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Desperate Zimbabwe moves to lure back white ex-farmers
Craig Timberg, The Washington Post
May 15, 2006

http://www.zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID=14370

Kwekwe - The end of a century of farming for the van der Berghs came in December, family members said, when a man brandishing an official-looking letter and voicing threats of violence demanded they abandon their 1,300 acres of land, the final remnants of what had been vast holdings more than a dozen times larger. But rather than flee the country, as thousands of other white farmers have done, the van der Berghs moved to the nearest major town, the pleasant, tree-lined community of Kwekwe, in central Zimbabwe, and tried to resume their lives. Taking advantage of a new government initiative that offers the possibility of returning land to some white farmers, the van der Berghs submitted an application for a long-term lease. At least 200 other farmers have done the same, according to the Commercial Farmers Union, and each day dozens of others call or visit the group's headquarters in Harare, the capital, to inquire about the program. "We can't just sit here," said Nicholas van der Bergh, 59, a large, muscular man with a crushing handshake hinting at a lifetime of clearing brush, tilling soil and harvesting crops. "We are farmers, really. We need to make a living. We are Zimbabweans. We think we belong here."

Other former farmers have treated the government's offer with suspicion bordering on contempt. President Robert Mugabe encouraged landless black peasants to invade commercial farms beginning in February 2000. He portrayed the longtime white owners - about 4,500 farmers who owned most of the country's best agricultural land - as thieves who had deprived the 12 million black Zimbabweans of their birthrights. The white farmers, whose families were encouraged to settle here by British colonial rulers and later a white-supremacist government, had for decades enjoyed large profits, low labor costs and little interference. Now only a few hundred white-owned farms remain. Tens of thousands of black Zimbabweans have been given the land, but most received no support, such as supplies of fertilizer and seeds, much less training in how to manage what had been sophisticated, export-oriented agribusinesses. Many of the farms turned brown and weedy. Giant irrigation machinery sat idle as poor rains combined with chaos in the agricultural industry to turn Zimbabwe into one of Africa's neediest recipients of international food aid. Inflation has reached 1,000 percent, and a catastrophic shortage of hard currency has severely limited the availability of clean water and electricity and access to health care.

Government officials blamed bad weather and sanctions by Western countries such as Britain and the United States, which have opposed Mugabe's increasingly ruthless authoritarian regime. But this year, with rain plentiful and agricultural production still paltry, Zimbabwean officials have begun speaking publicly of reclaiming underutilized land and leasing it to qualified commercial farmers without regard to race. Information Minister Tichaona Jokonya said in a recent telephone interview that land policy had moved into a new phase and that significant numbers of long-term leases would be issued before summer planting begins in August. No new farms, he said, would be given to poor blacks. "What the government is saying is: Those who genuinely want land, whether white or black, let them come forward," Jokonya said, speaking from his own farm, south of Harare. Referring to the government's land redistribution program, he said, "The resettlement is complete." The Commercial Farmers Union, meanwhile, has been meeting regularly with the government and is telling its almost entirely white membership that the offer of land is sincere. "I have no doubt that in the near future our sector of society will have access to land," said Trevor Gifford, the group's vice president.

Yet many farmers appear to regard the government's recent initiative as yet another trick by a government attempting to improve its economy and international standing by means of a public relations campaign rather than real reform. The day after Jokonya said that underutilized land was being redistributed, the minister of lands and land resettlement, Didymus Mutasa, was quoted in the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper as saying, "No white farmer is being invited back." And even if some land is returned, many white former farmers say the equipment and capital needed to resume farming were lost years ago. Besides, they say, they are interested in reoccupying only their own farms - to which most still hold titles - not those seized from other farmers. "It's a smokescreen," said Paul Nel, 65, a friend of van der Bergh's, adding that he lost his farm, his home and nearly his life in attacks related to the land redistribution. "I've got more to do than waste my time. There's no sincerity to it." A series of farm invasions over the past several weeks has also fueled farmers' skepticism even as the government speaks of returning some land to white farmers. Van der Bergh does have reservations. His family once pastured cattle and grew corn, soybeans, wheat, barley and tobacco on 22,000 acres of land while employing 110 workers. Over the past six years, that farmland has been lost piece by piece. Veterans of Zimbabwe's guerrilla war of liberation, who have been blamed for murders and other violence during the land redistribution, also burned down the family's house in 2002, van der Bergh said.

But more recently, he said, the situation has shifted both for the farmers, who want to work, and the government, which needs to revive its economy. He also said he was prepared to operate on a smaller scale, leasing the land rather than holding title to it, if that is the price of returning to farming. Mugabe last year passed a constitutional amendment nationalizing all land, rendering individual titles worthless. There is something else behind van der Bergh's thinking: His two sons want to farm in Zimbabwe. David van der Bergh, 25, and Nicholas Jr., 22, had largely taken over the planting and harvesting in recent years as their father shifted into semi-retirement. Until the final piece of land was seized in December, the younger van der Berghs were among the fortunate few. Of the 34 students who graduated from a Zimbabwean agricultural college with him, David van der Bergh said, all but three have left, mostly for Australia, New Zealand and Britain. Other popular destinations for Zimbabwean farmers include Zambia, Mozambique and Nigeria, where governments have offered them land in hopes of stimulating their own agricultural production.

David van der Bergh, who has a round face, curly brown hair and a smaller version of his father's muscular build, said he plans to join the exodus but is eager to return. Yet even if the government gives his family a long-term lease, he said, he expects to farm differently than did people of his father's generation. Among the lessons of the past six years, he said, is that large homes, vast holdings and lavish living can attract powerful enemies. "Guys who are going to farm in the future are going to have to adjust," he said. "I'll never build a little kingdom for myself."

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