Farmers 'take heart' from Mugabe address
Zimbabwe’s white farmers are taking heart from dictator Robert Mugabe’s relatively mild national address today, a union spokeswoman said.
Mugabe ordered white farmers defying eviction orders to pack up and leave their homes.
But he said loyal farmers willing to cooperate with his government would not be left completely landless.
Around 60% of the 3,000 farmers ordered to leave their land as part of an often violent programme to seize white-owned farms and give them to blacks have defiantly remained, said Jenni Williams of Zimbabwe’s Commercial Farmers Union.
They would take heart from Mugabe’s Hero’s Day address, she said.
“The majority of people will feel it was not the normal vitriolic attack and that, perhaps, sanity is beginning to prevail,” she said.
The land-seizure programme has crippled agriculture in Zimbabwe, once the bread basket of southern Africa but now facing the prospect of widespread starvation.
Those remaining on their farms still have grave concerns about their future but “have indicated to us that they have nowhere else to go”, said Ms Williams, from Bulawayo.
“They feel they belong in Zimbabwe and on their farms and they will stand their ground.”
The promises made by Mugabe and his henchmen were meaningless, she continued.
“He says there will be land for all and the government will not be taking farms that are single-owned,” she said.
“We hear this constantly coming from the government of Zimbabwe.
“Unfortunately, on the ground, 1,024 single-owned farms have been taken and are facing eviction.”
However, people were beginning to realise the scale of the catastrophe facing them if the land seizures continued, Ms Williams said.
“If they are to have food and they are to be able to be a productive Zimbabwean they have to say no to land reform on a political expediency and instead be able to foster a way to work in a fair and equitable manner with farmers on the ground so there is production,” she said.
“Otherwise millions will starve.”
