GAPWUZ land reform report out tomorrow

The report will be accompanied by a 26-minute documentary on DVD. The documentary- mainly narrated by GAPWUZ general secretary Gertrude Hambira- focuses on Chegutu district, one of the worst affected by farm invasions.

More than 130 delegates from non-governmental organizations and foreign diplomats as well as government officials are expected to attend the ceremony in Harare to launch the report.

Speaking to The Zimbabwean o Sunday, Hambira said she hoped the documentary and report would help convince the government to address the plight of farm workers, many of who were left homeless and jobless after their former white employers were expelled from farms.

We are using these as tools to lobby for a respect of human and workers rights in the farms and we also believe this would set the tone in our advocacy for the government to respect its promise to allocate farm workers 20 percent of the land set aside for resettlement, she said.

Mugabe — who last September told Americas CNN news network that his land reforms were the best thing to ever happen to Zimbabwe — has defended the farm redistribution programme as necessary to correct a colonial land tenure system that reserved most of the best arable land for whites while blacks were banished to arid and poor lands.

But the land reform programme did not cater for black farm workers, the vast majority of who were originally from neighbouring countries such as Malawi and Zambia.

Critics also say Mugabes cronies and not ordinary Zimbabwean villagers 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.

Mugabes land reforms are blamed for destroying the mainstay agricultural sector to leave once self-sufficient Zimbabwe depending on food handouts form international relief agencies.