Have a look at this.

__________________________________________________

Was land reform just a gimmick?

Denford Magora
8/18/2005 10:16:35 AM (GMT +2)

THE editor of this newspaper is obviously not crazy. He would not be editor otherwise. Which means that there is a good reason why this paper has, over the last six months or so, devoted several editorials to the land reform exercise and the way it is being handled.

The reason this paper has to revisit the topic is clearly the fact that the government appears not too bothered by the fiasco. They appear unaware of what this paper figured out many moons ago: that agriculture is indispensable to the rise of an industrialised and prosperous Zimbabwe.
Although we can continue to rely on it to meet our food needs, it can not offer sustained prosperity. Because of the subsidies given to western farmers and the fact that even Zambia is now producing an excess of food, agriculture's scope for giving Zimbabwe prosperity is limited even in the medium term.
The campaign against tobacco worldwide also means that even this foreign currency earner will be squeezed in the long term. Besides, we are not the only tobacco-producing nation in the world.
Still, there is no denying the fact that, in order to power itself up for true prosperity based on value-added natural resources, manufacturing and service industries, agriculture must take its place first as the engine of the current Zimbabwean economy. That is our starting point. With agriculture having been sorted out, it will be a short hop and skip to building a sustainably prosperous Zimbabwe.
This is the reason this paper sees it fit to repeatedly call the attention of government to the fiasco in the land reform programme.
Yet, to date, the government appears not to be bothered. We still have multiple farm ownerships. People who do not even know the difference between corn and cocoa are still in possession of farms that have fallen into disuse. The majority of this second group took up their farms with the hope of getting title deeds, whereupon they would then sell the farms to real, dedicated farmers.
They are the ones who are not interested in the loans from Agribank (which do not need collateral) because they want title deeds under the pretext of using them to get finance, when in fact they just want to sell and make a killing. Money for nothing.
Some of these people are politicians' relatives and even ministers themselves. They are not serious about farming at all. They have no interest in the industry whatsoever. Their interest is purely speculative.
Naturally, this paper sees the recovery of agriculture as the basis of Zimbabwe's return first, to self-sufficiency, and then on to true prosperity. This is so blindingly obvious that government's foot-dragging on this issue is extremely puzzling.
Is it that they find it easier to humiliate themselves by taking a begging bowl to South Africa than to actually get the ministers and their functionaries to work on resolving this?
We have extension officers in literally every district in Zimbabwe. If need be, rotate them (to obviate possible corruption) and get them to submit reports within a month on how the farms in their areas are being utilised.
Indeed, this is such an important issue that it is surprising that ministers are being allowed to go home at the end of the day at all. They should be spending sleepless nights trying to ensure that this issue is quickly resolved.
Are they not aware that, today, the world is laughing at the country. One British citizen (a former Zimbabwean) actually phoned me specifically to say, "Four thousand white people owned farms and were able to feed all of you people, yet now you supposedly have three hundred thousand people with farmland who can not afford to feed you."
To rub in more salt, he then went on to say that the job of feeding Zimbabweans is actually easier for these three hundred thousand new farmers since more than three million people have fled Zimbabwe, hence we have less mouths to feed. "Still, you can are failing."
Naturally, I can never agree with him that the maths then show that one old (read white) farmer is more than equal to 75 new farmers. Nevertheless, this is a humiliation that is not necessary.
Why do even have a cabinet then, if it can take more than four years to actually find out who is using his or her farm and who is leaving it to be taken care of by weeds and birds? Is the job that difficult for the lot of them?
More than anything else, President Mugabe's leadership is being trampled on by the ineptitude not only at the Ministry of Agriculture but at virtually all ministries. The fact that he appears unwilling to crack the whip and get the process concluded quickly is now making Zimbabweans think that there is truth in the talk that this was a gimmick, a ruse to maintain political power.
Having been witness to the repeated editorials in this paper calling for the land exercise to be sorted out once and for all, I and many other people have reached the conclusion that the government is not interested.