Beginning of end for white Zimbabwe farmers

On one morning last week, for example, two of the dwindling band of white farmers told Mr Olivier that they were abandoning the fight to keep their properties.

While recovering from that blow, the union chief learnt that police had charged with affray a farmer who had the previous day been beaten by 15 invading youths apparently linked to the Zanu (PF) party of President Robert Mugabe.

The union says that since the beginning of March shortly after a power-sharing deal took effect between Mr Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirais opposition Movement for Democratic Change at least six farmers have been abducted and 16 arrested for alleged illegal occupation of their own land. True, there have been fewer violent occupations by Zanu-PF supporters than last year, but vandalism and theft have been just as common.

I dont see any difference, says Mr Olivier. People are telling me that they have stuck it out for 10 years but now it is getting worse. We are coming to the end.

There are some signs that the pace of attacks is about to increase. Ten days ago, Mr Mugabe told his partys traditionally belligerent youth movement that there is no reversal of the land reform programme at all.

His ministers have said they intend to ignore a ruling handed down by a regional court part of the Southern African Development Community that land seizures were illegal.

Already the damage to Zimbabwean farming is extensive. Fewer than 500 commercial farmers are still producing compared with an estimated 4,500 when Zimbabwe became independent in 1980.

Mr Olivier says that many are operating below capacity. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of farms that are fully operational and which havent been touched, he says.

Output has been falling, turning a country once regarded as a regional breadbasket into one dependent on imports for much of its needs. Maize production is estimated at less than 500,000 tonnes, barely a third of what it could be, while the union expects wheat production to fall to 18,000 tonnes, about a third of the 2008 harvest.

With even many bigger farmers considering alternatives, the future looks bleak. Among them this week was Louis Fick, 43, a South African who has invested heavily in a 400 hectare plot near Chinhoyi in northern Zimbabwe since 1993.

In August, after his farm was invaded, Mr Fick and his family took refuge in Harare and tried to keep the business going at a distance. But even this is now at risk after the new occupants last week refused access to his trucks. Mr Fick now says: I dont see myself in farming.”

Financial Times