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Zimbabwe: White farmers beg Mugabe to halt farm disturbances
ZimOnline
February 07, 2006

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/KHII-6LS3AR?OpenDocument&rc=1&cc=zwe

HARARE - Zimbabwe's few remaining white farmers at the weekend called on President Robert Mugabe to declare a moratorium on his controversial land policies to enable farmers to resuscitate the agricultural sector and beat off starvation threatening the country.

Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) president Douglas Taylor-Freeme said a temporary halt on current land and agricultural policies would create breathing space for the rehabilitation of the key agricultural sector, at the moment in a state of near-total-collapse after Mugabe expelled most of the country's about 4 000 white farmers and parcelled out their farms to landless blacks.

"We urge the authorities to declare a moratorium on land and current agriculture policies and, with the full protection of the law, bring together all stakeholders and rebuild the entire industry to return as the principal employer of labour and generator of food and forex," said Taylor Freeme, in a statement to the "Government and People of Zimbabwe".

Taylor Freeme, whose CFU is the main representative body for white farmers in the country, said Mugabe's chaotic and often violent land seizure programme had plunged the agricultural sector into problems.

But the farmers' leader acknowledged the motive behind the state land redistribution plan to reverse inequality in land ownership, adding that now was "not the time for recrimination or going back - it is the time to draw the line and go forward, learning from the past."

Agricultural Minister Joseph Made was not immediately available for comment on the CFU appeal for a temporary halt on current land and agricultural policies to allow for the rebuilding of the farming sector.

However, both Mugabe and Made have on numerous occasions in the past declared they will not halt their land reform programme which has since 2000 seen the government seizing more than 10 million hectares of land from whites without paying compensation and giving it over to blacks.

But failure by the Harare administration to follow up land redistribution with inputs support and skills training for black villagers resettled on former white farms saw total agricultural production dropping by about 30 percent while food production fell by about 60 percent to leave Zimbabwe dependent on food aid.

To avoid mass starvation, the government last year signed an agreement with the World Food Programme and other donor groups to help feed about three million Zimbabweans or a quarter of the country's 12 million people who face starvation after poor harvests the previous season.

An acute economic crisis, in part blamed on the government's farm seizure programme that destabilised the mainstay agricultural sector, has worsened the humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe with the southern African nation also short of electricity, fuel, essential medical drugs and other basic commodities because there is no hard cash to pay foreign suppliers.

Taylor Freeme said with support from the government and other stakeholders, white farmers had "the energy and capacity to help bring Zimbabwe back, once again, to being the 'bread basket' of the sub-continent."

Only about 500 white farmers remain on the land in Zimbabwe and of these many are battling to hang on to their farms after a fresh wave of farm seizures that began late last year and has continued despite calls by Vice President Joseph Msika and Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor Gideon Gono for farm invasions to stop.

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