Mugabes remarks fuel violence: Farmers

Mugabe who was addressing a congress of his Zanu (PF) partys youth wing last weekend said whites should quickly move off farms allocated to new black owners by the government, saying those who did not would be forcibly driven off the farms by the police. The CFU said Mugabes utterances would only help to fuel violence by mobs – many of them members of Zanu (PF) — that have continued invading farms across the country despite formation of a power-sharing government that many Zimbabweans had hoped would restore law and order on farms to help food production.

“The speech to the Zanu (PF) youth may provide fuel for further politically motivated violence and disturbances on commercial farms at a time where peace and stability are required to ensure confidence and increased agricultural production in the current summer cropping season,” CFU president Deon Theron said in a statement on Tuesday. Theron said white farmers have complied with all regulations and requirements of the governments lands ministry, adding that farmers on land targeted for acquisition by the state have always applied for permission to continue farming as provided for under the law but the government had never responded to such applications.

“The CFU and its members have never disputed the need for genuine land reform that truly empowers all the people of Zimbabwe, irrespective of gender, race, belief or political affiliation and without destabilising agricultural production,” the CFU leader said. There was no immediate reaction to the CFU statement from Mugabes office.

Mugabes chaotic and often violent land reforms that he says were necessary to correct a colonial land ownership system that reserved the best land for whites and banished blacks to poor soils, are blamed for plunging Zimbabwe into food shortages after he failed to support black villagers resettled on former white farms with inputs to maintain production.

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai who formed a power-sharing government with Mugabe following disputed elections last year, has called for an audit to establish who owns which land in Zimbabwe before an orderly land reform programme can be implemented but Mugabe has in the past accused the MDC leader of wishing to return land to former white owners.

Critics say Mugabes cronies and not ordinary peasants benefited the most from farm seizures with some of them ending up with as many as six farms each against the governments stated one-man-one-farm policy.

Government farm seizures, which started in 2000, have resulted in the majority of the about 4 500 white farmers being forcibly ejected from their properties without being paid compensation for the land, which Mugabe says he will not pay because the land was stolen from blacks in the first place.

The government has compensated some farmers for developments on the land such as dams and farm buildings and says it is committed to compensating all farmers for such improvements. But farmers say even these payments are way below market rates.