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Dream turns sour for Zimbabwe's resettled black sugarcane farmers
ZimOnline
December 20, 2005

http://www.zimonline.co.za/headdetail.asp?ID=11320

CHIREDZI - Jowaki Chauke's dream of becoming a sugarcane farmer appeared well set to become reality when the government land committee allocated him a plot on one of Zimbabwe's prime sugar estates in the country's south-eastern lowveld.

But 15 months down the line, the sweet dream is gradually disintegrating into a nightmare not only for Chauke but for many of the 180 black villagers given land for free on the giant Mkwasine Estates under the government's controversial land redistribution exercise.

Mkwasine belonged to two South African-owned firms, Hippo Valley and Triangle Limited and was one of Zimbabwe's biggest sugar estates, producing up to 850 000 of sugarcane before it was seized by the government - together with sugar crop that was on it - and divided amongst Chauke and his fellow villagers.

But ask Chauke or anyone of his fellow sugar farmers here at Mkwasine and they will tell you that while the gift of free land and sugar was most welcome, it would have been better had government land officers done a little planning and above all ensured that the beneficiaries would be allocated enough space on the sugar plots to build homes.

"It could have been better for us had these areas been demarcated in such a manner to allow us to build homes," bemoans Chauke, who was given 20 hectares of prime sugar growing land at Mkwasine.

A father of three children, Chauke added: "I do not mean to be ungrateful to our government, but I do not know how they expected things to work out when they gave us land to grow cane without space to build homes."

In yet another vivid illustration of the chaos and shoddy planning that characterised President Robert Mugabe's controversial land reform programme, government land planners demarcated Mkwasine into fine sugar plots.

But for some strange reason the government land planners decided to leave not even one inch of land on which the newly resettled farmers could build homes!

Agricultural experts meanwhile say the compulsory acquisition and subsequent subdivision of Mkwasine Estate by the government was done in a manner bound to weigh down heavily on production.

The composite estate was parcelled out into uneconomic units that according to top agro-economist and main opposition Movement for Democratic Change party politician Renson Gasela cannot be economically cultivated.

Gasela, who is a former chief executive of the government's Grain Marketing Board, said: "The allocation was done in such a way that the fields for the new farmers are dotted about making any centralised operation impossible. This is done deliberately to make everybody fail. Otherwise why would the government allocate land in this manner?"

The opposition politician said Mkwasine Estate was developed as one unit comprising a network of fields, canals and dams for one owner. "Apportioning land to multiple owners has proved uneconomic," he added.

About 2 700 hectares have so far been allocated to 180 new farmers but half the beneficiaries have since deserted their plots while some have left them under the care of relatives and friends.

But even for those farmers like Chauke who are determined to stick it out and remain on the land to grown sugar - the odds are increasingly looking insurmountable.

For example, Chauke's neighbour, Tauzeni Mhlanguleni, says his cane has overgrown and will soon be worthless because he has no money to hire additional labour to help reap the cane.

"We cannot afford the wages," said Mhlanguleni, adding that his most important lesson in the past 15 months at Mkwasine has been that sugarcane growing is both a capital and labour intensive project.

"We have exhausted the initial government loans but have little to show for it after the state deducted from our first earnings all what we owed them," said Mhlanguleni.

And just to compound the despairing Mhlanguleni's problems are the fuel shortages gripping Zimbabwe which means that even if he eventually gets to cut his cane, it might still rot on his hands because he has no fuel to transport it to the mill about 65km away.

A cursory glance at the statistics provides a good insight on how the government's land reform exercise has been in this particular instance, a giant leap backwards.

The figures show that just about a year ago, Mkwasine under its former owners produced 110 tonnes of sugarcane per hectare. Today, Chauke and his colleagues can only manage 40 tonnes of poor quality cane pre hectare - a yield not enough to cover the costs of transporting the cane to the mills let alone the cost of fertilizers and other chemicals.

"It is obvious that the future of the farmers, without sufficient capital, without equipment, with no experience and working individually, is bleak," Gasela said.

"The government is set to destroy the sugar industry just as they have done with tobacco, maize, wheat, beef, dairy, horticulture," he added.

It would be easy to dismiss Gasela's predictions as the typical ranting of an opposition politician were it not Mugabe himself who admitted just as much during the conference of his ruling ZANU PF party earlier this month.

Mugabe - who has defended his chaotic and often violent land reforms as having been necessary to ensure blacks who were previously denied arable land by previous white rulers also owned land - told the ZANU PF conference that poor planning and corruption in the land reform exercise had contributed to food shortages in the country.

Zimbabwe has largely survived on food handouts from international donors since the government's land reforms destabilised the agricultural sector, knocking down food production by about 60 percent.

An estimated three million people or a quarter of the country's 12 million Zimbabweans require more than a million tonnes of food aid between now and the next harvest around March/April 2006 or they will starve.

But Mkwasine with its homeless and broke sugar farmers could be the most eloquent testimony yet to as what has gone wrong with Harare's controversial land redistribution plan.

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