Harare
THE ZIMBABWE GOVERNMENT is offering formerly white-owned farms for free to Chinese state-owned firms in a desperate bid to revive the key agricultural sector, say well-placed sources in Zimbabwe. Details of the planned land-for-investment scheme are still uncertain, but with President Robert Mugabe vigorously pursuing a "Look-East" policy after falling out with the West (because of his government's poor human rights record), the president was looking for new deals to capture foreign currency. Unfortunately it appears that Western firms, including a Virginian tobacco company, are being drawn into schemes with the Chinese government, which has been supplying arms to Zimbabwe.
Reports had been multiplying recently that Mugabe was inviting former white landowners back to farm in Zimbabwe, but this appears to be a fiction to cover up for his plan to bring Chinese farmers in to grow tobacco and other crops.
Mugabe has appointed Didymus Mutasa, the head of the country's secret police, the Central Intelligence Organization, to oversee the latest version of Zimbabwe's land redistribution program. The government is now targeting unproductive land previously owned by white farmers, now occupied by blacks--apparently because there is no longer enough land in white hands, after close to 90 percent of the former white commercial farmers were stripped of land under the government's chaotic and often violent land reforms
According to Wilf Mbanga of the Zimbabwean newspaper, the new farmers could soon find themselves at the center of international legal disputes as lawyers for the original landowners seek compensation. Like many commercial farmers who
were displaced while their tobacco crops were still in the field, Joe Whaley had his farm taken over by one of Mugabe's relatives, Chester Mhende. "Mhende walked on to Whaley's farm two years ago, as the tobacco crop was about to be reaped. With the help of the Zanu PF heavies and the police, he prevented Whaley from taking anything off the farm. The tobacco crop was reaped and sold," said a report in the Zimbabwean. In addition to having reaped the crop, Mhende has been using the equipment on the farm and has never paid a cent to Whaley--who has now secured a high court injunction confirming that he is the rightful owner of the farm and that Mhende has to leave. The police, however, have refused to act. The police may also have inside knowledge about Mugabe's push to nationalize all land (giving much to Chinese farmers), which will nullify all land claims anyway.
Whaley alleged that the crop was bought by Zimbabwe Leaf Tobacco. When asked to comment on this allegation, ZLT Director, Gary Wallace told the Zimbabwean, "ZLT might have bought Mhende's crop through the auction floors--we don't know."
ZLT is the wholly owned subsidiary of Universal (Zimbabwe) Leaf Tobacco, a U.S. subsidiary of Universal Corporation, a $3 billion a year, 30,000 employee corporation, based in Richmond, Virginia. Universal Leaf Tobacco's senior vice president, James H. Starkey, III said, "All kinds of deals going on down there to pay bills. . . . finding a working mechanism is not easy. . . . I don't like the situation but we have a factory in Harare to run and our work force has gone from 6,000 to only 1,500 in the past few years."
|
