Farmers' union says only few whites offered land

Tuesday 09 January 2007

HARARE - The Zimbabwe government has again promised to return land to former
white farmers but the dispossessed farmers on Monday told ZimOnline that
only a handful of them had been offered new farms out of hundreds that had
applied.

State Security and also Lands Minister Didymus Mutasa earlier on Sunday said
his department would offer farms to "former (white) farm owners who are
genuine farmers who desire to continue farming in this country" and help
resuscitate the mainstay agricultural sector that has collapsed since farm
seizures began in 2000.

The government, which had vowed never to return land it seized from whites,
first backtracked on that position last November when it gave 99-year leases
to about half a dozen whites who were part of a group of about 100 black
farmers to receive the life-long leases.

But the white-representative Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) said in total
only a handful of former white farmers have been given land out of 700 that
had applied to Mutasa's department following earlier pronouncements by the
government that it would also allocate farms to whites.

CFU spokeswoman Emily Crooks said: "The situation is that a larger number of
farmers applied for land but the minister (Mutasa) has not responded. Only a
couple of farmers were recently issued with offer leases."

Mutasa was not immediately available to explain delays in allocating land to
former white farmers many with vast experience to produce food in short
supply in the country.

Zimbabwe has relied on food imports since 2001 mainly due to failure by new
black farmers to maintain production on former white farms.

Poor performance in the mainstay agricultural sector has also had far
reaching consequences as hundreds of thousands have lost jobs while the
manufacturing sector, starved of inputs from the sector, is operating below
30 percent capacity. - ZimOnline