Zimbabwe’s plea to exiled farmers to return home meets with scepticism
Updated
The Zimbabwean Government’s call for exiled farmers to return and take up 99-year leases has been met with some excitement in the Australian community, but not everyone is convinced.
Former farmer and now Queensland resident Rod Blevin says no, and it comes down to whether the government can be trusted.
“To use an analogy, I see the same bus but it’s a different driver,” Mr Blevin said.
President Robert Mugabe resigned after 37 years in power in November last year.
He destroyed agriculture, the mainstay of Zimbabwe’s economy by taking farms away from the previous white owners and giving them to his cronies who then ran them into the ground.
Last week government officials said Zimbabwean farmers in Australia should return home and admitted the campaign of farm invasions that began in 2000 was a mistake.
Mr Blevin pointed out, however, that the members of the ruling party were the same people who enacted the land reform program that came out of those invasions.
In Zimbabwe, he was the chairman of this local agricultural committee and represented more than 60 farms in the Bindura region, north of Harare.
He saw first-hand the chaos of the land reforms and was acutely aware of the scale of the problem.
“I think it started off with disbelief because the farm acquisitions were precipitated by land invasions.
“At the time, the thought was that law and order would prevail, that these guys would be moved off the farms and normal activity would resume.”
They realised over time that the police would not act and had been instructed from above not to restore law and order, Mr Blevin said.
He and his family became one of the 62,000 Zimbabweans — black and white — to leave between 2000 and 2011 and call Australia home.
More than words
“This government’s done nothing and I really believe, in terms of the international community, they’re going to be judged on their actions,” Mr Blevin said.
This would only change if the Zimbabwean government held fair and free elections, which are due later this year, and then funded a new land reform program to set the past right, he added.
“Those 99-year leases exist only in word.”
Mr Blevin said for people to regain faith, the government would need to amend the constitution to reinstate the protections that were “trodden over roughshod” 15 years ago.
It was possible, just premature.
“It’s a huge job,” he said.
Along with the government proving it could be trusted, there would also need to be finance and capital available to get these farms back into working order, Mr Blevin said.
And the prospect has not been dismissed in Australia.
“I’ve seen some of my fellow Zimbabweans here on the coast getting fairly excited about these 99-year and asking me what I thought.”
It is just not for him.
Fresh memories
“I’ve been here almost 15 years now, I’ve made a new life and I’ve many new friends in Australia, so that’s where I stand personally.”
Mr Blevin said there were many things to love about Australia, but the number one for him was being safe.
In Zimbabwe, where he ran a commercial farm that exported roses, grew crops and grazed cattle, there was a constant feeling of fear.
“There was always the prospect of something going wrong or someone being hurt and I’m sure you’re aware that many farm labourers and farmers were killed during this business,” Mr Blevin said.
Part of the land acquisition process was to be issued with notices — either a notification that the government was going to acquire the land or another notice stating the government would acquire the land within 90 days.
“That was disruptive because you can’t wind up a lifetime’s work in 90 days, and we had that going right throughout the farming district.”
At the same time, teams from a government body would be dividing small farms into thousands of tiny plots or large-scale farms would be resettled and allocated to four people.
Mr Blevin gained a visa and moved with his wife and three sons to the Sunshine Coast and started a new life, running a wholesale nursery.
He hasn’t looked back, and nor has his family.
Family ties
His son, Nicholas, has also carved himself a life in Queensland.
The secondary school teacher has maintained his links to Zimbabwe and returns regularly as part of his not-for-profit enterprise to protect African wildlife.
He is intrigued by the call for exiled farmers to return.
“I think Zimbabweans are a proud people across the world and it’s not a nice thing to have been displaced in such huge numbers, and I think a lot of Zimbabweans would be open to the idea of moving back and the notion of bringing the country back to its former glory,” he said.
But the primary concern for many Zimbabweans was the elections and that they were free and fair.
“That’s the starting point of something people can trust.”
Through his work protecting African wildlife, Nicholas creates revenue streams for communities to stop poaching.
Asked what people felt:
“I think a lot of people are desperate for something to happen, and if this is how they are going to create employment then that’s excellent.
“But I think the government is going to have to provide some assurances that people can believe and then even some assistance to get these operations of the ground because it’s a really challenging prospect to bring it back from ground zero.”
Topics: government-and-politics, foreign-aid, agriculture, human, agribusiness, agricultural-machinery, agricultural-policy,rockhampton-4700, maroochydore-4558