Mugabe family owns 39 farms, says report
Sunday Times Correspondent | 31 July, 2011 02:11
Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and his family own 39 farms, according to
a report by the outgoing president of the country’ s Commercial Farmers
Union .
In his address to the CFU congress in Harare this week, Deon Theron said
Mugabe’s claimthat blackZimbabweans had been empowered under the land reform
rules wasa lie.
He said that less than 1% of the country’s 1.8 million commercial
farmworkers and their families had received land, and even then the land was
often merely loaned to them under a system of political patronage.
“The continued use and occupation of the land is dependent on their
political affiliation and loyalty. There is no genuine empowerment or farmer
autonomy, there is no security of tenure and there is no collateral value to
the land. It is a dead asset, which cannot drive its own development,” he
said.
Theron said Mugabe and members of his inner circle owned multiple farms –
despite the government’s policy of allowing no more than one farm per
person.
“If the aim of the land reform was to evict whites and replace them with
blacks then it can be deemed a success. However, if the aim was that it
should benefit the majority and not only a chosen few, then it has been a
failure.”