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| author/source:Zim Online (SA) |
| published:Sat 29-Oct-2005 |
| posted on this site:Sat 29-Oct-2005 |
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| Article Type : News |
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| Already owns Mupandaguta farm in Banket district |
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Harare - A government minister this week seized one of the country’s largest citrus fruit estates near Chegutu town after forcing out the white owner as senior government and security officials step up a fresh round of farm seizures. Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga grabbed the prime Lions Vlei farm near Chegutu, about 60km south-west of Harare throwing out hundreds of farm workers and putting in jeopardy a Z$7 billion fruit export project that was being implemented at the farm with help from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ). Matonga, like all other senior government officials who own at least one farm seized from whites, already owns Mupandaguta farm in Banket district, north of Harare. The deputy minister, who is said to have seized the farm with help from the police, was not available for comment on the matter last night. But the displaced farmer, Tom Beattie, told Zim Online that Matonga pitched up at the farm last Sunday and declared himself the new owner, telling Beattie to leave immediately. When Beattie demanded to see an official letter from the government authorising Matonga to take over the farm, the minister is said to have said no letter was necessary since the farm was “state land”. Beattie, who is now staying at his son’s home after being thrown off his farm, said: “He (Matonga) came and broke the security locks on the gate, started removing the furniture from the house of which the police were even assisting. This is very bad . . . we had secured a loan to do grenadillas for export worth more than $7 billion.”
Farm evictions have intensified ahead of the rainy season expected to begin anytime soon, this despite statements by Vice President Joseph Msika and RBZ governor Gideon Gono that the government would not allow the few remaining white farmers to be removed from the land. The largely white Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) early this month said a number of white commercial farmers countrywide were being ordered to cease farming by supporters of President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu PF party. About 25 commercial farmers were evicted in the prime farming district of Makoni in the past four weeks while farm invasions continue to be reported in the south-eastern Chipinge farming district. The government has since 2000 forced off the land about 90 percent of Zimbabwe’s large-scale producing white commercial farmers to pave way for landless black villagers. But the country has suffered severe food shortages as a result because the government did not give the black farmers inputs or skills training to maintain production on the former white farms. An estimated four million people or a third of the 12 million Zimbabweans urgently require more than a million tonnes of food aid or they will starve.
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