This is modern farming–and a political statement. Amid the tense uncertainty that settled over Zimbabwe last week after a rigged election returned President Robert Mugabe to power, many white farmers, finally, are calling it quits. But new black entrepreneurs–like the ones who own this 4,000-hectare (10,000-acre) spread–are rushing to make a success of Mugabe’s land-grab plans. “The perception outside is that the whites are the ones who make Zimbabwe tick,” says Mutumwa Mawere, the politically connected CEO of the trust that purchased this farm and others last year. “We’re creating a center of excellence to demonstrate what is possible.”
Mugabe’s plan is radical. Using sweeping new powers granted by a cowed Parliament, last year he formally seized 80 percent of the white-owned land left in Zimbabwe–some 10 million hectares, or 25 million acres. Experts say his bankrupt government can’t possibly afford to back the blacks slated to receive pieces of the expropriated land–and they predict a food crisis in less than three months; the United Nations already has begun emergency feeding programs. But Mugabe, 78, is surrounded by a core of true believers who say such negative talk is based on a colonial myth of white supremacy. The farm invaders who first outraged the world two years ago are Mugabe’s shock troops. Their drive to make a go of small-scale farming is crucial to the final battle of the president’s political career.
Mugabe insists the new black farmers can perform as well as the outgoing whites. “There is a misperception that white farmers are the only ones who can grow certain crops, and we are going to prove that this is wrong,” says Joseph Made, minister of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement. He says the government spent $2.7 million last year giving new farmers seed, fertilizer and herbicide, and has budgeted $1.9 billion for the forthcoming land-reform program (it compensates whites for the infrastructure they’ve built, but calls on Britain, the former colonial power, to pay for the land). Mugabe and his team claim to act on principle. “This is an intervention by the state to equalize what was not equal and take away what was acquired by conquest,” says Made. “We are talking justice. The average farm size in Britain is 65 hectares. Why should the Zimbabwean white farmer own an average of 3,000?”
Not all the weight will be on the government. Mawere’s trust, FSI Agricom, plans to give new farmers seed and plows on credit, and will market the crop. Simple plows are lined up in rows at a Harare foundry owned by the same business group–which diplomatic sources suspect is controlled by Mugabe’s ruling party. Another intangible is billions of Zimbabwe dollars accepted by Libya in return for oil that last year staved off an energy crisis. These funds could help finance expensive elements of the land-grab program, such as installing irrigation equipment to beat the country’s 10-year drought cycle.
International experts say it is all fantasy, an anachronistic Great Leap Forward. Zimbabwe just doesn’t have the cash to make the land transfer fly, they say. One damning analysis lies deep in a long-delayed report by the United Nations Development Program, finally issued in January. Mugabe has come up with only a fraction of the money he promised farmers, according to the report. The new settlers don’t hold title to the land, which means they can’t get commercial credit, and terms of the deal are subject to a minister’s whim. The program as a whole is an “overreach,” the U.N. team found–“not the consequence of debated and clear government policy but rather the aggregation of a series of one-off executive actions.” Officials secretly select who benefits, and often party hacks and police are first in line. Those who actually know farming–landless laborers who work the white farms–are being left out.
A small black elite vows to prove the doubters wrong. “This is empowering blacks,” says Yustus Wachiseka, manager of Essex Farm, one of those in the FSI group. He says he has quintupled the salary a white farmer used to pay him. Clearly some blacks will profit under Mugabe’s radical land redistribution. But for many more, the new freedom may come at the price of failure.
