http://news.xinhuanet.com
www.chinaview.cn 2009-12-28
19:44:48
By Gretinah Machingura
HARARE, Dec. 28 (Xinhua)
-- A Chinese firm, China Sonangol, is set to
develop satellite towns around
Harare in a development that is expected to
ease housing problems in the
capital.
The State media reported on Monday that the Zimbabwean
government had
provided land in excess of 1,000 hectares to the firm for the
development of
the towns.
This follows the singing of a
Memorandum of Understanding between
Zimbabwe and China Sonangol that will
see the latter funding the development
of satellite towns.
The
Chinese joint venture company has already unveiled an
eight-billion-U.S.
dollar package to fund various developmental programs in
Zimbabwe.
Local Government, Urban and Rural Development Minister
Ignatius Chombo
told the Herald that the government was now waiting for the
Chinese company
to come on board.
"As government, we have made
significant land available for the
development of satellite towns in Harare
which is in excess of 1,000
hectares," he said.
"The land covers
areas in Mount Hampden (some 20 km north west of
Harare) and some parts of
Mazowe (north of Harare). We are now ready as
government and we are now only
waiting for our Chinese counterparts to come
on board."
Chombo
added that the government was waiting for Chinese experts to come
and
inspect the land before construction gets underway.
He said if fully
implemented, the Chinese deal would go a long way in
addressing
accommodation challenges in Harare, estimated to have a housing
backlog of
close to one million people.
Chombo said many people were failing to
build decent houses in towns due
to the high cost of building
materials.
"It is our hope that this deal will afford many people
decent
accommodation in Harare. Due to high cost of building material, many
people
are failing construct houses in towns," he said.
The cash
strapped the Zimbabwean government is failing to provide decent
accommodation to urban residents whose population is growing tremendously as
rural-to-urban migration soar in recent years.
The
eight-billion-dollar Chinese investment ranks as one of the biggest
investments the country has received since the formation of the inclusive
government in February.
Editor: Xiong Tong
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=26195
December 28, 2009
By Owen
Chikari
MASVINGO - Evidence has emerged that Zimbabwe's voters' roll is
in total
shambles amid revelations that in Masvingo Urban Constituency alone
500
soldiers, some allegedly as old as 122 years, voted in last year's
harmonised elections.
According to an audit of the voters' roll
conducted by the mainstream MDC of
Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai in
Masvingo Urban Constituency 500 ghost
voters purported to be registered as
soldiers at Four Brigade Headquarters
voted during the March 29 harmonised
elections.
The audit also revealed that scores of people who are not
resident in
Masvingo Urban, including some who are deceased, are still
registered on the
voters' roll. The finding has generated fears that the
situation might be
replicated or worse in other parts of the
country.
Documents at hand show that 500 ghost voters, some purportedly
born in 1887
and enlisted at the army barracks, managed to cast their
vote.
"The MDC -T party has unearthed serious anomalies on the voters'
roll in
Masvingo Urban Constituency alone following an audit which revealed
that
ghost voters are still on the voters roll", reads the audit report in
part.
"This is just a tip of the iceberg since the situation might have
been very
serious in other constituencies country wide."
MDC-T
provincial secretary general Tongai Matutu who is also the MP for
Masvingo
urban yesterday confirmed the discovery. He said even if he won the
election
the voters' roll was in a shambles.
"We are the very people who carried
out this audit and we wonder how a
person can be considered to be still
serving in the army at the age of 122
years", said Matutu
"This was a
deliberate ploy by Zanu-PF to rob the people of victory but,
thank God, we
managed to win the election".
Zanu-PF officials in Masvingo yesterday
refused to comment on the audit and
referred all questions to the Zimbabwe
Electoral Commission (ZEC).
No comment could be obtained from the newly
constituted ZEC. The names of
new commissioners appointed to replace the
much discredited George Chiweshe
Commission were announced only last
week.
The outgoing commission, allegedly acting at the behest of Zanu-PF
was
consistently accused of manipulating the Voters' Roll in order to rig
elections on behalf of Mugabe and his party.
http://www.businessday.co.za
WILSON JOHWA
Published: 2009/12/28 10:06:00
AM
ZIMBABWEAN authorities have blamed inadequate parking as a reason for
congestion at the Beitbridge border post on the South African side of the
border.
Beitbridge is among the busiest border posts in the economic
region of the
Southern African Development Community (SADC), with volumes
rising to more
than 12000 travellers and 3500 vehicles a day during the
festive holidays.
This forced travellers and long- distance truck drivers
to queue for hours
on end to be cleared before crossing the
border.
Last week, Zimbabwe's main official newspaper, The Herald, quoted
border
officials blaming lack of space on the South African side of the
border for
the vehicle pile-up. They said this had a knock-on effect on the
Zimbabwean
side, which blocked the free movement of travellers.
" You
will note that most of the trucks that are queuing here have since
been
cleared on our side," the paper quoted Zimbabwe Revenue Authority
regional
manager Angeline Mashiri as saying.
However, regular power cuts in
Zimbabwe have also forced the authorities to
revert to manual clearance,
which Mashiri said was more time consuming.
Since 2003, the Beitbridge
border has been operating around the clock, while
a toll bridge was
commissioned in 1995.
Zimbabwean authorities said that this month traffic
flow across the border
had reached annual record levels, attributable to
growing economic stability
in the country along with the introduction of the
90-day visa exemption,
which made it easier for Zimbabweans to travel to
SA.
Gorden Moyo, minister of state in the prime minister's office,
visited the
border post and suggested that the old single-lane bridge could
be used to
cut down on congestion. But that facility had since been set
aside for
pedestrians and goods trains.
Home affairs spokeswoman
Siobhan McCarthy yesterday referred questions to
the South African Revenue
Service (SARS), which chairs the border control
operations coordinating
committee.
SARS spokesman Adrian Lackay said a visit to check on
operations a week
before Christmas had not revealed any problem areas,
although he
acknowledged that parking for long-distance trucks was a
challenge. "People
must understand that at this time of the year it's peak
traffic volumes," he
said.
Earlier this month, Deputy Home Affairs
Minister Malusi Gigaba said an extra
150 immigration officers would be
deployed to the busiest South African
border posts, including Beitbridge, to
beef up staff during the Christmas
period.
This month, Zambia and
Zimbabwe commissioned what was believed to be
sub-Saharan Africa's first
one- stop border post at Chirundu, which was
expected to reduce time spent
at the border by 30% to 50%.
It was anticipated that the proposed
one-stop border post would help ease
congestion and ensure quick clearance
of travellers, particularly during the
2010 Soccer World Cup when thousands
of fans are expected to pass through
Beitbridge and Musina.
johwaw@bdfm.co.za
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=26175
December 28, 2009
By Our
Correspondent
HARARE - A senior Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe official became
the recipient of
an unusual present on the eve of Christmas last week - 40
hectares of
tobacco and 11 000 chickens - after she invaded a farm in the
Makoni
District of Manicaland.
Winnie Mushipe, who is the central
bank's head of finance, took over Mhanda
Farm belonging to Raymond Finaughty
in dramatic fashion on Thursday morning
despite a pending court case over
the ownership of the farm. Mushipe, nee
Chipudhla, is the widow of a
Forestry Commission official, Martin Mushipe,
who died in the crash of a
commission aircraft in Chiredzi in 1998.
Mushipe gave Finaughty three
hours to pack and leave the farm.
A distraught Finaughty told The
Zimbabwe Times that his efforts to follow
the law and patiently wait for the
courts to make a decision had not helped
him.
"They have taken over
my farm," he said. "I have been chucked out just like
that. A Mrs Mushipe
from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe brought a two year-old
offer letter and
gave me three hours to leave the farm. I left because I
felt my life was in
danger."
The president of the Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union (CFU)
Deon Theron
said the invasion could be a signal for the return of
violence.
"This is a new wave of violence," he said. Theron said at least
another two
farmers had come under siege last week alone. He said former
lands minister
Didymus Mutasa was believed to be behind one of the
invasions.
Finaughty grows tobacco and rears chickens on Mhanda Farm just
outside
Rusape along the Nyanga Road. He is South African and Mhanda Farm is
covered
by the Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement
(BIPPA)
between his country and Zimbabwe.
"He has 40 hectares under
tobacco and 11 000 chickens which he has not been
able to look after over
the last three days because of the threats that he
has been receiving," said
Theron.
This latest invasion took place a day after President Robert
Mugabe, Prime
Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his Deputy Arthur Mutambara
expressed
satisfaction with the political climate prevailing in the country
at the
moment.
Finaughty has been in court a number of times. He
first appeared in court in
November 2007, was remanded six times before the
case was dismissed in
August 2008. Fresh charges were preferred on 7 May
this year. He has since
then appeared in court several
times.
Finaughty is one of the farmers who approached the Southern
African
Development Community (SADC) tribunal seeking redress over farms
compulsorily acquired by the government.
The beneficiary of this
latest farm invasion, Mushipe, has attempted to have
Finaughty evicted from
Mhanda Farm through both the magistrates' court and
in High
Court.
Mushipe was the head of RBZ's FISCORP (Pvt) Ltd which oversaw the
central
bank's quasi-fiscal operations. FISCORP, a special purpose vehicle
owned 100
percent by the Reserve Bank, was set up with the primary objective
of
collecting and administering loans issued by the bank.
In
September another top RBZ official, Deputy Governor Edward Mashiringwani
Friedawil Farm, owned by another South African farmer, Louis Fick, in the
Chinhoyi area.
The invasion turned bloody in October after a man
employed by Mashiringwani
shot and seriously injured five workers and
assaulted several others on the
pig farm.
http://www.iol.co.za
December 28 2009 at 02:20PM
The South
African government has an obligation to protect the rights of the
South
African farmer evicted from land in Zimbabwe last week, civil rights
initiative AfriForum said on Monday.
It said it had asked Trade and
Industry Minister Rob Davies to intervene
urgently to safeguard the lives
and property of Ray Finaughty and his
family.
Finaughty, who farmed
cattle, chickens and tobacco at Rusape, was reportedly
given three hours by
invaders to abandon his farm on Christmas eve.
AfriForum spokesman Willie
Spies said that in terms of a North Gauteng High
Court order, Finaughty was
entitled to protection in term of an investment
agreement signed last month
by both South Africa and Zimbabwe.
"Unless assurances are received from
the minister soon that steps have been
taken to protect Mr Finaughty and his
family's lives and property, AfriForum
will go ahead with urgent legal
action to ensure this," Spies said.
"It is a tragedy that innocent South
African citizens are subjected to this
kind of harassment just before
Christmas."
According to website www.zimbabwesituation.com, Finaughty
and his family are
safe and in Harare.
It said though he had handed
over part of his farm for President Robert
Mugabe's government land reform
programme, in 2007 a senior Reserve Bank
employee had tried to seize the
rest.
Finaughty had since then been in court on numerous occasions to try
to
retain his land.
Finaughty was one of 79 commercial farmers who
last year won a ruling from
the Southern African Development Community
Tribunal in Namibia that Mugabe's
land grabs were unlawful. - Sapa
http://www.newzimbabwe.com/
28/12/2009 00:00:00
THE
Government plans to form an exploration company as part of efforts to
curtail the hording of mining claims and other speculative activities
holding back development of the country's rich natural resource
base.
Zimbabwe boasts a relatively large underground mineral base but
government
is concerned that most of this wealth remains "inferred
resources" due to
the lack of extensive exploratory work.
"Government
will (therefore) finalise and operationalise an exploration
company to
undertake prospecting in areas neglected by private investors.
"This will
complement private mining exploration activity," the Ministry of
Finance
says in its latest economic blue-print.
The country's mining legislation
will also be tightened to curb speculative
tendencies and discourage the
hording of Exclusive Prospecting Orders (EPOs)
which has been holding back
investment in the sector.
"(The legislation will enable) Government . to
reclaim all undeveloped
mining claims held by some of the country's mining
companies for speculative
purposes as some mining houses are holding on to
mineral claims with no
plans to exploit them.
"Given that holding of
claims by some mining houses for speculative purposes
is detrimental to
securing fresh investment in the sector, . Government will
repossess all
claims held for speculative purposes on a 'use it' or 'lose it'
basis," the
new economic blue-print says.
The country's once vibrant mining sector
suffered near-terminal decline over
the last decade with only Zimplats,
Mimosa and Murowa Diamonds remaining
reasonably operational while about a
hundred other firms either closed shop
or scaled back activities to care and
maintenance.
However the sector is showing signs of tentative recovery as
a result of
positive policy measures introduced under the inclusive
government's Short
Term Economic Recovery Programme (STERP).
Analysts
say these measures which include the removal of forced foreign
exchange
surrender requirements and the full retention of export proceeds
are
expected to see the sector grow by 2% in 2009 and 40% in 2010 compared
to a
decline of 30% in 2008.
http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=26179
December 28, 2009
By Our
Correspondent
MASVINGO - Outreach teams to gather views of the people
during the
constitutional reform process will be deployed in different parts
of the
country on January 12 next year MDC-T co-chairperson of the
parliamentary
select committee on constitutional reform Tongai Matutu has
said.Addressing
MDC supporters at a Christmas party which he hosted here
Matutu said the
training of teams will commence work on January 4 while
deployment of the
outreach teams will start a week later.
"We are
behind time and these outreach teams will be deployed this time
without fail
on January 12 next year", said Matutu. "We have agreed to this
as prescribed
in the Global Political Agreement and there is no going back.
"It is the
people of Zimbabwe who should come up with a constitution and not
individuals or political parties.
"We want the document to reflect
what the people want and not what political
parties want"
Matutu who
will chair the thematic committee on executive powers and
elections said
that he will ensure that the document is not manipulated by
certain
individuals at the expense of the general majority.
Concerns have been
raised over the slow pace of the constitutional reform
process, amid reports
of disagreements amongst parties to the GPA which gave
birth to the
inclusive government.
The minister of constitutional Affairs Advocate
Erick Matinenga has already
visited several parts of the country to asses
the situation on the ground
with regard to the constitutional reform
process.
"All is now on course and we expect work to commence and be
finished within
the stipulated time," said Matinenga
However it
emerged last week that Zanu-PF which is pushing for the adoption
of the
Kariba Draft constitution has already deployed youths and war
veterans in
the countryside to campaign for the adoption of that draft.
Paul
Mangwana, Zanu-PF co-chairperson of the parliamentary select committee
on
the constitutional reform process, confirmed last week that Zanu-PF had
already started campaigning for its position on the
constitution.
Mangwana however said that even the MDC had also sent out
teams into the
countryside to campaign for its position.
"All the
political parties have already started campaigning for their
positions and
it is not illegal", said Mangwana.
"What we do not want is to hear of
incidents of violence during this period
because this will affect the
content of the document".
The militant Progressive Teachers Union of
Zimbabwe (PTUZ) has claimed that
several schools have been turned into
Zanu-PF campaign bases where war
veterans and party youths are being housed
as they campaign for the adoption
of the Kariba Draft.
PTUZ president
Takavafira Zhou said:" We have received reports that several
schools have
been turned into Zanu-PF bases where the party will launch its
campaign", he
said
Comment could be immediately obtained from Zanu-PF yesterday over
the
allegations.
Mangwana says the outreach teams will require 65
working days to complete
the exercise.
http://www.afriquejet.com/
News - Africa news
Tourism
authorities in Zimbabwe said Monday they had contracted 4,000
upmarket home
owners around the country to lease their properties for the
2010 FIFA World
Cup finals in South Africa next year.
The country expects around 130,000
tourists to visit Zimbabwe during the
World Cup, and is courting some of the
participating teams to camp here.
But it is short of hotel accommodation,
and as a result is contracting
private owners of upmarket homes to lease
these for use by the expected
visitors.
"South Africa is expecting
more than half a million soccer fans during the
2010 World Cup and we are
expecting that 130,000 of these will be coming to
Zimbabwe during that
period," Sylvester Maunganidze, Permanent Secreta ry in
the Ministry of
Tourism, said.
"Hence, it has become necessary to come up with mechanisms
for Zimbabwe to
provide comfortable accommodation," he
said.
Zimbabwe, a neighbour to South Africa, has around 8,000 hotel beds,
which
tourism authorities said would will be insufficient to accommodate the
expected influx of World Cup visitors to the country.
"At the moment,
we have registered more than 4,000 lodges after house owners
applied to
transform their houses into lodges," Maunganidze said.
He said the
government was looking for more private properties to lease.
Zimbabwe is
courting Brazil, among other World Cup teams, to camp in the
country during
the tournament.
Harare - Pana 28/12/2009
http://www.radiovop.com
Bulawayo- December 28 2009- Sacked Movement for
Democratic Change members of
parliament belonging to the Arthur Mutambara
Faction are busy campaigning in
anticipation of by-elections in their
respective constituencies.
Three MPs, Abedenico Bhebhe (Kkayi South),
Norman Mpofu (Bulila South), and
former Lupane North legislator, Njabuliso
Mguni unveiled their colorful
campaigning materials that included T-shirts,
posters and banners last week.
The MPs were sacked for allegedly denouncing
the party's leadership and
holding unsanctioned meetings.
The three
principals to the Global Political Agreement (GPA), President
Robert Mugabe,
MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai and Mutambara recently agreed on
new
commissioners to run the discredited Zimbabwe Electoral Commission
(ZEC).
"I am really overwhelmed by the material, moral and
financial support which
I am getting from people in Lupane North," Mguni
told Radio VOP. "The people
in my constituency are coming up with various
campaigning activities and
materials. To the people of Lupane the
by-elections will be emotional to
them because of the unfairness surrounding
our dismissal from the party."
Mguni who was wearing a green T-shirt
inscription "Vote Njabuliso Mguni, the
people's choice "said he is humbled
by the support which he has been
receiving following his dismissal from the
party.
"I urge Welshman Ncube and company to leave the comfort of
parliament and
come to where the people are and start campaigning for their
party.
Parliament is in Lupane where the people are, not in the airplane or
in five
star hotels. As for me I will just follow what the people in Lupane
are
saying and doing," said Mguni.
According to sources in
Khayi and Bulila, Bhebhe and Mpofu have also
launched their campaigns. The
two constituencies are also awash with
green -T-shirts with the same
inscriptions with that of Mguni.
The MDC -M last month approached
South African based professor Bekhimpilo
Sibanda to stand for the party
against Mguni but after accepting the offer
professor Sibanda chickened out
of the race after villagers in Mkombo ward
where he hails from allegedly
advised him to decline the offer.
Radio VOP is reliably informed that
the party has now settled for
Sibangelizwe Msipa, the party's former senator
for Makokoba constituency who
lost to Martison Hlalo of the MDC -T during
the last year's June 27
harmonized elections.
Under the GPA,
Zanu (PF), and MDC -T and MDC -M who are signatories to the
agreement are
not supposed to contest each other.
http://www.radiovop.com
Masvingo - December 28, 2009 - Zimbabwean
farmers are withholding their farm
produce in protest of an influx of cheap
Genetically Modified Organisms
(GMOs) products into the
country.
Commercial Farmers Union (ZCFU) acting president Robert
Marapira blasted
government for allowing GMOs in the country, saying they
were putting
farmers out of business.
"Farmers have agreed to stop
selling their products to government through
Grain Marketing Board (GMB)
because of the GMOs. We have been thrown out of
business, as farmers we also
want to make profits out of our business but we
can not do anything because
the government has
allowed the GMOs," said Marapira.
Marapira said
Mashonaland East alone was withholding more than 600 000 tones
of maize.
"There are thousands of tonnes of farm produce in all provinces.
Each
province has an average of over 600 000 tonnes which did not go to GMB
as
farmers complain over poor prices for their products."
According to
Zimbabwean laws, it is illegal to manufacture GMOs in the
country, however,
the law does not ban the importation of such foods.
Marapira said one
tonne of GMOs of maize goes for about USd 60, which is
ten times less than
the money which is needed by farmers for the same
quantity.
http://www.newzimbabwe.com/
28/12/2009 00:00:00
THE
leadership of the world-wide Anglican Communion has condemned what they
called a "resurgence of police intimidation of Anglicans in Zimbabwe"
following reports that church-goers, including the clergy were barred from
attending services over the Christmas holiday.
"We condemn
unequivocally any move to deny people their basic right to
worship.
"To prevent people from worshipping in their churches on
Christmas Day --
unable to receive the church's message of hope -- is a
further blow to civil
liberties in Zimbabwe.
"Such unprovoked
intimidation of worshippers by the police is completely
unacceptable and
indicative of the continued and persistent oppression by
state instruments
of those perceived to be in opposition," the archbishops
Canterbury and
York, Drs Rowan Williams and John Sentamu said in a
statement.
The
Anglican Church has been rocked by divisions in Zimbabwe since the
expulsion
of Bishop Nolbert Kunonga, who is seen as supporting President
Robert
Mugabe, after he tried to withdraw the Diocese of Harare from the
Church's
Central Africa Province.
Kunonga and part of the local clergy allied to
him have since formed their
own Province precipitating battles for control
of the Church's properties
with his successors, Bishops Sebastian Bakare
(Manicaland) and Chad Gandiya
(Harare).
Police have been forced to
intervene to quell the often violent disturbances
between the two factions
as well as enforce court orders that Church
property should be shared until
the dispute is resolved.
Meanwhile, Drs Williams and Sentamu reaffirmed
their support for the
Bakare/Gandiya faction.
"We stand in support of
the dioceses of Harare and Manicaland under the
Church of the Province of
Central Africa in this regard. For many people in
Zimbabwe, ground down by
unceasing unemployment and lack of basic services,
the church is their only
lifeline," the Anglican primates said.
Kunonga pulled out of the Church
and decided to form his own Province saying
the Church had failure to deal
with rampant homosexuality in the world-wide
communion.
He also
claims the Church is vilifying him for supporting President Mugabe's
land
reforms.
Time
and again society produces individuals who excel beyond the norm in
their
chosen field of expertise producing exceptional results and setting
achievement standards by which the rest of the community hope to
attain.
The disturbing injustice in Chegutu compels me to voice my deep
revulsion
with the blatantly racist and voracious victimisation of one of
Zimbabwe's
most progressive farmers, Mr Thomas Irving Beattie. Thomas
Beattie is an
agricultural visionary, an elder whose entrepreneurial spirit
resulted in
the agrarian revolution which established one of Zimbabwe's
largest citrus
estate, cattle feedlot, and commercial agricultural
enterprise.
My respect for Thomas Beattie is rooted in the experiences and
knowledge I
derived during my tenure under his tutelage as a farm manager in
the
formative years of my agricultural career. Thomas Beattie, a hard
taskmaster
who was firm and fair, imparted agrarian expertise and tricks of
the trade
not yet freely available in the public domain.
What ZANU (PF)
and its self-styled war veterans have done to this true
fellow Zimbabwean,
and many other loyal farmers like him, is both callous
and criminal.
Thieving politicians masquerading as revolutionaries have
unlawfully
stripped Thomas Beattie of his entire business-built over fifty
years
through sheer perseverance-and rendered him homeless.
Under the
one-man-one-farm policy, it is only fair that Thomas Beattie-who
had already
relinquished ownership of his other farms to the government in
1990, should
have been left with his remaining farm to continue farming with
his
sons-like every other Zimbabwean.
The theft of private property that occurred
when the vile Bright Matonga-the
then Deputy Minister of Information-evicted
Thomas Beattie and his sons
should be punished to the fullest extent of the
law.
Bright Matonga had already seized Mupandaguta Farm in 2003, a flower
farm in
Banket, which produced 10 million blooms for export, prior to
invading
Beattie's farm. The flower farm is now derelict. This one man has
destroyed
a collective agricultural unit that had employed 2 000 people and
generated
over US$ 10 million annually, all this lost permanently to
supposedly
"correct a colonial wrong".
Thomas Beattie has been farming
for longer than Bright Matonga has been
alive; Thomas Beattie has forgotten
more than Matonga will ever know in
agriculture. Zimbabwe has replaced
farmers like Thomas Beattie-walking
agricultural encyclopaedias-with
opportunists, measly gangsters devoid of
any agrarian knowhow cut from the
same cloth as Matonga. The current fast
track land acquisition exercise is a
ZANU (PF) tool for the self-enrichment
scheme by common criminals whose
political fortunes have evaporated.
It is a dark chapter in our history to
witness the silence and inaction of
black Zimbabweans while such brutal
injustices against fellow citizens occur
openly. People have been cowered
into submission and are terrified of being
labelled as sell-outs or stooges
of the British. White Zimbabwean farmers
are now easy targets portrayed as
colonial settlers whose continued
existence is erroneously equated by ZANU
(PF) propagandists as returning
Zimbabwe to British rule.
In 1993, Thomas
Beattie diversified from grain farming at the behest of the
Minister of
Agriculture, Kumbirai Kangai, whose policy in the 90's was to
stop all
commercial farmers from growing maize. The rationale being that
capable
communal farmers would produce the entire nation's grain, while
mechanised
commercial farmers diversified into labour intensive
export-oriented
horticultural crops.
The government deliberately lowered the producer price
of maize, thus making
it unprofitable for commercial farmers to plant maize.
The strategy worked
as most commercial farmers ceased commercial maize
production and converted
maize fields into citrus, passion fruit, flowers,
and mangoes.
The commencement of planting the first citrus orchards outside
of Mazoe
Valley occurred on Lionsvlei, Umvovo, and Rainbows End Farms owned
by Thomas
Beattie in the Chegutu District. During the punishing summer
midday heat and
bitterly cold early winter mornings, scores of hardworking
employees toiled
to meticulously lay an underground labyrinth that
constituted one of
Zimbabwe's first computerised citrus micro irrigation and
fertigation
systems.
The construction of the specialised citrus factory
with imported grading
equipment occurred in tandem. At the time it all
seemed as though the hard
work would someday result into an economic success
story to be emulated by
other farmers as they diversified.
During the
citrus harvesting season, women from Chegutu, Pfupajena, and
Mvovo Townships
were gainfully employed grading export citrus. So where 120
women sat
processing thousands of tonnes of oranges for export, one man -
Bright
Matonga - now pens his cattle. Today, Bright Matonga is nowhere to be
seen
in Chegutu, the citrus is dying, the women are unemployed, and the
revenue
to the COUNTRY has evaporated. Are we now proud in having correcting
this
misdeed?
Informal traders from as far afield as Lusaka in Zambia would
converge at
the Big Orange factory to purchase citrus for resale at the
markets. The
waxed and graded citrus was trucked to Durban in pallets from
Hunyani loaded
on refrigerated units provided by the local transport
company, which also
created its own downstream employment for cross border
drivers. The Beattie
family abattoir is found in the township of Rimuka in
Kadoma and supplied
prime beef to butcheries all over Zimbabwe.
Whilst
Thomas Beattie was toiling, Bright Matonga was lavishly cavorting in
England
only to return and claim to be the custodian of so-called Zimbabwean
heritage-the champion or leading light in a revolution that removes other
Zimbabweans from their land.
Since the fast track land seizures commenced
in 2000, it has been easy for
ZANU (PF) to portray the land invasions as a
spontaneous demonstration by
landless peasants who needed to take back land
originally taken away from
them by colonial settlers. It is now apparent and
clear that the so-called
land reform program has been nothing but a
political gimmick that has been
used to reward ZANU (PF) supporters and
punish anyone perceived as an enemy.
Mr Thomas Beattie at any one time grew 2
000 hectares of maize, equal
hectares of soyabeans and sorghum (in summer),
coupled with at least 1 000
hectares of winter wheat. He maintained a beef
herd of not less than 5 000
in any given year. Mr Beattie employed 1 400 men
and women who either lived
on his farms or bussed in from Chegutu Township
daily. Furthermore, Mr
Beattie's benevolence during the drought years saw
him drill boreholes in
the townships and relinquish his water rights in the
Mupfure River so that
the Chegutu Town Council would have adequate water
supplies.
When the bankrupt Chegutu City Council's unmaintained tractors
finally broke
down, Thomas Beattie's fleet of tractors and drivers performed
the
grass-cutting duties in and around the city limits. The continual
dredging
of the Mupfure river weirs by Thomas Beattie provided the Chegutu
building
industry with a constant supply of river sand. The informal
building blocks
industry mushroomed around it, whilst insuring that these
essential
irrigation water reservoirs did not silt.
Is Bright Matonga a
better farmer than Thomas Beattie? Is Bright Matonga a
farmer? Why is it
that only the ruling elite are allocated prime
agricultural properties? What
has Bright Matonga's contribution to the
Chegutu community been since he
evicted Thomas Beattie? How much money
has Bright Matonga pilfered from
the Reserve Bank and yet produced nothing?
Bright Matonga was the chief
executive officer of ZUPCO-the government bus
company-who had been arrested
in May of 2005 for allegedly soliciting for
bribes-the company is now in
financial ruin.
Thomas Beattie's only "crime" is that his skin colour is
similar to that of
the people who once colonised Zimbabwe. What does it mean
to be a citizen of
Zimbabwe? Do farmers have fewer rights than a member of
ZANU (PF) who can
take their property with less than twenty-four hours
notice?
At Independence, like every white person at the time, Thomas Beattie
was a
Rhodesian. But he became a Zimbabwean on April 18, 1980. He
enthusiastically
participated in the nation's rebuilding, paid his taxes,
produced food, and
created employment for the next twenty-eight
years.
How could a devoted Zimbabwean farmer, rooted in the community, now be
labelled as a colonial settler with no citizenship rights over a
pseudo-revolutionary who has never earned an honest living and was only a
primary school student during the war of liberation?
Most of the
productive farm land that has made its way to this clique of
gangsters is
being chopped up into residential plots. The "liberators" are
profiting from
land that they never paid for in the first place. Thomas
Beattie and other
patriotic farmers like him are being punished today for
believing in the
empty words of reconciliation preached by Robert Mugabe at
Independence. It
is a shame that as a nation we celebrate the abhorrent
treatment of fellow
human beings and citizens as justified empowerment.
In the district of
Chegutu, it is amazing to discover that only a handful of
ZANU (PF)
politicians have been carving up farms for themselves, their
families, and
their relatives for the past ten years. If all the farms
seized by the
government are state property, it therefore follows that
anyone who took
that state property, looted equipment and destroyed
productivity, caused
famine, therefore committed a crime that should be
punishable by
imprisonment.
The very same ZANU (PF) parliamentarians, who passed laws that
barred
farmers from taking their machinery, took over these properties and
looted
valuable irrigation infrastructure. In the case of Thomas Beattie,
Bright
Matonga destroyed or vandalised one of Zimbabwe's most modern citrus
factories.
The ZANU (PF) politburo, central committee members and
President's Office
officials now occupy multiple farms with Mugabe leading
the way with the
theft of 10 farms for himself.
The replacement of all
the nations' damaged infrastructure to pre-1999
levels has now been
estimated by the Minister of Finance to be US$ 45
billion dollars. Was it
worth it, creating a financial burden, unemployment
and hunger for
generations so that a few ethnically skewed greedy
politicians could enrich
themselves by destroying commercial agriculture?
US$45 billion-the
conservative monetary value for Zimbabwe to correct a
"colonial wrong"-and
yet, Zimbabwe has not redressed its colonial imbalance,
instead it has
created a deep-rooted political and ethnic wrong, which shall
soon need to
be righted.
Phil Matibe - www.madhingabucketboy.com