Controversial land reform programme costs Zim $12 billion

Zimbabwe's Dispossesed farmers say the country's controversial fast-track land reform programme has heavily weighed-down the economy, costing the nation $12 billion since it was launched in 2000, Daily News revealed.

The total cost is 50 percent in excess of Zimbabwe's projected $8 billion Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for 2011, and double  the country's 2010 GDP which was slightly above $6 billion.

Outgoing Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) president Deon Theron said Zimbabwe's chaotic land reform had chased away productive farmers leading to an endemic economic collapse.

"We used to produce in excess of what we needed allowing us to export (but) we are no longer able to do this.

"Commercial agriculture was Zimbabwe's largest employer (and) largest supplier of raw materials to the manufacturing sector," he said, adding that farming was the largest revenue earner before the 2000 land invasions."

Theron said the $12 billion figure was reached after considering farm production before and after the land grab as well as the projected production.

He said the cost was also increased due to the fact that resettled farmers, whose access to land was chaotic, had to replace vandalised farming equipment.

The farmers said the country's total agricultural output in 2000 stood at 4,3 million tonnes with a value of about $3,5 billion, but has since declined by 73 percent.

A majority of the 4 500 commercial farmers lost their land in 2000 to mainly Zanu PF party officials, resulted in displacing close to 250 000 people and their estimated 1,3 million dependents, according to Theron.

"Government claims of giving land and empowering the black majority are simply not true.

"Records show that the majority of land has been given to senior politicians, senior members of the security forces, judges, so called ‘war veterans,' high profile cleric and relatives of senior politicians. The one man one farm does not hold water," he said.

According to statistics from the General Agricultural and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe (GAPWUZ), President Robert Mugabe and his family together with Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa and Local Government minister, Ignatius Chombo, own multiple farms.

"Land that has been allocated to the people is lent under a system of political patronage. The continued use and occupation of the land is dependent on their political affiliation and loyalty (and) there is no genuine empowerment or farmer autonomy, there is no security of tenure and there is no collateral value attached to the land (making it) a dead asset, which cannot drive its own development," he added.

The devastating effects of the land reform have left the country facing a debilitating food deficit which resulted in the failure to feed itself for the past decade.

According to United Nations, Zimbabwe requires an additional $73 million in food aid to avert hunger caused by drought which affected several parts of the country.

This comes after the country received around $415 million this year, but drought and ill informed agricultural policies have worsened food shortages in the dry parts of the country, straining the national coffers further.

Comments