Mutambara denies benefiting from government farm programme

By Violet Gonda
12 June 2007

The state Herald newspaper alleged on Tuesday that leading opposition officials were among scores of beneficiaries of Robert Mugabe’s farm mechanisation programme. This program is supposed to revive the agriculture sector, destroyed by government, by providing farming inputs. Part of this scheme involves the setting up of technical colleges to produce ox-drawn carts and ploughs to help communal farmers produce food.

The newspaper listed several “beneficiaries” from different sectors of society. The paper then went to extraordinary lengths to emphasise the alleged participation of opposition officials in this controversial scheme. Some of those mentioned include one of the MDC leaders Professor Arthur Mutambara, his deputy Gibson Sibanda, their secretary general Professor Welshman Ncube, the deputy leader of the Morgan Tsvangirai-led faction Thokozani Khupe, the opposition chief whip in parliament Innocent Gonese and Tsvangirai-MDC MP Giles Mutsekwa.

We could not get a comment from some of the opposition officials as they were in parliament but Professor Mutambara dismissed the report as propaganda. He said: “This is totally false. Its complete nonsense. I am not doing any farming at all in Zimbabwe. I have no farm in Zimbabwe and I am not a beneficiary at all of Robert Mugabe’s criminal activities in the country.”

Mutambara said this was a complete fabrication meant to tarnish the brand of the opposition and create confusion and divisions. He said the opposition opposes the way the government handled the land reform programme and will not be part and parcel of Mugabe’s criminal conduct.

He said: “Yes as a party we believe in a land revolution. We believe in a fair transparent and equitable use of land in our country but not the criminal activities which Mugabe is carrying out in our country.”

Giles Mutsekwa of the Tsvangirai MDC also denied the reports. The legislator said most people, including himself, were taken by surprise to read the Herald and discovered their names amongst people who were supposed to have benefited from this programme. Mutsekwa said: “But I am not a beneficiary. I don’t intend to be one. I am not a farmer and have no intention to be one and therefore I don’t need the equipment.”

He also said some parliamentarians were tricked by the Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono into attending the ceremony where Mugabe was handing out the farming equipment. The Mutare North MP said: “Gono sent invitations to various MPs pretending that this was actually a programme that invites members of parliament to see what importations the Reserve Bank has done for the purpose of agrarian performance in the country, only to be caught unaware when they got there and President Mugabe was also there and that the occasion was to distribute some equipment and the lot! So it was dishonest on the part of the Reserve Bank Governor himself.”

Hundreds of thousands of farm workers were left without work and were displaced after the regime sponsored a violent land invasion campaign in 2000. White commercials farmers were evicted from the farms which resulted in the collapse of the agricultural sector.

Professor Mutambara said Mugabe literally took the land and gave it to his friends and cronies: “That is not land revolution so he cannot reach out to us through criminal conduct. No, we reject that hand of friendship and Mugabe can go to hell and hang!”

Mutsekwa said the latest move by the government is a desperate attempt to be seen by the international community, especially by regional leaders, as a government that wants to extend its hand of friendship to the opposition. He also said this was also an attempt to blackmail and divide the opposition.