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Zim farmers help Zambia
25/03/2005 08:46 - (SA)
Choma, Zambia - White farmers who lost their land in Zimbabwe are helping neighbouring Zambia shore up its tobacco and maize production while steering clear of political controversy.
In the southern town of Choma, some 25 Zimbabwean farmers are leasing farmland to grow tobacco and maize for export and creating jobs for many poor Zambians and an "outbreak of money", officials say.
"Tobacco production has increased in the last three years because of the white Zimbabwean farmers who have introduced highly mechanized farming in Zambia," says Finance Minister Ngandu Magande.
"There is an outbreak of money in Choma," Magande adds.
The group is part of Zimbabwe's 4 500 white commercial farmers who had been targeted by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's government since 2000 and whose prime land had been taken away and given to landless blacks.
Before the land invasions, white farmers, mainly descendants of British settlers, owned 70% of the most fertile land in Zimbabwe.
The Choma agriculturists are farming on long-term leases from individual Zambians who were unable to develop the land because of a lack of capital and equipment and are being financed through $25m in loans from US tobacco company Universal.
"Each farm employs about 120 local people," says Tim Carter, 47, a Zimbabwean who owns Nkanga Farms, a tract of land of around 1 200 acres west of Choma.
Carter left in 1983
Carter left Zimbabwe in 1983, three years after Zimbabwean independence and some 17 years before Mugabe let his supporters, led by independence war veterans, attack and take over white-owned farms.
Mugabe's policy sparked an exodus with farmers leaving for Zambia, Mozambique and a handful even going as far away as Nigeria to rebuild their lives.
Most farmers crossed into Zambia without equipment because the Zimbabwean government imposed a ban on the movement of farm machinery.
"The Zim farmers had to start from scratch," Carter says. Universal has provided loans to buy new machinery.
He says he hopes things would change for the better in Zimbabwe after the parliamentary polls on Thursday and is rooting for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
After the scathing experience of Zimbabwe, the white farmers are keeping a low profile in Zambia.
"We don't even talk politics here. It's sports and farming," Carter said.
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