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Land
reform chaos
Media Monitoring
Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ)
Extracted from Weekly Media Update 2004-28
Monday July 5th – Sunday July 11th 2004
While The
Herald and Chronicle (15/7) recorded President Mugabe
as having told a visiting Chinese delegation that Zimbabweans had
"successfully" reclaimed their land from "whites"
adding that agriculture was thus set to "propel the country to prosperity",
other media reports seemed to indicate otherwise. They reflected
the deep-seated chaos in the agriculture sector as far from being
over. Even the government media, which the authorities have often
used to give government’s land reforms a veneer of normalcy, belied
President Mugabe claims.
However, these
media did not comprehensively view the issues as indicative of the
chaos that has generally marred the reforms since their inception
four years ago. For example, Radio Zimbabwe (13/7, 1pm) and ZTV
(13/7, 6 & 8pm) reported that more than 15,000 people that were
"illegally resettled" in conservancies in Masvingo
province had been ordered off the properties. The stations, however,
did not ask the authorities why those people were allowed to settle
in those conservancies in the first place. The Herald (15/7)
further exposed the fallacy surrounding government’s one-man-one-farm
policy. This was after the Lands Ministry sent out withdrawal letters
to several government ministers and ZANU PF cabinet members who
allegedly owned more than one farm. These included Local Government
Minister Ignatius Chombo, Information Minister Jonathan Moyo and
Agriculture Minister Joseph Made.
In contrast,
the privately owned media was more categorical in its coverage of
multiple farm ownership by ruling party leaders. The Sunday Mirror
(18/7), for example, viewed the "annoyed" response
from some of the recipients of Lands Minister John Nkomo’s letters
as stemming from a " deep-seated defiance" to Mugabe’s renewed clampdown
of multiple farm ownership which the presidency has failed to tackle.
Some of these recipients, it argued, had simply "secured technical
immunity from charges of multiple farm ownership by having ‘eligible’
relatives assume occupation of the extra properties".
Interestingly,
Moyo told The Herald (15/7) that one of the farms that Nkomo’s
officials had associated with him was actually allocated to his
cousin, while Transport Minister Chris Mushowe claimed that another
farm linked to him actually belonged to his son, "a grown
up man with his own family". It is against such responses
that Nkomo noted in the Sunday Mirror; "Justice Minister
Patrick Chinamasa said his wife gave up the farm, Moyo says his
cousin is now occupying the Hwange farm …the point is they had more
than one farm."
Meanwhile, the
private media exposed the continued farm invasions, violence and
looting that is taking place on the few remaining white owned farms.
For example, Studio 7(12/7 & 13/7) revealed that ZANU (PF) youth
militia and war veterans had ordered two white commercial farmers,
Eric Harrison of Mkwasine and John Winwood of Karoi off their farms
in two separate incidents. Harrison was said to be "holed
up" in his farm as the youths vowed not to leave the property,
while Winwood was reportedly arrested for "refusing to vacate
the farm" by the police and was later released without charge.
The station quoted a Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) official confirming
the arrest. However, a comment from the police was missing.
SW Radio Africa
(13/7) also reported the incidents adding that violence had been
"escalating in the past few weeks" in the white owned
farms, particularly in Karoi and Chiredzi sugar plantations. In
fact, the Zimbabwe Independent (16/7) carried a CFU statement saying
at least six white wheat commercial farmers in Karoi faced expulsion
from their properties after they were given 48-hour eviction notices
by the Mashonaland West governor, Nelson Samkange. Their pending
eviction was despite the fact that they had already applied to the
courts for a stay of execution to harvest their wheat crop while
challenging Section 8 notices in court.
In another classic
example of the lawlessness gripping government’s agrarian reforms,
the Zimbabwe Independent revealed that the government organ, the
Agricultural and Rural Development Authority (ARDA), had seized
152 cattle worth more than $304 million from opposition MP Roy Bennett’s
Charleswood Estate and relocated them to one of its farms in Chikomba
district. Bennett’s lawyer, Arnold Tsunga, described ARDA’s action
as constituting "stock theft under common law".
SW Radio Africa
and Studio 7 (12/7) also carried the report.
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fact sheet
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