- President Robert Mugabe confessed yesterday that millions
of acres of prime land seized from Zimbabwe's white farmers are now lying
empty and idle.
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- After years spent trumpeting the "success"
of the land grab, Mr Mugabe, 81, admitted that most of the farms transferred
to black owners have never been used.
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- All but a handful of Zimbabwe's 4,000 white farmers lost
their homes and livelihoods when armed gangs of Mugabe supporters began
invading their property in 2000.
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- In the first 18 months of the campaign, eight white landowners
and 39 of their black workers were murdered, court orders defied and Zimbabwe's
economy plunged into crisis.
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- Mr Mugabe said this was the price that Zimbabwe would
have to pay to redress the wrongs of the British colonial era, which left
much of the best land in white hands. He claimed that the seizures would
boost production and benefit millions of blacks.
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- Yet in his home province yesterday, Mr Mugabe chided
the new landowners for growing crops on less than half of their land.
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- "President Mugabe expressed disappointment with
the land use, saying only 44 per cent of the land distributed is being
fully utilised," state television reported. "He warned the farmers
that the government will not hesitate to redistribute land that is not
being utilised."
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- Some 10.4 million acres were seized under a scheme designed
to create a new class of black commercial farmer. By Mr Mugabe's figures,
5.8 million acres are lying fallow.
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- Last year, Mr Mugabe boasted of a bumper harvest and
said that Zimbabwe no longer needed help "foisted" on it from
the United Nations World Food Programme.
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- His land grab had made Zimbabwe "self sufficient",
Mr Mugabe repeatedly claimed, and the national maize crop was a record
2.4 million tonnes.
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- The Commercial Farmers' Union said that Zimbabwe grew
only 850,000 tonnes of maize last year, not enough to meet domestic demand.
In 1999, the last year before the land grab began, Zimbabwe grew 1.5 million
tonnes. Then, Zimbabwe also earned about £263 million from tobacco
exports. Last year, production had fallen by more than 70 per cent and
earnings were down to £77 million.
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- Critics said Mr Mugabe's admission exposed the land grab's
"failure".
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- "It has been a phenomenal and absolute failure on
every level," said Tendai Biti, secretary for economic affairs of
the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. "It has failed both
in terms of production of crops and in terms of the occupation of the land."
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- The new farmers are unable to raise bank loans because
their properties are formally owned by the government and they have no
individual title deeds. Without loans, they cannot buy seed, fertiliser
or farming equipment and the regime has broken a pledge to supply them
with tools.
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- Some farmers have resorted to using horse-drawn ploughs.
Many have given up trying to produce anything at all.
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- Zimbabwe will hold parliamentary elections on March 31
and, for the first time in 10 years, Mr Mugabe is no longer holding out
the offer of white-owned land as a vote-winner. Instead, his speeches are
dominated by attacks on Tony Blair, who he claims is plotting to recolonise
Zimbabwe.
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- About 400 white farmers remain in Zimbabwe, with about
one third of this year's tobacco crop of 89,000 tonnes coming from only
250 white landowners.
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.
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- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/
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