Posted on 07/29/2007 9:26:52 AM PDT by blam
Zimbabwe farmers wait out Robert Mugabe
By Stephen Bevan, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:52am BST 29/07/2007
For Rod Swales and many of Zimbabwe's 4,000 white farmers forced off their land by President Robert Mugabe's chaotic and violent land reforms, the chance to start afresh somewhere else was too good to pass up.
Resilient: Rod Swales hopes to return his farm in Zimbabwe to profitable production
Neighbouring countries welcomed them with open arms and furnished them with land, while the agricultural companies provided them with cash incentives. But five years later, 52-year-old Mr Swales is back in Zimbabwe at the forefront of a new wave of pioneers.
Far from being deterred by the country's downward economic spiral, the farmers are convinced that it will hasten the end of Mr Mugabe's rule, and speed the day when they can set up in business once again.
"I do believe the wheel is turning and sanity will prevail at some stage," Mr Swales said. "I speak to various Zanu PF moderates and all of them advise us to be patient, there will be change, this thing can't continue."
Mr Swales believes Mr Mugabe's regime is nearing the end, that an economy battered by inflation reported to have hit 13,000 per cent in June and where supplies of even basic foods such as maize flour and cooking oil have dried up, must surely soon collapse altogether.
"I might not get my farm back but when the dust settles I might get another farm. Maybe I'll buy a farm from someone who doesn't want to come back to Zimbabwe. I have to hope I can survive that long and wait out old Bob."
Back in 2002, Mr Swales and his family were forcibly evicted from their 1,976-acre farm in Darwendale, 50 miles north east of Harare, by a mob of "war veterans". The chance to move over the border to Chimoio, in Mozambique, was too good to turn down.
Like many of those now returning to Zimbabwe, Mr Swales was on a scheme sponsored by tobacco companies such as Universal Leaf Tobacco. The companies provided start-up capital and seasonal loans.
In return, the farmers agreed to grow a set number of acres of tobacco which they would sell to the companies.
However, in the hotter and wetter climate of Mozambique, the tobacco yields turned out to be substantially less than the companies had projected. Soon the farmers fell into debt until many stopped growing tobacco altogether, whereupon the tobacco companies took them to court to seize their equipment.
Although Mr Swales could have gone to South Africa, where he has relatives, or applied for residency in Britain, because his grandfather came from Yorkshire, Mr Swales chose to return to Zimbabwe, where he is running a small transport business based in Harare.
"My wife must have asked me a million times what the hell we are doing here," he said.
But he believes that Mr Mugabe's time is nearly up, and he is not alone. At least 70 other farmers have returned following the collapse of their new farming ventures, most of them from Mozambique, Zambia and Malawi.
"There were about 30 of us Zimbabweans in Chimoio," said Mr Swales. "Right now there are probably no more than 10 left, and of those only two are still farming."
John Worswick, of the lobby group Justice for Agriculture, said the returning farmers believed that within a year or two the country would turn around and return to conditions conducive for agricultural production.
"They've come back licking their wounds and set up in other businesses," he said. "Most of these guys keep a pretty close eye on their old properties.
"Their view is that, given a reasonable incentive package, they can get their farms back to production within two years and back up to the state they were in before within five years, so they've decided to sit it out."
Willem Coetzee, 54, was one of the first Zimbabwean farmers to go to Chimoio. He said he lost everything when the tobacco company seized all his equipment. He and his wife returned to Zimbabwe last year.
"We sold everything to get the funds to invest in the scheme," he said. "We must have lost $20,000 - apart from the heartache, and living in a tent for two and a half years, and being threatened by armed robbers."
A former farm manager, Mr Coetzee now works for a company making garden sheds, but said he hoped to be able to farm again.
"If an opportunity to farm here arose then I'd take it up. I'd like to stay in Zimbabwe. It has got a much better infrastructure and things have worked here in the past, so there's no reason why they shouldn't work in the future."
But even Mr Swales admitted that the prospect of getting his old farm back up to production would be daunting.
"Two weeks ago I went out to see it. It's an absolute wreck. It's the closest I've come to crying for some time. The barns, the roofs, the sheds, everything had been stripped. It will cost an untold figure to put that right and make it productive again.
"But we are resilient people, we've hung in through wars and we'll hang in through this."
Zim Ping.
I love this guys attitude...almost. They need to be more aggressive and help “Old Bob” with his demise.
Best that they can hope for, and that is not probable, is monetary compensation subsidized by the United Kingdom.
Better to follow in the paths of other commercial farmers and take up offers by Zambia, Mozambique and Nigeria of 50 year commercial farm leases.
Sadly i agree, there is no chance that Zimbabwe’s leaders will ever give any land back to whites over blacks in that part of the world.
I am afraid Mr. Swales for his optimism, may be seeing blue skies where there are none.
Who do they think is going to take over for “ol bob, when he dies? Some reformer? And anger the people who supported them on the way to the top?
sorry, in Africa politcal courage leads to military coup.
It’s a pity we can’t allow them to come here and get citizenship.
This guy thinks he’s going to get land back in Zim? Good luck with THAT.
/hopelessly optimistic or optimistically hopeless?
Sometimes, you should listen to your nagging wife.
I’ve heard that the people that the farms given to stripped the farms and left so they might not have to take them awayfrom them.
I’d wager many wouldn’t want to. Rhodesia/Zimbabwe is their home. The displaced residents are affectionately known in SA as “When-We’s” because every conversation you have with them begins with “When we lived.....” and so on.
We’d be the same if we allow the left to destroy America like the left is ravaging Africa and Europe. Our home is our home.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2267/print
Oh, but it can get worse. Much worse. The road Mugabe is still stubbornly on leads to famine and cannibalism.
The real difficulty is that after Mugabe goes the thugs that ate the country will still be there, ever more ravenous and with less around them to steal. The "war veterans" are a sham - the war was over before the vast majority of them were even born. They're looters, period, and there isn't anyone or anything to stop them.
The economy can be saved, but not under the current regime. What it will take is what it took in Weimar Germany - a new currency backed by foreign loans and an end to the insanity of printing money to solve the very inflation that it feeds.
Building back the agricultural surplus is a project that will take years and more likely generations. The infrastructure is gone, beginning with the sine qua non of farming, a respect for property rights. There is no seed grain, no money for loans, and the equipment has fallen apart from disuse and lack of maintenance. The land itself has not been maintained. Not only the landowners but their trained workers have been scattered.
But what really killed Zimbabwe is the politics of anti-colonialism and racial hatred. I say "killed" because Zim isn't a dying country, it's a dead one. Individuals within it may survive but as long as those politics remain Zimbabwe will not.
Come to America, leave Africa to die out on its own, Europe and America will hopefully come back once the dust clears.
Outside of western academia I couldn’t think of more deluded whites than those of Africa. Its as if they really believe that they are going back to the days of lordship and cheap black labor.
I’m not so sure they are that “deluded.” None of the former residents of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe I’ve spoken with list those two motives for wanting to return to their farms. Who knows for sure what they have in their heart.
I find striking the fact these farmers didn’t fight Mugabe and his thugs with everything they had. Could you imagine what would happen if our government tried to steal our farmers land? Even now, the farmers are content with waiting for “Old Bob” to assume room temperature, unbelievable.
Why isn’t he sat on his arse, blaming US imperialism and waiting for food aid to be distributed?
</sarcasm>
I don’t think they have ever showed much in the intellectual department when it comes to dealing with their predicament. To me they seem like country club Republicans whose convervatism is that of their privileges and foggy recollections of their past.
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