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Land grab continues
Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2004-15
Monday April 12th - Sunday April 18th 2004

The facade of normalcy with which government has always tried to mask the chaotic nature of its controversial land seizures peeled off again in the week to reveal the nasty outlook of the exercise after the authorities made fresh aggressive bids to take over Kondozi and Charleswood Farms in Manicaland.

As SW Radio Africa (13/4) and Studio 7 (12 & 16/4) revealed, this onslaught follows President Mugabe’s threat in June last year that government would take over the two farms and more recent statements by Information Minister Jonathan Moyo that the authorities would take "decisive and final corrective measures over Kondozi".

Not only did government’s latest efforts smack of hypocrisy and vindictiveness, but also exposed serious policy contradictions in the implementation of government’s ‘fast-track’ agrarian reforms.

Predictably, the government media ignored the authorities’ violations of the law and human rights under the guise of the so-called equitable redistribution of land. As illustrated by The Herald (16/4) for example, they covered up the illegal and violent nature of the raids and failed to question why government continued to resort to this barbaric method to achieve its goals.

This primitive use of force was all the more alarming since the raids were clearly in contempt of court orders granted to the owners of the farms barring government from interfering in their operations.

Instead, The Herald downplayed the vicious manner in which armed State security agents evicted workers at Kondozi Farm, ostensibly to pave the way for the Agricultural and Rural Development Authority (ARDA). It merely reported that ARDA "has started operations" at Kondozi after its previous owners, the De Klerk family, who had "refused" to vacate it after its acquisition by the government, "made way for the Authority".

Similarly, the paper reported law enforcement agents as occupying Charleswood Farm and ordering "defiant employees to leave" after its owner, MDC MP for the area, Roy Bennet, "deserted the farm and the constituency opting for his farm at Ruwa".

ZBC simply ignored the seizures altogether.

But SW Radio Africa, which has for several weeks closely followed the developments at the farms, disproved The Herald’s suggestion of civility in the way state security agents threw out the farm workers.

The private radio station’s determination to ferret out a more reliable story about the invasions saw it diligently updating its audiences on the matter at least four times during the week.

For instance it reported (13/4) that "truckloads of soldiers armed with AK-47’s and police units with dogs and baton sticks" descended on Charleswood on Good Friday and forced all the farm workers and their families out of the compound, assaulting and injuring several in the process. Some workers who decided to stay were offered "short-term contracts and less pay".

The Zimbabwe Independent (16/4) corroborated the story and quoted farm workers who claimed that the police beat them up with truncheons "while children and the infirm were trampled in the melee". The paper also reported that the Manicaland provincial administrator had allegedly prevented the Red Cross from helping the stranded Kondozi farm workers. SW Radio Africa (15/4) also highlighted this.

The station (14/4) revealed that the seizure of Kondozi had adversely affected the surrounding community. It quoted journalist Peta Thorncroft as saying Kondozi supported "more than…8,000 families" in the province, most of whom were subsistence farmers contracted to sell their produce to the farm, which in turn exported the products to the lucrative European Union markets.

In fact, Studio 7 (15/04) reported that such negative repercussions of the takeover had prompted a high-powered delegation, including 28 chiefs, from areas surrounding Kondozi to travel to Harare hoping to meet President Mugabe "to complain about the evictions" but instead ended up meeting Vice-President Joseph Msika. The Zimbabwe Independent also revealed this.

Msika reportedly ordered ARDA off Kondozi saying the original farm "management must resume operations without interference" (Studio 7, 16/4, and The Standard, 18/4). The Standard quoted Msika as having claimed that he was unaware of "this latest land (Kondozi) acquisition neither is John Nkomo (Land Reform and Resettlement Minister) – nor is the acting police commissioner – only the police there were aware of this invasion".

Ironically, while the government was hounding out the remnants of productive commercial agriculture, the government media attacked Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo for wanting the same rejected farmers to farm in his country.

They did this by rehashing previous private media reports claiming that a team of white former commercial farmers had held talks with Obasanjo during a week-long visit to that country during which the group discussed the possibility of relocating there (The Herald, Chronicle, 15/4, and The Herald, 16/4).

But instead of fairly reporting the matter, the two papers (15/4) abused their professional roles by politicising the issue, depicting Obasanjo as a latter day Judas Iscariot.

They claimed that Nigeria’s move had "raised eyebrows and set tongues wagging in diplomatic circles, given that General Obasanjo had been ‘a midwife’ involved in moves to mend relations between Zimbabwe and Britain over the land issue".

To sustain their attack on Obasanjo the papers falsely claimed that government had not expelled the farmers but that they had instead spurned government’s one-man-one-farm policy in favour of multiple farm ownership, "some of which were idle and have been repossessed for redistribution among landless blacks".

They deliberately ignored the fact that government had legislated against the one-man-one-farm policy through section 9 (2)(a) (iii) of its 2004 Land Acquisition Amendment. The section dismisses the owning of one piece of land as constituting "valid grounds for any objection to the compulsory acquisition of the land nor shall such criteria form the basis of any claim or right in law…"

However, unlike the government media’s heavily sanitised reports on agricultural activity, the private media critically took stock of the pitfalls surrounding government’s agrarian reforms.

For example, the private media picked up an IRIN report (the UN’s Integrated Regional Information Network) on the rapidly shrinking dairy industry because some newly resettled farmers had given up on dairy production and had instead turned to the cultivation of maize and soya beans (The Tribune, 16/4, Zimbabwe Independent and The Standard).

The Tribune quoted one of the farmers as saying: "When I took up dairy farming I thought it was an easy business, but hardly had I started, did I realise that there was much more to it than leading cows into a milking pen."

The Zimbabwe Independent, on the other hand, quoted the National Association of Dairy Farmers (NADF) spokesperson, Hilary Blair, as saying the new dairy farmers had been disillusioned mainly because of their lack of experience and resources. This had resulted in a slump in the production of milk on some farms by 25 to 45 percent.

Blair said a dairy farmer "must be… a veterinary doctor, a nutritionist and must be on duty 24 hours a day, 365 days a year."

In contrast, the government-controlled media merely carried damage control pieces as was the case with The Herald (16/4) story, Milk shortage due to operational problems – DZL. The story unhelpfully claimed, "Milk producers continue to face various challenges related to drought, the cost and shortages of critical inputs…" adding that Dairiboard Zimbabwe Limited was running schemes to help dairy farmers with funds and infrastructural developments.

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