HARARE – Zimbabwe’s few remaining white farmers said on Monday that they had sought without success help from Agriculture Minister Joseph Made and his lands counterpart Herbert Murerwa to end fresh farm invasions by military officers and supporters of President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF party.

The majority of the about 4 000 white commercial farmers were expelled from the land under Mugabe’s chaotic and often bloody land reforms blamed for plunging Zimbabwe into food shortages but which the veteran leader says were necessary to ensure blacks also had access to arable land that they were denied by previous white-led governments.

Deon Theron, president of the mainly white Commercial Framers Union (CFU), said in a press statement that fresh disturbances on farms and invasions would have a “catastrophic impact” on the nation’s ability to produce enough food in the 2009/10 season.

“We have written to various ministries, including the minister of agriculture and the minister of lands, seeking dialogue to stabilise the situation and protect our livestock, but have not even received a reply,” he said.

Efforts to get a comment from Murerwa were fruitless yesterday. Made declined to comment.

Theron said his union was “deeply” concerned about the increased onslaught against white farmers, employees and livestock.

“Many of our members and their employees have been assaulted, had their belongings seized and stolen, and been forced to watch as their homes and worker villages have been burnt to the ground,” Theron alleged.

“Police reaction has been limited, slow and frequently biased against our members. In the majority of cases there has been no response at all because the deliberately orchestrated violence has been classified as political,” the CFU leader said.

He said over 150 productive farmers have been targeted and prosecuted by the Attorney General’s office for refusing to vacate their farms.

“We see dairy farmers, tobacco farmers, wheat farmers, maize farmers – in fact every category of farmer throughout the country being victimised and prosecuted currently in the magistrates’ courts,” he said.

“In addition to these illegal prosecutions, we have beneficiaries of ‘offer letters’ taking the law into their own hands and farming operations continue to be violently disrupted.”

He said summer cropping was in danger if farm disruptions were not ended.

“The summer cropping season is upon us and the situation is extremely serious. As commercial farmers we are being prevented from producing crops, and the highly productive farms that have been acquired by the government are producing either very little or nothing,” Theron explained.

Theron added: “Zimbabwe has been warned continuously that the beneficiaries of international food aid should be those that are most deserving, notably regions affected by severe drought conditions, floods, tornadoes, tsunamis, global warming and other natural disasters. 

“Justifying massive shipments of food aid to countries whose governments destroy their population’s ability to feed themselves is proving to be increasingly difficult.”

Once a net food exporter Zimbabwe has avoided mass starvation over the past decade of Mugabe’s land reforms only because international relief agencies were quick to chip in with food handouts.

Chaos in agriculture because of the farm seizures also hit hard Zimbabwe’s once impressive manufacturing sector that had depended on a robust farming sector for orders and inputs.

Many industries were either forced to drastically scale down operations or close shop altogether in a country where inflation is estimated at more than 80 percent.

By Zimonline