- Dear Family and Friends,
-
- This week I have had many desperate emails from farming
friends who have been forced out of their homes in the past few days and
are desperately looking for somewhere to stay. One friend told me that
they were ordered out of their home by a senior politician who has now
claimed five farms in the area. The farmer and his family were given 12
hours to pack up and get out. They do not know where to go, have no plans
in place but knew that they had to get out or risk being put in prison
- or worse. They went into a mad flurry of activity and when everything
was piled up outside on the lawn Mandy's husband suggested she go around
and stick white labels on the boxes and items that were the most important
so that they would be easily identifiable when they found somewhere to
live.
-
- Mandy walked around looking at the contents of her life
strewn on the lawn and with the help of Albert, one of her farm workers,
stuck little white labels on her most treasured possessions. When she had
finished, Albert picked up the roll of stickers and stuck a little white
label onto his chest showing that he wanted to come too and should not
be forgotten. Mandy started to cry, she and her family have endured so
very much in the last 30 months and in her words they have been trashed
and looted and are now booted.
-
- What will become of Albert in the weeks and months ahead
is not known. Perhaps he and his little white sticker, like the white
farmers, will become as unwanted as Jews who wore little yellow stars 60
years ago. As the International Crisis Group said this week, Zimbabwe's
farm workers are literally falling through the cracks. Official sources
estimate that less than 1% of the country's 1.5 million farm workers have
been given pieces of land by the government in this so called land redistribution
programme. They have become homeless, jobless and destitute and some are
resorting to desperate measures as a means of survival. One of these is
extortion and it is absolutely tragic to see what is happening in labour
offices all over the country.
-
- It was not enough for the Zimbabwe government to seize
the land, crops, equipment and then homes of white farmers. They then gazetted
legislation ordering that if a farm was seized by the State the farmers
would have to pay enormous retrenchment packages to their workers. In hundreds
of cases a farm worker who was perhaps earning Z$10 or 15 thousand a month
is walking away with amounts of up to half and even three quarters of a
million dollars. Everyone who ever worked on a farm, even for a month weeding
between a line of maize, is climbing on the bandwagon demanding they be
paid retrenchment. A friend told me this week how the relatives of a worker
who had died of alcohol abuse four years ago were claiming the retrenchment
package. Another told of a worker who, dismissed for theft, tried and convicted,
had also arrived demanding a million dollar package.
-
- To anyone not living in Zimbabwe this probably sounds
hysterically funny but it isn't. You cannot just tell these people to go
away and stop being inane, you have to go to a "hearing" at the
local Labour offices. Here dozens of people wait for many many hours in
dark, filthy corridors for a physically and mentally exhausted official
to finally see you. It has turned into a nightmare of plain and simple
extortion and is so utterly tragic to see people abandoning pride and dignity
because they know there is no law.
-
- One farmer told me how she paid out the retrenchment
package and watched her elderly, jobless, homeless and barely literate
employee take a wad of 50 thousand dollars and blow it all in one weekend
at the nearby bottle store. There is no one to help these people invest
their money and no one to give them advice or guidance and so some just
drink their lives and futures away, drowning their sorrows for today. There
are also hundreds of farmers who literally do not have the money to pay
out these huge amounts of money. The legislation says that in these cases
half the amount must be paid on vacation of the farm and the balance when
the government pays compensation to the farmer. Both farmer and worker
know the chances of government compensation ever actually materializing
is virtually nil and so there is a stalemate. If the farmer refuses to
pay then a mob arrive at the gate, bang tins and light fires, barricade
you into your home and say that you had better start selling things in
order to pay them.
-
- Amidst these horrific scenes is the even bigger tragedy
that we are all looking at every day. In less than a month the summer crops
are due to be in the ground and the men and women who have the experience,
expertise and capital to grow this food are not allowed to do so. In an
area near where I live there are only 12 farmers left out of 76 in the
district. Many of the homes have been taken over by politicians and army
personnel, greenhouses for export flowers have been dismantled, tobacco
seed beds have not been planted, there are no cattle to be seen and the
fields stand barren and unprepared. All this for a cause which is neither
about land nor race but politics. There is a Zulu saying which warns that:
"The infant who does not cry, will die on the back of its mother."
Zimbabwe is crying but no one hears us.
-
- Until next week,
- with love, cathy.
-
- http://africantears.netfirms.com
- Copyright 2002 Cathy Buckle
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