Posted on 02/13/2003 5:22:55 AM PST by Clive
London - President Robert Mugabe has awarded a Chinese company a tender to grow maize on more than 100 000ha in a desperate attempt to avert an unprecedented food crisis.
The land was mostly seized from white farmers and is now lying fallow after its new black owners failed to take it up because of lack of farming equipment.
Mugabe's decision to approve huge land allocations to the China International Water and Electric Corporation, a state-owned company, contradicts his claims that he wants to empower black Zimbabweans by giving them land seized from white farmers.
The state media hailed it as a wise move that would effectively restore Zimbabwe to its former glory in Africa's agriculture sector. It said the deal proved that Mugabe's policy of opting for co-operation with Asia and former communist countries in Eastern Europe at the expense of the West was paying dividends.
But a senior government official said he felt that the deal with the Chinese was a direct indictment of Mugabe's chaotic land reforms.
"I think what it proves is that our system of chasing farm owners and confiscating their land has not worked," said the official, who was interviewed on condition of anonymity.
Even agriculture minister Joseph Made publicly admitted for the first time last month that most of the seized land had not been taken by its new owners.
In some key agricultural provinces, less than 50 percent of the land allocated to blacks has been occupied.
New black occupants quickly get frustrated by the government's failure to give them resources to farm and abandon the land in favour of going back to their communal areas where they at least have infrastructure like boreholes nearby.
The Zimbabwe government is now trying to lure back commercial farmers displaced from their properties when violent occupations and seizures of their properties began three years ago.
The government claims it has drafted a memorandum of understanding, which awaits signing, but farmers say nothing has materialised from the talks that began a few weeks ago.
The government is hopeful of its new deal with the Chinese, who are expected to bring in massive irrigation equipment for the project.
State media reports said the project, expected to start soon, would play a significant role in reducing Zimbabwe's inflation which peaked to 200 percent last month.
In a sign of the country's deepening economic crisis, Zimbabwe's national airline is heading towards collapse, a parliamentary inquiry reported.
Silas Mangono, head of the inquiry, said two of Air Zimbabwe's six planes were grounded because there was no hard currency to buy spare parts, reports said on Tuesday. - Independent Foreign Service
I guess they don't know how to use the land as collateral to get a loan and buy equipment and then pay it back after harvest. Or, is it that the banks know they don't know poop about farming? Hmmm
How much shock will there be when the crops are loaded aboard Chinese ships? Hmmmm
"You cannot grow three crops of maize a year in this country, even with the best irrigation," said the director of a large agricultural business.
"Many have tried to grow winter maize and have failed . . . the whole notion of growing three crops a year is preposterous. To rely on such a scheme for the country's food self-sufficiency is dangerous."
Bump!
Mugabe is determined to re-colonize the country.
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