Mutasa farm re-grab exposes Bob, MDC-T

via Mutasa farm re-grab exposes Bob, MDC-T – New Zimbabwe 05/05/2015

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe’s much vaunted Land Reform program was never a genuine effort meant to benefit the generality of Zimbabweans disempowered by colonialism, the opposition MDC-T has said.

In a statement Tuesday, the country’s main opposition party said recent invents in which ruling party’s activists have terrorised people aligned to a faction led by former vice president Joice Mujuru vindicates its claim that the program was a “vote buying gimmick”.

“It is now emerging, rather crudely though, that Zanu PF’s chaotic land reform was never genuine or about redressing past colonial imbalances, but rather a shameful vote buying, patronage jamboree meant to prop up the regime’s waning fortunes.

“The current re-invasion and vandalism now targeted at the once Zanu PF perpetrators now turned Zanu PF enemies, Temba Mliswa, Dydimus Mutasa and a host of others around the country raises a stink,” the party said.

Mutasa and Mliswa were axed from the ruling party along with other stalwarts who included Mujuru and former spokesperson Rugare Gumbo in the aftermath of a shambolic congress late last year.

The MDC-T said the charade “manifest in the latest madness of re-grabbing of the once grabbed farms is shameful and vindicates the MDC’s long held assertion that the regime was never sincere both in intention and purpose about the ill-fated land reform exercise in the first place.

“What is most disgusting is the replay of the same chaotic and violent manner reminiscent of 2000, exposing the worst levels of impunity characteristic of the regime.”

“Whilst the country experienced an erratic rainfall pattern this season and is faced with hunger, requiring 700,000 tonnes of maize imports, we hold Zanu PF accountable for this whole disaster owing to the regime’s record of poor economic planning and policy discord since 2000,” the statement added.

Hordes of Zanu PF youths have invaded Mutasa and Mliswa’s farms demanding that they be parcelled out following reports that the former party administration chief and presidential affairs minister had condemned the reform exercise and regretted the way it was implemented.

At the turn of the century, when his power base was threatened by the emergence of a genuine opposition, Mugabe sponsored invasion of white-owned farms, unleashing the veterans of the country’s liberation struggle.

What followed was an orgy of violence in which several lives were lost and property running into millions destroyed. The country’s once-thriving agricultural sector has never recovered since with unrelenting hunger stoking the country.