Mugabe sticks to his guns
2001-07-06 20:05
Harare - Despite a looming food crisis and widespread discontent with its economic policies, Zimbabwe's government is set to nationalise almost all white-owned farms and to give itself a monopoly in maize
sales.
During the last three weeks, President Robert Mugabe's government
has added more than 2 500 farms to the list of properties it plans
to seize and resettle with black farmers in a bid to redress
colonial-era inequalities in land ownership.
Agricultural officials, speaking on condition of anonymity,
estimated that almost all of the 5 500 white-owned farms in
Zimbabwe have been earmarked for resettlement. Only half the
white-owned lands in Zimbabwe were due to be resettled under the
government's original proposal.
The move comes despite a looming food shortage, which the government only admitted to on Thursday despite months of warnings
from regional, national and local crop monitors that the normally
self-sufficient nation would not produce enough grains to meet its
needs.
"That there will be shortages in national production is confirmed.
The uncertainty is the magnitude," Finance Minister Simba Makoni
said Thursday.
Commercial farms in Zimbabwe have struggled since February last
year, when veterans of the liberation war began leading the violent
occupations of white-owned farms, which account for most of the
country's commercial production.
Small farmers who produce food for their own consumption have also suffered because of erratic rains and rampant inflation, which made
it difficult for them to buy fertilisers and other supplies.
In a decision aimed at heading off the grain shortages, the
government announced earlier this week in the state-run Herald
newspaper that it would soon introduce legislation to restore its
monopoly over maize sales.
The parastatal Grain Marketing Board held a monopoly on maize sales
until the early 1990s, when the market was liberalised as part of
World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF)-backed reforms.
The IMF suspended aid to Zimbabwe in October 1999 after government efforts to liberalise the economy went off track, prompting most other lenders to pull out and leaving the country with little credit and practically no foreign currency.
The loss of international aid, along with Zimbabwe's unpopular
military role in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), an
enormous unbudgeted pay-out to liberation war veterans three years
ago, and the crippling of agriculture by the land reforms, has left
the country in its worst-ever economic crisis.
That has translated into popular discontent with Mugabe's economic
policies, which manifested itself this week in a widely observed
two-day stay-away that succeeded in bringing the nation to a
standstill.
The strike cost Zimbabwe's economy up to $9.1 million,
according to the Herald. The strike cost $5 million in
delayed tobacco sales alone, Tobacco Sales Floor managing director
Pat Devenish said.
Workers want government to rescind last month's 70 percent hike in
fuel prices, but government has yet to respond to their demands.
Despite all the problems hobbling this once thriving nation, Mugabe
shows no signs of backing down on his land reform scheme - which
has been heavily tied to political violence targeting the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
His government recently pushed through a law legalising the presence of squatters on white farms listed for resettlement. With
the latest lists, that law gives the war vets and their followers
free run over huge swaths of the country.
Despite Mugabe's recent overtures to the international community,
most Zimbabweans are bracing for a resurgence of the violence that
rocked the country before last year's parliamentary elections as
the nation nears the presidential poll due in April.
At least 34 people died before last year's elections, while 19 000 people suffered various forms of torture, according to rights
groups. - Sapa-AFP
- SAPA