Zimbabwe
Immediate redistribution of 3000 farms

afrol.com, 31 July - The Zimbabwean government has announced that it will confiscate and redistribute 3000 farms on an immediate basis. These 3000 farms are among the over 1600 farms currently occupied by so-called war veterans and others. Formally, they belong to white farmers, and the official government policy is to transfer them to poor, landless, black peasants. 

The decision was made on an unannounced emergency cabinet meeting, the government owned Zimbabwe television announced yesterday. All the ministers of Mugabe's government and other top government officials participated in the meeting. Ignatius Chombo, minister of housing and public works, informed that the redistribution process was to start immediately. "This coming week we are going to see quite a lot of persons being settled," the minister stated.

The announcement comes only a day after the white farmers had declared that they would join a three-day strike (starting on Wednesday) to have the government restoring law and order in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabweans divided
The question of redistribution of "white farms" remains to divide Zimbabweans. The official view is that these vast agricultural lands occupied by white farmers was stolen from the African population by the former colonialists, and thus should be returned to the landless blacks. Any compensation should be paid by the former colonial power, the British. This view has some popularity, even among Europeans and white farmers, but the British government has demanded a better control of who is to receive the redistributed land, as there have been well documented reports over government allocation to members of the ruling Zanu-PF party. Farm redistribution thus has not been to the benefit of the poor landless, but to party members, who are not among the poorest classes in Zimbabwe. 

Further, the critics go, the land today owned by white farmers is relatively well managed and big scale, modern agricultural production here contributes strongly to Zimbabwe's exports (mainly tobacco). Commercial agriculture is the major mean of employment in Zimbabwe, employing 26 percent of the total labour force It further contributes with some 16% of Zimbabwean GDP. Thus, it is feared that a division and redistribution of the commercial farms to the landless poor, which do not have the capital for major investments and maintenance of a modern agriculture, will give a drop in the export of agriculture products. On the other hand, it might enhance local food production. On a national scale, however, numbers would be negative if big scale export production is to change into small scale food production. It simply is better business to export the products Zimbabwe is best fit to produce and import cheap food staples from abroad.

The powerful allies of president Mugabe, the so-called war vets led by Chenjerai "Hitler" Hunzvi, have applied strong pressure on the government to fulfill the promises to redistribute farms owned by white farmers. Hunzvi gave the government an ultimatum and threatened with uncontrolled violence if large scale confiscation and redistribution was not to begin within short. Mugabe's government, the military and the police has already demonstrated that they have little means to control the extremist followers of Hunzvi. Action, thus was needed. Thus in June, the first 804 occupied farms were seized by the government and the redistribution process started. First in line to obtain "the promised land" of course are the so-called war vets themselves. This, by far was not enough to calm Hunzvi's followers and yesterday's decision to seize 3000 farms was not unexpected. 

Only on July 27, Hunzvi told the Financial Gazette that "the government should move faster now and build on what has been achieved by the war veterans by giving more land to the people". Vice President Msika had discussed several hours with Hunzvi. "The talks were apparently aimed at convincing Hunzvi that the land resettlement programme should now be handled by the government and not by the veterans who are already allocating land to thousands of people across the country," according to the Financial Gazette.

Meanwhile, the opposition party MDC gains widespread support for its opinion that the farm occupations by the "war vets" should be acted on and that any possible redistribution should be handled in more competent manners. MDC stresses the point that it is documented that the government has been abusing the land issue to allocate seized farms to undeserving politicians and other influential people. 

Yesterday, MDC's secretary for lands and agriculture, Tendai Biti, told the Zimbabwe Standard that his party would "push for the repossession of state farms run by cabinet ministers. Senior Zanu PF officials and their supporters have benefited from the government's land resettlement plan at the expense of the ordinary citizen." He further stressed that any redistribution programme must "must be transparent and based on need and not greed".

Economic collapse
The government thus has received much pressure from MDC, the commercial farmers organisations and the international community. Under the given circumstances, the British government is not willing to finance the redistribution. Even worse, due to the government supported violence of the "war vets" - five white farmers have been killed so far - Zimbabwe is excluded from international aid and loans. All major international institutions have frozen Zimbabwe's access to financial means. All in all, foreign investments have dropped by 80% since the farm land crisis began. Exports are dropping severely too, as much of the commercial agricultural production has been disrupted by the actions. 

Zimbabwe, thus, is slowly gliding into an economic collapse. This situation will not improve with yesterday's decision.

© afrol.com. Texts and graphics may be reproduced freely, under the condition that their origin is clearly referred to, see Conditions.    You can contact us at mail@afrol.com