Farm evictions intensify as hunger grips Zimbabwe

By Tererai Karimakwenda
10 November 2005

While starvation due to food shortages continues to grip the nation, Zimbabwe’s government officials and ruling party cronies have intensified farm evictions in the Karoi area. The Zimonline news site reports that 18 of the last remaining white farmers in this prime farming district have been ordered to leave. The report said Robert Mugabe's friend Billy Rautenbach is the only farmer in Karoi who has been allowed to stay.
The evictions are senseless in a country that is reeling from hunger due to a huge reduction in food production. And despite reassuring rhetoric and threats from Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono and Vice president Musika, there is no security for white farmers in Zimbabwe anymore.

The 18 farmers were last week ordered to vacate their properties to make way for new black owners, most of them reported to be senior government officials and ZANU PF cronies. Mashonaland West province governor Nelson Samkange confirmed the evictions to ZimOnline, saying that the black farmers taking over were just as good. But the situation on the ground tells a different story. Many farms are lying idle and Zimbabweans are relying on food aid to survive, this only 5 years after the land invasions started.
As for Rautenbach, the only Karoi farmer who has been allowed to keep his farm in this fresh round of evictions, he is wanted in South Africa on some criminal charges, and is known to be a personal friend of Robert Mugabe.

The latest farm seizures that come just as the main planting period is getting underway after the country received its first substantial rains about a week ago, flies in the face of assurances two weeks ago by Mugabe's first Vice-President, Joseph Msika, that the government was not out to chase away all white farmers.

Mutasa, who oversees land reforms and food aid distribution, is one of the government hardliners. He was about three months ago quoted by the local media as having said white farmers were filthy and should all be removed from the land.

One of the affected Karoi farmers, Ben Tamblach said a former chief executive officer of a government-owned agro-bank was eyeing his farm and had deployed a number of war veterans to chase him away from the farm.

The farmer said he had 50 hectares of potatoes at the flowering stage and had prepared 200 hectares of maize, while another 100 hectares of winter wheat had already been harvested.