To anyone
familiar with the formerly well-tended,
red-soiled farms of Zimbabwe, the lands
that once fed a nation, the sight of barren
earth is devastating.
We see a few patches of short, yellowing
maize, enough for a small peasant family
for a few months; a couple of scraggy
cattle, infested with ticks, and scores
of kilometres of broken fences on the
now crumbling road towards Zambia.
John Worsley-Worswick, 46, flinches as
we pass one desolate former commercial
farm after another. He recounts the crops,
the trees, the pedigree beef herds and
the dairies that once dotted the landscape.
Three years have passed since President
Robert Mugabe, months before he faced
parliamentary elections that he nearly
lost, sent his supporters on to white-owned
farms.
In that time they have seized 90% of
the land or about 10 million hectares,
destroying more than 4 000 businesses
in the process and leaving a million black
farm workers and their families without
jobs or homes.
While land lies fallow, Zimbabwe relies
on Britain, the EU and the US to feed
half its people.
Many farms were taken over with crops
in the ground. Others had fertiliser and
seeds in sheds. Irrigation equipment still
worked and borehole pumps still sucked
water out of the ground.
No longer. The farms of the Mashonaland
West province are now in the hands of
Mugabe's elite. On some of Africa's richest
agricultural land, they have failed more
terribly than the president and his cronies
could ever have expected.
Worsley-Worswick has not farmed his 600ha
for three years, but he will not let the
matter rest. He returned to the region
armed with a High Court order to force
the police to evict the officially sanctioned
squatters who took his land.
During a day of meetings he tried to
get the police to sign a receipt for the
court order.
His farm, Lyndhurst, 80km northwest of
Harare, has still not been properly "acquired"
by the government. Worsley-Worswick left
after a mob, armed and drunk, surrounded
the homestead day and night.
He said: "I can hardly bear to look
at what has happened, not only here on
my farm but to all the others along the
road. I estimate only about 5% of the
land around here is being used by Mugabe's
settlers. Not only do they lack seed,
because commercial farmers who grew seed
crops have gone, but, most importantly,
they are not farmers."
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