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Zimbabwe:
Mugabe admits chaotic land reforms to blame for food shortages
ZimOnline
December
12, 2005
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/KHII-6JZ4JG?OpenDocument&rc=1&cc=zwe
HARARE -
President Robert Mugabe at the weekend admitted that his chaotic
and often violent land redistribution exercise helped cause severe
food shortages in Zimbabwe.
Mugabe has in
the past completely rejected assertions that his seizure of large-scale
producing white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks
destabilised the mainstay agricultural sector and Zimbabwe's capacity
to feed itself.
Zimbabwe, once
a regional breadbasket, has since Mugabe's land reforms in 2000
largely survived on handouts from international food relief agencies.
The Zimbabwean
leader, who insists his land reforms were necessary to correct an
unjust land tenure system that reserved all the best farmland for
whites while blacks were cramped on poor soils, had in the past
maintained that his country's food problems were mainly because
of poor weather.
But Mugabe last
Saturday told a conference of his ruling ZANU PF party that lack
of proper planning in the land reform exercise, corruption, lawlessness
on farms and vandalisation of irrigation equipment and infrastructure,
coupled with shortages of fertilizer and seed had exacerbated the
effects of poor weather.
"All this translates
into low production and food insecurity," said Mugabe, in a surprisingly
frank assessment of his land reform project.
Indicating he
is not about to call off ongoing seizures of the few farms still
in white hands, Mugabe told the ZANU PF conference that there were
still more people waiting to be allocated land. But he said vandalisation
of farms should stop.
"We still have
people in need of land. We have to stop vandalisation on farms.
All irrigation badly needs to be rehabilitated," Mugabe said.
Mugabe's farm
seizures, which he launched a year after the International Monetary
Fund withdrew balance-of-payments support to his government, knocked
Zimbabwe's agriculture-based economy completely off the rails, triggering
a severe recession that has been described by the World Bank as
unprecedented in a country not at war.
The economic
crisis has seen inflation shooting beyond 500 percent, while unemployment
is above 70 percent. Fuel, electricity, essential medical drugs
and just about every basic survival commodity is in critical short
supply because there is no hard cash to pay foreign suppliers.
The United Nations
(UN) World Food Programme says by end of January, it will be providing
food aid to about three million Zimbabweans or a quarter of the
country's 12 million people.
But Mugabe and
ZANU PF used their conference to heap scorn on UN emergency relief
co-ordinator Jan Egeland who toured Zimbabwe last week and described
humanitarian conditions in the country as very serious and worsening
by the day.
Mugabe and his
party accused the UN envoy of exaggerating Zimbabwe's humanitarian
situation with the 81-year old President calling the UN envoy a
hypocrite and liar.
The ZANU PF
conference urged Mugabe's government to crack down on non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) and civic groups allied to the opposition Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC) which the party claims are being sponsored
by Britain and its Western allies to topple the Harare government.
The ruling party
also called on immigration authorities to step up seizure of travel
documents from citizens opposed to Mugabe's rule so they cannot
travel abroad to mobilise international pressure against the government.
Zimbabwe immigration
officials have in the past week seized the passport of top journalist
and publisher Trevor Ncube and MDC official, Paul Themba Nyathi,
who they said were among a list of 64 people whose passports must
be impounded.
Ncube is expected
to appeal to the High Court today against the seizure of his passport.
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