VP takes swipe at trophy farm owners
http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk/
Written by Lovejoy Sakala
Saturday, 19 February 2011 13:12
BINDURA – Vice President Joice Mujuru has criticised some new black
landowners for turning former white-owned farms into trophy farms kept only
for show-off to relatives and friends with little or no production ever
taking place on the farms.
Mujuru, who was addressing a field day at Langana farm in Matepatepa
recently, said urban households engaging in peri-urban farming were in
several cases doing a lot better than the resettled farmers. “When we told
you to take up land from white commercial farmers we did not mean that land
should be for display,” she said.
Zimbabwe has battled food shortages since 2000 when President Robert Mugabe
began seizing white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to blacks, an
exercise he said was necessary to correct a colonial land tenure system that
reserved the best land for whites and banished blacks to poor soils.
But critics blame the chaotic and often violent reforms for destroying food
security and destabilising Zimbabwe’s agriculture-based economy after Mugabe
failed to support the resettled black villagers with inputs to maintain
production.
A farmer in Matepatepa told The Zimbabwean On Sunday that it was unfair for
Mujuru to blame resettled villagers for failure to produce when the
government has not done anything to provide support to the poor peasants.
“Zanu (PF) only gave us land but did not capacitate us with resources and
finance so we cannot produce enough food to feed the nation,” the farmer
said.