From bread-basket to basket case: Land seizures from white farmers have cost Mugabe’s Zimbabwe £7billion
- Robert Mugabe’s family now control 39 seized farms
- Food production dropped 70% in former British colony
- UN says Zimbabwe needs 1/2billion in aid this year
By Gerard Hunt
Last updated at 5:54 PM on 3rd August 2011
Redistribution? The family of President Robert Mugabe now control 39 farms seized from white farmers
Zimbabwe’s policy of seizing white-owned farms and handing them over to black workers has cost the country £7billion in lost production over the past decade, it has been claimed.
The extent of the agricultural collapse in the former British colony – once famed as the ‘bread-basket of Africa’ – emerged hours after the UN said it needs half a billion dollars in humanitarian aid this year.
Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, and his family now own 39 farms which had been seized from their white former owners, said the Commercial Farmers’ Union in Harare, the country’s capital.
Hundreds more have been ‘stolen’ from experienced white farmers and given to black workers and veterans of the war of independence – many of whom have little knowledge of farming.
Union chief Deon Theron said food production had slumped by 70 per cent in Zimbabwe since President Mugabe began his policy of seizing white-owned farms in 2000.
Mr Mugabe has always said that the land seizures were needed to correct colonial imbalances and that beneficiaries would get only one farm.
Prior to the introduction of the policy, whites controlled about 70 per cent of Zimbabwe’s arable land despite make up less than 1 per cent of the country’s population.
His officials have not yet commented on the union report, or the claims of farms in Mugabe family ownership.
Anger: President of The Commercial Farmers Union of Zimbabwe Deon Theron says that Mugabe’s policies are destroying the country’s agricultural industry
Mr Theron blamed the land seizures for food shortages and the collapse of Zimbabwe’s economy over the past decade, saying it had destroyed the country’s tax base.
‘If the aim of the land reform was to evict whites and replace them with blacks, then it can be deemed a success,’ Mr Theron said.
‘However, if the aim was that it should benefit the majority and not only a chosen few, then it has been a failure.’
His report was issued just hours after the UN appealed for more cash for Zimbabwe, saying the country needed almost half a billion dollars in humanitarian aid this year.
Aid coordinator Allain Noudehou said 1.7 million Zimbabweans needed food hand-outs.
Displaced: This 2002 photo shows a group of Zimbabwe white commercial farmers having their group photograph taken at the Mutorashanga Country Club, before meeting a government deadline to vacate their farms
Zimbabwe used to produce enough to feed itself and even to export but this was no longer the case, according to Mr Theron
He estimated that production of maize, a staple food largely grown by small-scale black farmers – the people supposed to gain most from land reform – is this year estimated to be just 50 per cent of 2000 levels.
Cotton, seen as a cash crop for small-scale farmers, has fallen by 45 per cent, said Mr Theron, while tobacco, one of the country’s main export earners and previously dominated by large-scale white farmers, has declined by 50 percent.
Wheat, beef and dairy production had effectively collapsed, he added.
Mr Theron said land had become a tool for dispensing political patronage and named five other close allies of Mr Mugabe whose families have taken control of at least five farms each.
After years of economic meltdown, Zimbabwe abandoned its currency in 2009 and now uses the US and South African money.
During the colonial era, much of the best land in the then Rhodesia was reserved for white people – a situation that President Mugabe vowed to reverse during his guerrilla war against white minority rule during the Seventies.