Source: Land reform cost 1,5m jobs: Chinamasa – DailyNews Live
Blessings Mashaya 26 May 2017
HARARE – Zimbabwe’s controversial programme to redistribute land taken
from white farmers cost 1,5 million jobs, Finance minister Patrick
Chinamasa has said.
“Right now our economy is highly informalised. I always give the
statistics that in 1999 or thereabout, there were two million workers in
the formal sector, by the time we reached 2005, because of the revolution
in the land reform programme, the formal sector collapsed and the two
million formal workers dwindled to half a million and could be just about
less,” Chinamasa told the Senate last week.
“It is our responsibility to now move that economy from the informal and
back to the formal again. That is the transition which we are now
travelling. I am very happy with the progress that we are making so far.
It is a process and not an event, it cannot happen overnight.”
Critics say the country’s once strong agricultural base has been damaged
by the chaotic land redistribution programme.
President Robert Mugabe introduced land reforms in 1999 aimed at
addressing colonial imbalances whereby a few white farmers own most of the
best agricultural land in Zimbabwe.
More than 4 000 farmers were forcibly evicted from their land in often
violent struggles. The violence – and allegations of rigged elections and
rights abuses – led western donors to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe.
“… in the agricultural sector…we were talking about 4 000 (white)
farmers. There is no way an economy can grow and expand when a vital
productive asset like land is held by one or two people.
“So, it is important that we realise that because we moved from that
ownership of land and now we have the A1 farmers. We distributed that land
to about 350 000 households, you can also multiply the number of people
who are dependent on that piece of land. Now, that change caused
disruption in our productive system. So, initially there was a fall of
production, everyone was laughing at us.”
“I cannot see how we could have gone from that skilled land ownership to
the current one where it is now owned by the majority of our people,
without a transition.
“There has to be a transition and what we are talking about here Madam
president is how to manage that transition from yesterday to today and
tomorrow,” he said.
COMMENTS
It’s amazing how ZANU PF Ministers are now telling us something that level headed people realized years ago.
Perhaps they were too busy accumulating multiple farms for themselves, and their relatives, that they did not even care what the consequences would be for our future generations.
Patrick Chinamasa himself, along with his greedy wife Lady Monica, were right there at the front of the greediest when productive farms were being grabbed. At one stage they had been given ownership of several farms and they did not even know where they were. They even had to ask others on how to get to them.
But they did get to these farms in time to turn them from productive food units into scrub-land.
Shame on them. Their legacies will make sad reading some day. And all their high talk about formal and and informal farming to the “Madam President” , whoever she is, will not fill the stomachs of our hungry people.
Interesting Minister China. How many farms do you and your boss own now. How many workers have you made redundant without pay. You and your boss will be paying soon for your crimes. SOON.
The zanu murderers must be hanged without trial at the showgrounds in a public spectacle as soon as the MDC are elected. They will be brought in on the back of trucks under a cross beam. The trucks will then drive off leaving them to dangle. This was the fate that happened to Nazi death camp guards after the second world war. This is a necessary fate for the thugs we have in zanu. I will name just a few. Mugabe, Chinamasa, Moyo, Phiri, Mnangagwa, Sekeramayi, Muchena, Charamba. Feel free to add to the list.
Interesting that he states that 1.5 million jobs have gone, so perhaps if the farms were returned to their legal owners 1.5 million jobs will come back.