Productive farms turned into wasteland

urmoil, colonial wounds and disastrous economic policies.
BY CHIEF REPORTER
CONCESSION – Nyasha Mapimhidze, 51, fought in the 16-year liberation war that ended white rule in 1980. He is a beneficiary of a plush white-owned farm that used to produce macadamia nuts for export, helping the country access the desperately needed foreign currency. The farm he grabbed is now lying derelict.
Joshua Frankis, 41, was a successful white farmer. President Robert Mugabe’s government wrestled control of his farm five years ago and gave it to a “disadvantaged Zimbabwean.” Now, it’s a wasteland.
In a resource-rich nation that once was self-sufficient, one third of the population of 12 million is facing chronic food shortages. And Tear Fund, a Christian aid agency, reported last week that there was an escalation of numbers of children dying from malnutrition as a direct result of Mugabe’s land grab.
Peter Grant, Tearfund’s International director said: “People are dying. It’s the very young, the very old, and those with Aids who are the most vulnerable. As the year goes on with the continuing food shortages, we can expect the situation to get worse, and more people to die.”
Zimbabwe has been on the edge since 2000, when Mugabe, now 83, ordered the seizure of white-owned farms. The move was widely seen as an attempt to bolster his sinking popularity. White farmers, aid officials and Western diplomats agree that land redistribution was needed to undo colonialism’s legacy in Zimbabwe, where whites who make up 1 percent of the population owned 70 percent of the most fertile land.
But they say the program’s fast pace and Mugabe’s hardball tactics have spawned violence and aggravated the food crisis. And Mugabe has forged ahead with his land grab despite its disastrous impact. At least 220 white farmers have to be off their farms by the close of this month.
Mapimhidze, the former anti-colonial fighter, is proud to have a piece of the land that once belonged to his ancestors, but as he gazes at his untilled soil he sees a bleak future. The soft, red earth that surrounds his kraal, or homestead, in Matabeleland province is peppered with thin, mangled maize stalks. His granary is empty.
On good days, he and his six children survive on black tea and one meal. Mapimhidze’s Z$300,000 a-month government pension doesn’t go far in these days of soaring maize prices. He and other war veterans who’ve settled on seized land nearby travel 150 kilometres south to Bulawayo to wait in long lines for food handouts.
“The white farmers were necessary. They had the expertise,” Mapimhidze said in a tired voice dulled by months of hunger and dashed expectations.
In a normal year, Frankis, the white commercial farmer, would be harvesting his crop of winter wheat now. He also used to grow maize, cotton, soybeans and sorghum. He exported flower seeds to the United States, Denmark and France. He had 120 head of cattle and 200 sheep.
The cattle, sheep and flowerbeds are gone. On his 4,450-acre farm in Concession, north of Harare, tall, overgrown weeds sway in the wind. Goats are munching on the yellow grass, which used to be emerald green this time of year. Frankis dismantled the irrigation pipes and sprinkler system when he was kicked out.
“It’s a terrible feeling coming to your farm and seeing these people ruining it,” said Frankis, who has retreated to Harare. The farm, which was in Frankis’s family for four generations, has been carved into 14 plots.
Businessmen and government officials loyal to Mugabe own some of them. War veterans occupy the remainder. Frankis’s black farm workers, now unemployed, want him to return because the war veterans have no money to pay them.
“This is where I was born. I had every right to live here,” Frankis said. “We built our farm up nicely. We kept a lot of people employed. And we contributed to the economy.”
Just before the land grab began, commercial farmers earned US$800 million, 52 percent of Zimbabwe’s export earnings. This season, that’s expected to plunge to US$4 million as the farmers’ share of gross domestic product drops to -5 percent from 14 percent, according to the Commercial Farmers Union.
Price controls and foreign exchange restrictions have made matters worse, raising food prices and creating a thriving underground economy. The government has a monopoly on trading maize and other grains, which prevents private traders from importing grain.
In some parts of the country, food has become a political weapon, according to human rights groups and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. In Binga, a sleepy MDC stronghold on the shores of Lake Kariba, armed war veterans are accused of doling out government-bought food aid only to people with ruling party identification cards.
Mugabe has publicly denied using food to gain political leverage.