Zanu PF elites in land dogfight
Written by Everson Mushava, Staff Writer
Thursday, 26 April 2012 12:20
HARARE – None of his contemporaries took the import of a statement by the
late Edison Zvobgo seriously when he warned: “Unless care is taken,
revolutions may eat their children. But when they begin to eat their
fathers, then fate has doomed their nation’s dreams.”
A land re-distribution programme that once united President Robert Mugabe’s
faithful supporters has turned into a dog-eat-dog fight.
War veterans and a rag-tag group of party members who led the invasion of
thousands of white-owned farmland more than a decade ago under the pretext
of correcting colonial imbalances are wilting under the rot of fresh
takeovers by more powerful politicians and government officials.
The new dispossessions, victims say, are fraught with corruption and human
rights abuses perpetrated from the top, particularly by ministers and
well-heeled individuals who regard pioneering settlers as criminals.
Once regarded as the forerunners of the often violent takeovers of
white-owned farms, the independence war participants were allowed to parcel
out to each other the rich farmlands they had taken over and settled on.
But they seem to have clapped their hands too early as the honeymoon is
gradually coming to an end.
As the Daily News shows today, plum properties have always been for the
political elites and the wealthy.
With only a few white-owned farms to grab remaining, powerful politicians
and senior government officials as well as the wealthy are turning onto
their kith and kin, leaving pioneering beneficiaries fighting evictions by
top chefs.
The black-on-black land war has become so vicious that violence and looting
is the order of the day, as was the case when former
journalist-turned-businessman Edwin Moyo was pushed out of Kondozi
horticultural farm by five Zanu PF heavy weights.
Didymus Mutasa, Joseph Made, Christopher Mushowe, Munacho Mutezo and Mike
Nyambuya ran tongues over their lips for the thriving horticultural property
joining the looting spree and throwing more than 5 000 workers out of work.
Acquisitive instinct and open greed among the ruling elite prompted Zvobgo
to bemoan that as government, Zanu PF had “turned a noble agrarian
revolution into a racist enterprise.”
Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) statistics show that by 2010, President
Robert Mugabe and his top allies controlled close to 40 percent of the 14
million hectares of land seized from about 4 500 white farmers since 2000.
With only 250 white farmers remaining, according to CFU, the focus has
turned on the less powerful blacks.
Critics of the “land redistribution programme say it has been an act of
transferring land to high-profile people and not the landless — a political
programme meant to institutionalise looting.
Government used to claim that it has resettled over 250 000 families to date
but on Independence Day, Local Government minister Ignatius Chombo revealed
that a mere 147 000 families were resettled on A1 farms while only 16 000
got land countrywide under the A2 farming scheme.
A1 farms are less than 15 hectares while A2 farms are anything more than
that.
The eviction of groups of independence war fighters and other participants
to make way for either the rich or the politically-connected exposes the rot
that has beset “offer letters” used to confirm allocation of land to
beneficiaries.
Some farms are “officially” offered to multiple owners, resulting in
wrangles some of which have spilled into the courts when politicians have
resorted to brawn and political muscle than reason to eject occupiers.
For instance the First Lady Grace Mugabe pushed out High Court judge Ben
Hlatshwayo from Gwina Farm in Banket, using crude revanchism.
Hlatshwayo had seized the farm from an old white couple.
But, like the white farmer he had dispossessed, he was evicted in similar
fashion as are a number of other beneficiaries.
Independence war fighters with the help of pro-Zanu PF poor peasants were
used by the big chefs to violently invade white-owned farms on the pretext
that they were the beneficiaries.
Their lack of access to higher offices compounds their problems.
This black-on-black land war comes just as many of the war veterans and the
poor peasants were starting to enjoy a modicum of success as evidenced by
the increase in the number of small-scale tobacco farmers and the boom in
tobacco production over the past years.
Despite the government’s claim that the land reform was a success, the Daily
News can expose that it was indeed a partisan and chaotic programme laced
with political expediency.
A land wrangle at Selby farm in Mashonaland Central Province demonstrates
how the weak are being plucked out of farms. It also points to potential
abuse of offer letters now often issued with reckless abandon.
Ten resettled farmers with A1 offer letters issued by Mazowe District
Council have been chased away from their plots to make way for a single
owner Elasto Mugwadi.
Mugwadi sits in the Human Rights Commission established in 2010 to
investigate human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. He is also a former chief
immigrations officer.
He is brandishing a 2006 offer letter for the farm signed by the then lands
minister Didymus Mutasa.
Mugwadi’s offer letter dated December 20, 2006 shows that he owns Shamwari
of Kinvara Farm, an A2 farm in Mugabe’s home district of Zvimba in
Mashonaland West.
The same offer letter gives him occupancy to part of Selby Farm, Mazowe
District in Mashonaland Central is an A1 farm.
A lands officer who asked for anonymity because he is not authorised to
speak to the media said A2 farms were administered by the Lands ministry
while A1 farms fall under district administrators, making Mugwadi’s offer
letter that straddles across boundaries and farm designations suspicious.
An investigation conducted at the Surveyor General (SG)’s office by the
Daily News and a study of maps possessed by this paper show that Selby Farm
indeed falls under Mazowe District in cadastral survey terms.
“This letter serves to confirm that in cadastral survey terms, the above
farms fall under (Salisbury) Harare District.
“Administratively, it falls within the boundaries of Mashonaland Central
Province (Mazoe District)” read part of the letter from the SG dated
November 2, 2010, concerning Selby Farm.
“It is not possible for one to get a farm that cuts across provinces,” said
an officer in the ministry of Lands.
*Read Part 2 of the special report in tomorrow’s issue.