- HARARE - Zimbabwe's lands
minister, Joseph Made, told the nation's battered white farmers that the
government has increased to 8.3 million hectares the amount of white-owned
land it wants to resettle with black farmers.
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- In his first-ever speech to Commercial Farmers' Union
(CFU), Made said government plans to resettle "not less than 8.3 million
hectares", up from the original target of five million hectares.
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- If the government follows through with its plan, 90%
of white-owned land would be resettled with both small-scale farmers and
for black commercial farmers.
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- According to CFU statistics, white farmers own about
nine million hectares of land. Made's attendence at CFU's annual congress
did allow for a dialogue with farmers that some had not expected, after
he jilted the farmers last year, saying he had not received an invitation
to the event.
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- Made, who became the minister of lands, agriculture and
rural resettlement in July 2000, gave farmers no assurances about an end
to violent occupations and minimised the farm invasions' impact on agriculture.
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- "I want to urge the farmers or producers so affected
not to take the law into their own hands, but to always consult with government
and in particular with my ministry so that we minimise head-on collision,"
Made told the annual CFU congress. "If you so desire to take the government
to court in this noble exercise, the government is left with no option
except to defend our noble cause in the courts," he said.
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- The CFU, which represents 4,500 mostly white large-scale
farmers, has already won a Supreme Court ruling declaring the government's
land reform scheme unconstitutional and ordering police to evict squatters.
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- The government has yet to enforce the ruling, and has
passed a law legalising the presence of squatters on hundreds of farms.
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- The vast majority of white farmers have had their property
earmarked for resettlement, totalling slightly less than 8.3 million hectares,
according to CFU statistics.
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- Made declined to answer questions about how the government
plans to deal with an expected food shortage, including a projected shortfall
of at least 400,000 tonnes of maize.
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- He insisted that the government's land reform scheme
"is not an economic issue, it is a social-political issue".
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- The scheme has been wracked by violence since February
2000, when pro-government militants, led by veterans of the 1970s liberation
war, forcibly occupied as many as 1,700 white-owned farms. - AFP
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