White farmers begin returning to Zimbabwe

Scores of white commercial farmers who left Zimbabwe after their farms were seized as part of President Robert Mugabe's land reform policies are returning home as the promise of greener pastures elsewhere in southern Africa fails to materialise.

Justice for Agriculture (JAG), an independent organisation established to support about 4,000 farmers left landless after implementation of the 2000 fast-track land-reform programme to redistribute land to blacks, said about 100 farmers who had left to settle in other countries in the region had returned to Zimbabwe.

"Following numerous constraints that almost turned them into paupers in countries like Mozambique, Zambia and Malawi, the farmers decided to come back, and more could be returning," JAG chairman John Worswick said. "Their difficulties were mostly financial : after being invited by some private organisations to help boost agricultural production (in other countries), particularly in tobacco farming, they set up farms but were later dumped by their financiers and had no choice but to pack their bags and head back to virtual emptiness here."

Although the prospects for the farmers in Zimbabwe appeared bleak because of the country's economic meltdown and the absence of investment opportunities, he said there was optimism that farmers would, in the end, be given back their properties. "Long-term prospects are bright for the commercial farmers. Justice will one day prevail, even if it means twenty or thirty years. We have seen private individuals being given back their properties in countries like Mozambique and Uganda, decades after oppressive governments had taken them over," Worswick said.

Rod Swales, 52, a tobacco farmer, decided to return from Mozambique's Manica Province, which borders Zimbabwe. His farm was taken from him in 2002. "With the steep decline in tobacco production in Zimbabwe after the land seizures, the companies invited us to Mozambique, saying we could fill the void by producing in that country on a large scale, and we jumped at the opportunity," Swales said.

They were contracted to produce tobacco over seven years and would be required to make yearly loan repayments, but did not receive sufficient funding from the companies that had taken them on board and produced poor quality tobacco because they started late in the first farming season. "We also got poor prices for our tobacco and in subsequent seasons our woes persisted, and we had no choice but to tell the company that we could not keep on farming because the money we were getting in loans was not sufficient to establish ourselves," said Swales.

They lost their farming equipment to the companies after deciding to quit tobacco farming and, Swales said, even their efforts to have the Mozambican government intervene were fruitless. The language barrier also made it difficult for the farmers to operate in their adopted country. English is widely spoken in Zimbabwe, while Portuguese is the lingua franca of Mozambique.

"That we had to come back to Zimbabwe was a hard pill to swallow but, for people like me, this is the only home I know. My grandparents settled here and bought a farm, which was inherited by my father. I bought my own farm, from which I was unfortunately ejected," said Swales.

It pains Swales that his farm, once thriving and producing enough tobacco for local and international markets, is being underutilised by resettled farmers who are planting small plots of maize, even though the land is not suited for that crop.

Because the land redistribution exercise was hurried and haphazard, thousands of new farmers lacking in expertise were settled on plots of land without the necessary infrastructure, leading to severely reduced production, while influential politicians and government officials obtained multiple farms that, in many cases, have become derelict.

As a means of making a living, Swales has teamed up with others and formed a farming consultancy to help "new and ailing" farmers establish themselves, "but our activities are limited to those who bought their farms, not the ones that grabbed them." The fledgling company is finding it difficult to obtain bank loans to establish itself because none of the shareholders have access to the collateral that their farms would have provided.

While Swales has seized on an opportunity to reconstruct his life, others have no means of making a living.

Some of the farmers, particularly grain and cereal producers who relocated as far afield as Nigeria and Australia, have managed to farm successfully, boosting agricultural production in their adopted countries.

IRIN