NYT - Zimbabwe's Potemkin prosperity has evaporated since the elections, replaced by penury and mounting signs of economic collapse.

Here in the second largest city, lines of cars stretch a quarter mile and more at fuel-parched service stations, and drivers spend the night in their cars' back seats lest they lose their place in line. Milk, cooking oil and, most of all, corn, the national staple, are a distant memory at most stores. At one downtown grocery, tubes of much-prized American toothpaste are kept in a locked case.

Zimbabwe's currency, which traded on the black market at 120 to the dollar in April 2002, went for 6,200 to the dollar last December, 12,000 on April 1, and 17,000 in early May. By mid-May a single American dollar brought as much as 25,000 Zimbabwean dollars, though the rate has since steadied at about 20,000

· Eighty percent of black South Africans who responded to a survey believe Mr Mugabe is ruling badly.

White farmers reject Mugabe plea to return
By Toby Harnden , Chief Foreign Correspondent
(Filed: 22/05/2005)

White farmers evicted by Robert Mugabe's government have reacted with contempt to an offer that they should return to Zimbabwe to take part in "joint ventures" with those who brutalised them and stole their land.

Gideon Gono, the governor of the country's central bank, suggested the idea last Thursday as a possible solution to Zimbabwe's economic crisis.

	A Zimbabwean woman surveys her devastated maize crop

Greg McMurray, a tobacco farmer who fled Zimbabwe in 2001 and is now a grinder at a factory in Wiltshire, said: "These are empty promises. We have had all the assurances before and then they just turn around and change their minds.

"I had them coming into my garden and threatening my fiancée. Men with a bit of beer in their bellies told me, 'We'll come and burn you and your wife and your house'.

"I would love to go back but the economy's in ruins. The place is a shambles. So many professional people have left. It would need a new regime before most of us would think seriously about going back."

The prospect of a return for white farmers was dangled by Mr Gono, Mr Mugabe's leading economic policy maker, in a rambling three-hour statement in which he also announced a 31 per cent devaluation of the Zimbabwean dollar.

He said: "In order to ensure maximum productivity levels, there is great scope in the country promoting and supporting joint ventures between the new farmers with progressive-minded former operators as well as other new investors, so as to hasten the skills transfer cycle."

During the evictions, some white farmers were murdered and many others were beaten and their families abused. The evictions prompted the collapse of the agriculture sector, the traditional engine of the economy.

Those who took over the farms had no specialist knowledge - and most farmland now lies uncultivated. The machinery has been stolen, buildings have been plundered and the former workers are starving.

Eddie Cross, the economics spokesman for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change - which was heavily defeated by the ruling Zanu-PF party in recent parliamentary elections that were widely condemned as being rigged - said that Mr Gono was desperate.

Mr Cross said: "He's got no power and he can't deliver. The reality is a thousand miles away from everything he says. He wants to regain some credibility with multilateral institutions. He has meetings with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank next month. This is about having something to say to those guys. The only salvation will be a change of government and a return to the rule of law.

"Until then, no one's going to invest here or come back. Who on earth is going to do anything in agriculture when there is such dispute over land ownership? They'd be mad."

While Mr Gono's words could be interpreted as an admission that the land seizure policy pursued by Mr Mugabe - which led to him becoming an international pariah - had failed, they offered little comfort to the dispossessed.

One tobacco and cattle farmer, who was forced off his property by armed squatters in 2000, said: "He can't be serious. My house has been burnt down, my fields destroyed and he wants to invite me back?

"There has to be a proper return to respect for property rights. We need facts, not words and a legal framework. No one's going to go back on the basis of this."

The man, who asked to remain anonymous, is among 1,600 evicted landowners who have stayed in Zimbabwe and are attempting to get compensation.

In 2000, there were 4,500 white farmers. Now only 400 remain on parts of their farms, many having made deals with Mugabe's regime. Thousands of others lost everything and have had to seek help to set themselves up in ventures outside Zimbabwe.

Colin Ransome, of the Zimbabwe Farmers Trust Fund, a Scottish-registered charity, said: "A lot of those who settled in Britain have young families and new jobs. Everyone is very wary. Iron-clad assurances would be needed."