Farmers, business as usual

“Keep farming” was how one white farmer described his plans. He discovered recently that a mob was targeting his farm for seizure, but he said he planned to file a legal challenge.

“I don’t think they’ll acquire it this year,” he said. “The formalities of the legal process will take so long, we’ll be harvesting tobacco by then.”

Several farms here are under siege by marauding land invaders trying to force the few remaining white farmers off their land. Reports suggest the thugs are splitting up and re-grouping on different farms, the fact that they are being ‘bussed in’ pointing to a higher level of coordination with access to resources beyond the reach of a typical poverty-stricken opportunistic ‘settler’.

Only one farm in the tobacco-growing region south of Chegutu, about100km southwest of Harare, has not been listed for seizure, farmers have said.

Tobacco, a major earner

Tobacco is Zimbabwe’s largest cash crop. Nationally, the tobacco industry employs about 200 000 people and is a major earner of desperately needed foreign currency.

The Zanu (PF) wing of the government’s plan to seize the remaining 400 of the country’s formerly 4 500 white-owned commercial farms before November has thrown a wrench into farmers’ plans, leaving them uncertain as to whether they will be able to plant.

Quickly listing farms for seizure is the Zanu (PF)’s answer to an often violent squatter movement led by militant veterans of Zimbabwe’s liberation war.

There are allegations that Edna Madzongwe – President of the House of Senate – is linked to the upsurge in harassment here and possibly orchestrating the invasions. Mudzongwe has already seized Aitape and Stockdale Citrus Estate. The rumours are that she is desperate to acquire another farm close-by before any agreements regarding land are formalised between South Africa and Zimbabwe.

At Umvovo Farm – the family have been under continuous intimidation. In addition, Wakefield Farm, owned by Ken Bartholomew and close to Umvovo Farm, is under siege. The Beatties are vigorously shrugging off the fierce challenge to their property.

Tensions run high

Tensions are running dangerously high here on Umvovo Farm where the Beattie’s daughter and son-in-law, Simon and Sarah Jane Keagal were being held hostage – locked in and denied permission to leave the farm – until such time as they agreed to take all possessions off the farm.

Rainbow’s End Farm, owned by Doug and Charmaine Beattie, is also under siege.

At all the farms under siege, Madzongwe’s name is featuring prominently together with Clever Kunonga, former Lands Officer in Chegutu. Sylvester Hunyani is the head of the goon squad terrorising Chegutu. He is leading the farm invasions with his wife. Hunyani’s brother-in-law, Nicolas, is also spearheading the farm invasions here.

The marijuana-smoking thugs are reportedly earning US$160 per month for spearheading the dastardly evictions. They say they are veterans of the liberation struggle that brought independence to Zimbabwe 29 years ago.

The veterans have led forcible occupations of 4000 white-owned farms since February 2000, demanding that the government redistribute more white farms to poor blacks.

Violence stemming from the occupations is intensifying dangerously here. Many others have been beaten and intimidated in a campaign of terror that has left all the farmers and farm workers here unwilling to speak on the record about their experiences.

Land reform done properly

The goon squads say evicting all white farmers from this land before the close of the year was the motive.

“Logistically, they’ve got quite a big task ahead of them,” one farmer said. “People have the impression that we are very anti this (land reform) programme. We are not, we would just like it done properly,” the farmer added.

Both white farm owners and the farm workers here said if the thugs plod ahead, it will open a Pandora’s box of economic and social problems that had been addressed with the formation of an inclusive government in February between President Mugabe and his foe, now Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

One farmer pointed to a 500-hectare wheat farm adjacent to communal farmland. The property line stuck out as hectares of green wheat – growing with irrigation and fertilizers – which abruptly ended where the communal land began.

On communal soil, no one actually owns the land. Regional leaders allocate property between families, but without a title to the property few have the collateral to win the bank loans needed to buy fertilizer or to maintain irrigation systems.

Under the government’s current land-reform scheme, highly productive commercial farm have become communal lands. Economists fear that if the Prime Minister, who has insisted on a halt of the farm seizures did not stand firm, it will mean even less domestically grown food, fewer exports and less foreign currency, which Zimbabwe desperately needs to pay for fuel and electricity brought in from abroad.

Farm workers here said they didn’t want their employers’ farms seized because they preferred the security of employment to the uncertainty of small-scale independent farming.

Workers on farms here also said the government’s land reform programme ignored their needs.

“I want to stay where there are schools and a clinic,” said one farm worker, adding that his employer paid all his family’s school and medical expenses, benefits the cash-strapped government could not provide.

Despite the fears raised by the land reform scheme, farmers here said they thought this was the beginning of the end of the land grab.