll be allowed to stay. That includes lining the necessary pockets. As despicable as it is for them to employ racial teminology in this it is more despicable still for the world press to allow them to get away with it.
I hope they tell the baboon to shove it up his arse as they walk out the door, and I hope this country does not lift a finger to prevent what will happen afterwards. All of Africa needs to be taught a hard lesson in economics.
-ccm
Hear, hear! No representation without taxation. If you are a ward of the state, you are like a little ignorant spoiled child, and you should get no say in how the pie is carved up. Welfare is a privilege, not a right, and there should be social and financial disincentives to sponging off one's fellow citizens.
NB this should not apply to those with true disabilities, only able-bodied but lazy welfare chiselers and baby factories.
-ccm
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