New evictions put Mugabe's land reform in focus

Harare - White farmers are once again facing evictions in Zimbabwe. Despite the widespread perception that President Robert Mugabe's land reform benefited only the wealthy, experts say it redistributed land to hundreds of thousands of rural poor.

A new wave of invasions of white-owned farms has hit Zimbabwe, with the opposition accusing ruling party officials of "grabbing" land for themselves.

"We received a phone call from someone called Colonel Nkatazo that we should move off our farm," said Scott Hunter, who was evicted from his maize and wheat farm near Harare in September.

The person wanting the land, he was told, was none other than Mugabe's 24-year-old daughter Bona.

"The colonel told us that Bona wanted to take three or so farms in the district, and people claiming to be police officers and operatives from the president's office came to tell us to move immediately," a distressed Hunter told dpa whilst in the process of moving farm equipment.

Bona Mugabe has not commented on the allegations that she took ownership of Hunter's farm.

More than 30 white farmers have been forced out of their properties in the west and north of the country over the past three months, according to media reports.

Invaders usually chant slogans of the governing Zanu-PF party and wear its regalia. Reports say most of the invasions are organized by wealthy people using political connections to take over farms.

The main opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) accuses government officials of "looting" land for themselves.

Less influential invaders have been removed by police.

The Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU) says less than 500 white farmers remain on their properties after the chaotic land reform that displaced thousands of people.

When the land reform was first launched in 1980, white farmers made up about 5 per cent of the population and held 70 per cent of the most fertile land, according to figures cited by the newspaper Zimbabwe Herald.

The final and most radical phase of reform took place between 2000 and 2010, when white farmers no longer received any compensation for the land they lost.

The land reform as well as a crackdown on the opposition prompted the West to impose sanctions which caused government revenue to collapse.

Sanctions eased

The European Union eased most of its sanctions in February, while maintaining travel restrictions on Mugabe and his wife.

There is a feeling among many Zimbabweans that it was above all the president's family and cronies who benefited from the land reform.

"It benefited mainly senior Zanu-PF officials at the expense of the majority," said Pedzisai Ruhanya, director of the independent think tank Zimbabwe Democracy Institute.

Other experts, however, dispute that perception.

While "some elites benefited from the process," the land reform also redistributed wealth, writes Sam Moyo, executive director of Zimbabwe's African Institute for Agrarian Studies.

Between 1980 and 2009, more than 13 of the 15 million hectares that had been controlled mostly by 6 000 white farmers were transferred to over 240 000 families of rural origin, according to figures given by Moyo in the Journal of Peasant Studies.

Mugabe's critics say the expulsion of capital-intensive and experienced white farmers was a disaster for the country formerly known as Africa's bread basket, but that view has been put into question.

"Small-scale farmers have done reasonably well," says Professor Ben Cousins, an expert on agrarian reform in southern Africa.

While capital-intensive fruit and flower production has declined, cotton production has increased. Maize shortages are largely due to the difficulty farmers face obtaining seeds and fertilisers, says Cousins of South Africa's University of the Western Cape.

The land reform was not always carried out correctly, with the authorities sometimes breaking the rule that one person was only entitled to one farm, Cousins says.

Those now invading white-owned farms may include wealthy people trying to get more land and others who feel wronged because they did not get any, he adds.

"We did not get any land when the land reform programme was rolled out, but the government seems reluctant to address this anomaly," says Tariro Magovanyika, a grassroots Zanu-PF activist who participated in invading a farm near the second-largest city Bulawayo recently.

The farm belonged to Dumiso Dabengwa, the only black person targeted by the invasions so far - allegedly for his position as the leader of the opposition party Zapu.

The farmers' union accuses the government of dragging its feet on dealing with the invasions. Some of the white farmers whose land was taken away have gone to court.

Land Minister Douglas Mombeshora declined to comment on any individual cases of farm invasions, but said the government would not tolerate any more of them.

Anyone wanting land should contact the ministry and "not take the law into his or her hands," Mombeshora told dpa.