- The last British-owned estate in Zimbabwe has fallen
victim to President Robert Mugabe's land grab and will close at the end
of this month after 50 years.
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- Lady Salina Graham, the only family member of one of
the owners still living in Zimbabwe, was evicted from her farm by a brigadier
in the Zimbabwean army. She left Raffingora, 60 miles north of Harare,
on Friday.
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- She returns to Britain with a heavy heart this week.
"I am sad," she said. "The school we were building is going
to be opened at the end of the month and I will miss that."
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- According to former managers of Sipolilo Estates, the
only returns on their inheritance for the four British owners were annual
air tickets to Zimbabwe and a two month holiday during the British winter.
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- The remaining tractors are now being sold or removed
for storage in Harare. Ploughs, planters and tools are being stacked into
old tobacco barns.
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- "We made a big mistake," said Smart Mwale,
48, who has worked on the farm for many years with his nine children and
two wives.
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- The mistake is the "package" which thousands
of retrenched farm workers demanded from their former employers.
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- Mr Mugabe forgot about the 1.2 million blacks living
on white-owned farms when he launched his land grab. They are losing their
jobs and homes. In panic, the regime passed a law this year compelling
dispossessed farmers to pay terminal benefits to their workers.
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- In a country where unemployment exceeds 60 per cent,
the former farm labourers know that they will never work again. They threatened
their former employers with violence, destroyed property and seized farm
equipment to force them to pay. All of them did so.
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- At Sipolilo Estates, workers who once enjoyed free housing,
schools, food and medical care were paid the equivalent of £67,000,
divided between 500 workers on a sliding scale. It amounts to serious money
by Zimbabwean standards.
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- "I bought three cows with my package. But now we
have no food," said Mr Mwale. Aggressive supporters of Mr Mugabe have
occupied large areas of the estate, dictating who can do what and where.
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- The Grain Marketing Board, the only legal grain trader,
has raided Sipolilo and every other maize farm and confiscated maize.
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- "The settlers will not let us plant maize. They
say this is their farm. We have no money left for food," said Musaida
Mtetwa, 45, a trained health worker on Sipolilo. If my husband loses his
job next door we will go home to Chipinge [250 miles south east]. Everything
is broken. We made a mistake with packages, but we were confused."
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- Mr Mugabe claims that drought put 6.7 million people,
more than half the population, at risk of starvation. Yet rains were normal
in Mashonaland West, Zimbabwe's most fertile province, which has fed the
nation for 60 years.
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- Further north from Raffingora lies the heartland of grain
production. But in Lion's Den, Umboe, Mhangura and Doma, mile after mile
of empty land stretches from horizon to horizon. There are abandoned farmyards
every few miles along the dusty Umboe Valley road.
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- The maize planting season ends this week. Instead of
a green landscape of young maize there is nothing but bare earth or dry
stalks from past seasons. Instead of the rhythmic pounding of tractors,
Zimbabwe's food for next year is planted seed by seed in small plots.
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- The "new farmers" settling on formerly white-owned
land will barely succeed in growing enough for their families. There will
be nothing left over to feed the nation.
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- "This land reform is catastrophic," said a
farmer in Doma. "The time for planting maize ended this week."
He once grew enough maize to feed 4,000 people, but has now been compelled
to stop.
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- After years of vilification from Mr Mugabe, the British
Government is helping to pick up the pieces. British donations are feeding
1.2 million children.
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- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/11
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