So in other words, 3400 productive white farmers have been replaced by 160 000 sycophantic ZANU PF supporters and their families under the model A2 programme, while the chefs' A1 model, the modern day shifting cultivation programme, continues to remove the last pillars of organised agriculture.Â
In year 2000, Mugabe mendaciously announced to the whole world that the fast-track land acquisition models consisted of two approaches: model A1, to benefit 160,000 of the poor from the general landless population; and model A2 aimed at creating 51,000 black commercial farmers.
Since then Zimbabwe has been on a fast track to hyperinflation, cholera, electoral fraud and Mugabe has Satan on speed dial.Â
In the first wave of fast track farm takeovers, the political elite, our liberators, hired bogus war veterans, gullible peasants and the disposable youth militia to invade selected farms. Each greedy chef essentially targeted a farm close to his rural home, to remain connected spiritually and attached physically to his local svikiro for political counsel, and mhondoro for agronomic advice.
The second wave of takeovers involved violently occupying a productive farm, preferably with plantation crops, tobacco, wheat, maize or soyabeans, ready for harvest. These desired agricultural businesses were predominantly in the natural regions one and two and were within a couple of hours driving distance from Harare to make weekend braais easy. It is so absurd that some ZANU PF officials swapped farms merely based on the availability of mobile telephone signals.Â
The timing of evictions is critical; first, the farmer is assured his farm is not for acquisition, this deceptive tactic encouraged the hapless farmer to plant. When the crops were ready for harvest, the preplanned invasion orchestrated by the same chef, is instigated. Waving a freshly signed Section 5 or 8, the chef takes the farm, pays the occupiers for hire and sells the crops as his own. The chefs even exported some of the controlled crops such soyabeans, wheat and maize, denying the nations needs. Together, with high-value, misappropriated horticultural produce for foreign currency kept in offshore accounts, these few incompetent and greedy individuals charted the course for Zimbabwe's man- made starvation.
The next planting season, the same chefs with no rudimentary understanding of the science of agriculture, received cash handouts from Gideon Gono, inputs and equipment from ZANU PF's Operation Maguta, which they then sold on the parallel market while the farms lay fallow in spite of adequate rainfall patterns. The once proud 600 000 farm worker families who used to earn an honest living from these farms are now destitute and elongate the lines of food relief agencies. Â
The chef soon realises that it does not rain mealies, and he is allocated yet another productive farm, having relinquished the now unproductive farm to his mother-in-law's third cousin's uncle. In some cases, the chefs favourite traditional healers have been allocated farms as a reward for providing potions that ensured the particular chefs continued inclusion in the bloated government and ZANU PF hierarchy.
Known ZANU PF acolytes, some of whom are still evicting farmers in 2009 for their fourth round of farm acquisitions, are the same persons who blame sanctions, sabotage by monkeys, and the manipulation of the rainfall patterns by the West, for the dismal failure of Zimbabwe's agricultural sector.
The seven million Zimbabweans, facing severe food shortages and experiencing the worst famine in our history, know who is to blame for their misery – the few ruling elite.
Competent Zimbabweans were never allocated farms; in fact they were removed from farms. No one need die of starvation in Zimbabwe, what is unfolding is passive genocide and ZANU PF is culpable.
These ZANU PF common thieves and thugs are NOT farmers; there is no hope for Zimbabwe to grow, harvest and produce food for our nation's people until real FARMERS, black and white, go back to the fields. - Critic@large