HARARE - The Zimbabwe government has ordered 25 of the few white commercial farmers still remaining in the country to vacate their land by the end of this month, the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) said in a statement on Thursday.
The largely white-membership CFU said State Security Minister Didymus Mutasa, who is also in charge of land redistribution and the Ministers of Agriculture and Justice, Joseph Made and Patrick Chinamasa respectively, told farmers in Makoni district in Manicaland province that only 15 of the 40 white farmers there would be permitted to continue farming.
"In Makoni district (Headlands, Rusape and Nyazura), there are presently 40 farmers. After a visit to the area on 24 September by Ministers Mutasa, Made and Chinamasa, the farmers were told that only 15 of them would be permitted to continue farming, and the other 25 must cease farming operations and vacate their farms," the CFU statement reads in part.
The farmers' representative body spoke as top government politicians and supporters of President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU PF party have in the last five weeks intensified efforts to seize land from the few white farmers across the country.
About 90 percent of the more than 4 000 white large-scale producing white commercial farmers in Zimbabwe before 2000 were dispossessed of land over the past five years under the government's chaotic and often violent land redistribution exercise.
Mutasa, who was quoted by local newspapers as having called white farmers filthy, refused to discuss the fresh farm evictions when contacted by ZimOnline.
But Mutasa two months ago said he was resuming the farm seizure programme, which the government had publicly said was finished, because he wanted to ensure every black Zimbabwean owned land by the onset of the next rainy season around November.
The CFU said several of its members have in the last few weeks reported being ordered to cease farming and vacate their properties.
In Bindura in ZANU PF's stronghold Mashonaland Central Province, two farmers there have been given up to October 30 to stop farming and leave. In Chipinge district in eastern Zimbabwe, a total of five farmers were in the last two weeks forced off their properties.
The farmers and their families, who were given hours to pack and go, were forced to leave behind farm equipment and even personal household property all worth billions of dollars. Some of the farmers and their managers were severely assaulted, according to the CFU.
But in Mashonaland East governor, Ray Kaukonde, has ordered a stop to farm invasions and there is peace and quiet on farms there, the CFU said.
The farm seizures, which Mugabe says were necessary to correct an unjust colonial land tenure system that bequeathed 75 percent of the best arable land to minority whites while blacks were cramped on poor soils, have destabilised the agricultural sector causing severe food shortages
Zimbabwe, also grappling a severe economic crisis, has survived on food handouts from the international community since the farm seizures began five years ago and this year requires more than a million tonnes of food aid or a third of its 12 million people could starve.
But Mugabe denies his farm seizure programme worsened Zimbabwe's economic and food crisis, instead blaming food shortages on poor weather and economic problems on sabotage by Western governments opposed to his land reform policies.