Tag: farmers

Zim to hand back land to some white farmers

Zimbabwe’s government has for the first time suggested it may give official permission for some white farmers to stay on their land, 15 years after it sanctioned widespread land grabs that plummeted the country into an economic crisis.

Douglas Mombeshora, the Zanu-PF Lands Minister, said provincial leaders had been asked to draw up a list of white farmers they wanted to stay on their farms deemed to be “of strategic economic importance”.

“We have asked provinces to give us the names of white farmers they want to remain on farms so that we can give them security of tenure documents to enable them to plan their operations properly,” Mr Mombeshora said.

Beneficiaries of the land grabs that started in 2000, mostly President Robert Mugabe’s officials and allies, will in the future also have to pay a small rental per acre which will be used in part to pay compensation to evicted white farmers.

More than 4,000 white farmers lost their land after Mr Mugabe lost a referendum to the new Movement for Democratic Change party and, in a bid to regain popularity, authorised land grabs by disaffected war veterans.

Today, fewer than 300 white farmers remain on portions of their original land holdings in Zimbabwe and many of the seized farms lie fallow, meaning the former Breadbasket of Africa has to import food to feed its population.

Among remaining farmers who have been recommended for a reprieve of Mr Mugabe’s edict that whites can no longer own land in Zimbabwe is Elizabeth Mitchell, a poultry farmer who produces 100,000 day-old chicks each week.

Her farm, Barquest, which lies around 160 miles south of Harare in Masvingo Province, had been allocated by the government to Walter Mzembi, the tourism minister, but he recently retreated after the provincial leadership backed her request to stay.

Shuvai Mahofa, Masvingo’s Provincial Affairs Minister, has recommended five more white farmers be issued with 99-year leases because their operations were, she said, of “strategic economic importance”.

Mr Mugabe regularly tells white farmers who have survived years of uncertainty, violence and threats to move off the parcels of land they have hung on to.

“Don’t be too kind to white farmers,” Mr Mugabe told supporters at a recent Zanu PF rally. “They can own industries and companies, or stay in apartments in our towns but they cannot own land. They must leave the land to blacks.”

Mr Mombeshora also announced the long-delayed establishment of a “Land Commission”, which the EU has said it will help fund, to survey how seized white farms were distributed during the chaotic and sometimes violent land grab.

He said new land laws were almost ready to go before parliament which would require beneficiaries to pay rent. Those funds would, he said, be used to start a process of compensation for evicted white farmers.

George Charamba, Mr Mugabe’s spokesman, told The Telegraph during a recent visit to South Africa that the review would be “founded on productivity” and beneficiaries would be subjected to a “use it or lose it” rule.

“Not many have made land reform work and they will not hold on to it if they are not making it sweat,” he said. “There will be tears, black tears this time.”

Hendrik Olivier, director of the Commercial Farmers Union, which represents interests of thousands of evicted white farmers and the roughly 300 who remain, said he was “pleased” the government was talking about compensation and urged more farmers be given the right to stay.

“So many of the evicted farmers are old now and destitute and desperate for compensation,” he said.

He said he hoped that the UK, would, as the former coloniser and in accordance with Zimbabwe’s constitution since 1992, also meet its commitments to paying some compensation.

“If the UK, alone or with other donors, paid the small amount for the land, we believe international financiers, such as the World Bank would assist Zimbabwe pay white farmers for the more expensive part of the deal, improvements to the land,” he said.

“We doubt the government will raise enough money from rentals to pay much compensation, but it is a start.”

Source: The Telegraph

Malema threatens white land owners

South Africa’s white farmers should stop being sensitive and participate in critical debates on the transformation of the agricultural landscape and other emotive issues, Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema told a forum of agricultural roleplayers in the Western Cape on Wednesday night.

Speaking at a dinner hosted by the forum – which calls itself “Gesprek” – Malema moved to allay white fears on “expropriation without compensation”.

“As long as it’s a productive farm, we don’t have to interfere with the production on that piece of land,” Malema said.

“When there is part of a land which is not used for agriculture purposes, we would be having a problem. All we are saying is the land must be used. It must not lie idle.”

But, he wasted little time before warning farmers that they needed to play their part in empowering black people.

“You owe it to the people who have been oppressed… to mentor them,” Malema said.

“If you love this country, you must love its people. Say to them ‘I’m volunteering my services. I’m going to make sure the land is used productively and used to feed the children of this community’.”

Those who did not want to contribute to transforming the sector were free to pack up and leave.

“There is no white man… no white woman who is going to be driven into the sea,” he assured the farmers.

“Feel free to leave, but you would miss out. You will miss us. We won’t miss you.”

Source: IOL

Mugabe wants to give few remaining whites the boot too

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe on Wednesday ratcheted up pressure against few hundred white remaining farmers saying they too must go adding whites would no longer be allowed to own land in Zimbabwe.

In an address filled with anti-western rhetoric at the launch of the A1 Model Settlement Tenure Permit in the Zanu PF heartland of Mashonaland West, Mugabe said Zimbabwe was no country for whites as far as the land was concerned.

“There are white farmers who are still on the land and have the protection of some cabinet ministers and politicians as well as traditional leaders,” he said.

“That should never happen and we will deal with ministers but as for our chiefs we do not want to harass you.

“Chief Charumbira (Fortune and president of chief’s council), you need to help us on this one because we respect you and your members. We do not want trouble.”

He added: “I have been given a list of 35 white farmers in Mashonaland West alone and in just a few districts that have been audited. We say no to whites owning our land and they should go.

“They can own companies and apartments in our towns and cities but not the soil. It is ours and that message should ring loud and clear in Britain and the United States.”

The new tenure system will confirm land ownership and, according to Mugabe, the government will create modalities within the financial services sector to allow farmers to access funding.

In typical anti-western rhetoric Mugabe took a dig at former British Premier Tony Blair.

“We had an agreement with the Margaret Thatcher government and when Tony Blair came he reneged on that agreement. I pleaded with him to review his decision but he was a boy from the street with no experience so he stuck to his guns,” said the veteran leader.

“I was not amused and told him to keep his England and we would keep our Zimbabwe. We will not pay for our land and we will not ask our people to pay for it because they never paid for it in the first place.

“They were selling to each other amongst themselves and we will not recognise any of that nonsense. They were living like kings and queens on our land and we chucked them out. Now we want all of it.”

Mugabe’s latest pronouncements are likely to send jitters across the agricultural sector and the remaining white commercial farmers some who have argued that they never benefitted from colonialism. – New Zimbabwe

Another farm murder rattles KZN farming community

law4A crowd of 350 farmers, farmworkers and others from the rural community protested outside the Himeville Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, as three men appeared for the grisly murder of timber contractor Daniel Knight last week.

The protest was held just a day after another KwaZulu-Natal farmer was murdered on his Vryheid dairy farm, The Witness reported.

Willem Weites, 78, was killed while trying to rescue his daughter, who was being held at knife-point

His son, Frederik Weites, 50, said a white car came to the dairy store with men carrying a bucket as people often do when they come to buy milk.

Weites said the three black men got out of the car and grabbed his sister Everlien, 49, after asking where her father was.

“They held a knife to her neck and when my father tried to intervene, they just shot him in the head and chest and he died on the spot,” he said.

He said they then dragged his sister to the main house threatening to rape her. They thus forced his mother to hand over keys to the safe.

They tied up both women, took an undisclosed sum of money and drove off in his father’s bakkie, he said.

Another attacker tied up farm workers and took their cellphones.

The bakkie was later recovered about eight kilometres away as in most farm attacks.

“We are devastated. I mean why do you need to kill people for money when you can take the money and leave them alive?” Frederik asked. Weites had often helped local blacks grind their maize at his mill.

Police spokesperson Captain Thulani Zwane said Ngome SAPS were investigating charges of murder and “business robbery”. No arrests had been made, he said.

In Himeville, Tsepiso Sthembiso Ramanyane, 20, Bonginkosi Eric Nyawose, 33, both from Bulwer, and Thabo Dlamini, 22, from Himeville, appeared for the murder of Knight and robbery with aggravating circumstances for taking property of Knight’s valued at R651 000.

While white farmers fear the escalating farm attacks, black workers fear that 300 households who had family members working for Knight may be hit by job losses following his murder.

Knight’s murder was particularly brutal. He was struck on the head with a heavy hammer while his partner, her eyelids forced open, was made to watch.

Graham Acutt, a dairy farmer, said: “This affects the community more than it affects the farmers; more families in the community will lose jobs because of some individuals that want quick cash. This picketing shows everyone that we are sick and tired of criminals that attack us.”

Sue Acutt asked: “Why did they want her to watch them doing this? Later, they even tried to suffocate her using a plastic glove as they covered her face with it. They left her thinking she had also died after she passed out.”

Vice-chairperson of the Vryheid Agricultural Chamber Horst Hellberg, referring to Weites’ death, said it was with shock “that we had to hear of another farm murder, this time one of our senior farmers”.

“It is unacceptable that farm murders are getting out of control again and government is not treating it as a priority.”

He suggested the government would address these issues more seriously only once there was not enough food to put on the nation’s tables.

KwaZulu-Natal Agricultural Union (KwaNalu) security desk Koos Marais said they were disturbed by the latest callous murder.

Dr Johan Burger of the South African Institute for Security Studies said in 2012, 63 farm murders were recorded. This year up to September there had been 54 farm murders recorded already.

“The brutality with which these murders are carried out makes us believe that there is something behind these attacks,” he said.

He said it was interesting to note that last year 39 farmers were killed and of those only three were black farmers.

Toilet-flushing symphony in Zimbabwe

Probable Zimbabwean toilet

City authorities in Zimbabwe’s second largest city of Bulawayo, are appealing to home owners to flush their toilets at a specific time, in order to unblock sewers after days of severe water rationing. The ‘big flush’ time has been set for 7:30 pm.

The Bulawayo City Council has asked its 1.5 million residents to flush their toilets simultaneously when water supplies are restored. City officials say ‘‘synchronized flushing’’ is needed to clear waste that would have accumulated in sanitary facilities – which will have been affected by days of water outages.
The hope is that if everyone flushes together there is less chance of sewer blockages and pipe bursts, officials claimed.

Simela Dube, the city’s director of engineering, said: “We need to flush our toilets at the same time to push all the waste that will be just under the surface, as residents would be using little water to flush toilets during water shedding hours.”

Bulawayo’s two main dams, supplying water to the city, have been drying up due to severe droughts in the southwestern part of Zimbabwe.

After expelling whites, Zimbabwe’s formerly first-world infrastructure has been crumbling. Agricultural production has also plummeted, leading to a shortage of foreign exchange and funds necessary for maintaining essential services.