Security chiefs own most fertile land

Of the nearly 200 officers from the rank of Major to Lieutenant General in the Zimbabwe National Army, 90 percent have farms in the most fertile parts of the country. This is replicated in the Zimbabwe Republic Police, Zimbabwe Prisons Service, Air Force of Zimbabwe and CIO.

In total there are 400 officers in the security services alone who are known to have farms above 250 hectares, often seized at gun point from the previous white owners while several lower ranking officers and war veterans also have smaller holdings.

Constantine Chiwenga, the Zimbabwe Defence Forces Commander, who is among a cabal of Defence Forces chiefs who have publicly declared that they will only serve Mugabe, has two farms near Harare, including the 1,200 hectare Chakoma Estates, which his wife seized at gunpoint, telling a terrified white farmer that she lusted for white blood and sought the slightest excuse to kill him.

Perence Shiri, a veteran of the liberation struggle whose record was soiled during his command of an army crack unit in an insurgency crackdown in Matabeleland in early 1980s, has two farms, the 1,460 hectare Eirin farm in Marondera, which he seized after evicting 96 landless families and the 1,950 hectare banana producing Bamboo Creek in Shamva.

Augustine Chihuri, Mugabes loyal Police Commissioner General owns Woodlands Farm (size unknown) in Shamva. In the past year more than a dozen senior army and air force officers with have used armed soldiers to evict white commercial farmers.

In August last year Brigadier General Justin Mujaji evicted white farmer Charles Lock from his 376 hectare Karori farm in Headlands district east of Harare and defied several High Court orders, including one meant to allow Lock to take his tobacco and maize crop and equipment.

Clearly there is a common thread here, where the military which is supposed to defend its citizens brazenly terrorises them in the name of land reform, said John Makumbe, a University of Zimbabwe political lecturer and Mugabe critic.

Politburo and judges

All of Zanu (PF)s 56 politburo members, 98 Members of Parliament and 35 elected and unelected Senators were allocated former white farms, all 10 provincial governors have seized farms, with four being multiple owners, while 65 percent of the countrys more than 200 mostly partisan traditional chiefs have also benefited from the land reforms.Sixteen Supreme Court and High Court Judges, including Chief Justice Chidyausiku, who owns the 1 000 hectare Estes Park farm in Mazowe/Concession district, also own large farms ranging between 540 to 1380 hectares.

Forty serving and former ambassadors have been allocated farms, with 70 percent of Parastatals bosses also owning large tracts of land. Investigations have also revealed that Mugabes personal banker and Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor Gideon Gono surprisingly does not own a farm given to him by government but has managed to buy four farms, including the prime 4,000 hectare Donnington farm in Norton he purchased in 2001.

Sources said Gono, who at the time was CBZ Holdings chief executive who personally authorised loans for senior government officials, bought the farms at knockdown prices from farmers who were under pressure from invaders to leave their properties.

“The white farmers have simply been replaced by a new black elite,” said a source. But while the old white farmers regarded farming as a profession and most worked their land full time maintaining Zimbabwe as the bread basket of Africa, the Mugabe cronies who have replaced them largely fit the mould of what Mugabe himself has described as “mobile phone farmers”.

They are largely responsible for converting Zimbabwe into a basket case as they have used their land more for weekend recreation. Minister of State in Vice President Joyce Mujuru’s office, Sylvester Nguni, himself a huge land owner, once accused his fellow Zanu (PF) officials of only acquiring vast swathes of land “for pride” as they had dismally failed to use their land many years after they seized it.

While most of the seized land controlled by these top Mugabe cronies continue to lie fallow, most of the poor peasants and small holder farmers in communal and other better areas account for most of the improvements in agricultural output last year. In fact, the peasant farmers accounted for more than half of Zimbabwe’s total maize production even before the mass evictions of white landowners who mostly focused on cash crops.

Sources say if the land reforms had been based on a transparent poverty alleviation thresholds and properly implemented with the right beneficiaries being selected and empowered without Mugabe’s patronage considerations, the white farmers would largely have not been missed. But even the 350 000 black farm workers, who many had thought would be among the initial targets or beneficiaries of land reforms were largely ignored.

Unconfirmed reports say many of the former farm labourers have died due to poverty after they were evicted alongside their former white employers. The few who remained on the farms have to content with the new black landowners who don’t invest on the properties and pay them starvation wages.