Posted on 06/26/2002 1:52:05 AM PDT by Clive
Owen Connor, a white Zimbabwean farmer, committed a crime yesterday. Helped by half a dozen of his workers he poured seed maize into a fumigator and then bagged it. A power cut had prevented Mr Connor, 68, completing the job by Monday so he decided to risk two years in jail rather than lose the grain.
Yesterday marked one of the more bizarre twists of modern African history as President Mugabe's Government banned most of the country's white farmers from growing food amid Zimbabwe's worst famine in a century. Within 45 days 2,900 designated farmers must leave their property altogether.
Mr Connor is in the top league of a small group of white farmers who are legendary for their expertise. He and one of his sons, Kevin, are the only farmers in Africa to have produced four tonnes of wheat an acre. He also holds the national record for producing 5.1 tonnes an acre of a high-yielding maize.
Of Irish descent but born in Zimbabwe, Mr Connor left school when he was 15 to start farming on Oribi for his just-widowed mother. Starting with an ox-drawn plough - like the squatters now surrounding him - he doubled the arable area and built the rambling homestead.
Oribi's 865 acres of arable land would now yield 3,500 tonnes of wheat, maize and soya beans and 150 slaughter cattle, but the farm was invaded by squatters in August 2000. They steadily encroached. His last crop on Oribi was 800 tonnes of wheat on the 220 acres to which he was confined last winter. For all of the farm's rich soils, fed and tended by Mr Connor for more than 50 years, the squatters have produced just 15 tonnes of grain and ten bags of soya beans in the past year.
At this time, the land around the homestead should stretch to the horizon in green new wheat. Now the homestead is surrounded by dense, shoulder-high elephant grass and pigweed.
The squatters have chopped down the 120 mature macadamia nut trees he planted. "I tried to explain if they left them they would have an annual crop of US$50 a tree," Mr Connor said. "They chopped every tree out so they could plant maize."
"It's been hell," he says. He and his wife, Dawn, have suffered threats, vandalism, theft and extortion almost every day since then, and he has stress-related shingles. Kevin is soon to leave for new work in a neighbouring country. Mr Connor?s other son, Sean, is looking at prospects in New Zealand. His daughter, Cherry, is farming with her husband in Zambia.
But Mr Connor is not leaving. He has kept a grass cutter and hay baler with which to try to earn some income, "but it's not a secure living". He is a man of few words. Asked how he felt, a four-letter expletive was all that he could manage.
The greatest resource any nation has is its people.
/1/ Deferred gratification.
/2/ Enlightened self interest.
Folks who cut down producing macadamia nut trees to grow pig corn will always need someone else to feed them.
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