White farmers and the whole country alike, under siege from Mugabe's Office

This week one of the few remaining white commercial farmers in Zimbabwe, David Connolly (DC), owner of Centenary Farm, about 30km from Bulawayo was tracked down. Itai Mushekwe (IM), discusses with him an array of issues pertaining to the situation of white farmers in the country, land, and Zimbabwe's food security.

IM: David before we go any further, we are aware about the running battles that you are facing with one of President Robert Mugabe's top aides, Ray Ndhlukula, who has been eying your farm since June 2014, and even defying court orders, in his bid to seize your property. Ndhlukula says Mugabe has personally granted him the green light to come after Centenary farm, as a beneficiary of the land reform exercise. Could you please walk us through, the current state of affairs right now?

DC: Yes, Itai. I think we need to identify who Ray is. He is the Deputy Chief Secretary in the Office of the President and Cabinet which in my eyes would make him the second highest Civil Servant in the country after the Chief Secretary. He already has two other farms that being Vlakfontein and Wilfreds Hope. During the contempt of court trial the High Court judge specifically said to him that it was appalling that such a senior civil servant should be behaving in such a manner, what type of example was he setting to the rest of the civil service. He was duly found guilty of being in contempt of court, the judge saying in his judgement that contempt strikes at the very heart of the rule of law. Ray has appealed against this order to the supreme court and we wait for this process. Concurrently my workers have been putting together a claim against their illegal eviction from the property and this will be filed in the next couple of days. This claim runs into hundreds of thousands of dollars. Similarly, I have kept a very detailed record of my production losses and I will be filing this within the week. Again, this runs into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

IM: Vice President, Phelekezela Mpoko, has come to the rescue of another white commercial farmer in that region, Peter Cunningham, whose Maleme Ranch, had almost forcibly been grabbed by a senior intelligence officer, before he intervened to reverse the development, thus giving a hope to about 800 families who are said to be benefiting from the farm. Have you tried to seek the VP's help on the matter too?

DC: All farms in Matebeleland South are being targeted by members of the Presidents office. What happened at Maleme is that a senior CIO official occupied the house and locked the gates. Some of the local villagers then broke the locks and escorted the CIO employees to Natisa Growth Point and put them on a bus to Bulawayo. These villagers were arrested that night and taken to the Kezi police station. The following morning there were a thousand villagers at the police station asking to be arrested. It must be understood that these are the same villagers that suffered horrendous atrocities during the Gukurahundi genocide. This was an incredibly brave action. The Vice President had no option but to reverse the occupation. It must also be understood that he is elected by no one, but appointed by the president and can be replaced by the president as VP Mujuru was. Mutasa and Mliswa are seeing the fruits of vice presidential protection, in fact this goes to the heart of the problem. We have a break down in the rule of law, and the country is run by patronage. The CIO official who had been given Maleme ranch had applied to the High Court for an eviction order against the Cunninghams and this had been thrown out. Despite this he proceeded in his attempt to take over the farm. So I have not sought help from the VP but rather sought help from the constitution of the land. As far as I am aware the president at his inauguration, after the election swore to uphold this constitution. There is no future for Zimbabwe in this modern world if senior officials believe they are not bound by the constitution of the country.Humans come and go a constitution is a lot more durable.

IM: Violence on farms appears to be bouncing back, and you can curiously see how even former officials in Mugabe's government and party, who have been fired, are now experiencing crackdowns from fellow black Zimbabweans, who are mostly party youths being sent to force them off those farms. A good case here, is that of former Zanu PF provincial chairman for Mashonaland West, Themba Mliswa, who has been hounded to give up his Spring Farm in Hurungwe, owing to the weapon of violence. How serious is the scourge of violence on white commercial farmers?

DC: The June election 2008 was not recognised because of the violence. Themba Mliswa fully participated in that violence for which he has now apologised. Violence is no way to run a modern country. Sadly, as I speak, Tim White of Avlon Farm in Esigodin is in his house surrounded by a crowd of unruly youths sent by a senior CIO official from the Midlands province. This is happening when only yesterday, members of the World Bank, IMF, AFDB and senior western diplomats met with Minister of Finance Chinamasa in Harare where he was asking for budgetary support. As far as I am aware, the only vote in his budget that has been fully paid up is that to the Presidents Office, in excess of two hundred million dollars. The president is using this money to destroy any pockets of production in the country and then appealing to the west to fund the rest of his budget. Of course he has said that he has degrees in violence.
 
IM: Some people are saying that, white farmers are under renewed siege from Mugabe, and that his supporters are meting out institutionalized xenophobia on them. What is your view?

DC: The whole country is under siege from the President's office. The ZANU PF constitution, Joice Mujuru, Telecel, the Zimbabwean constitution, the Kalanga tribe, and the economy. The term "institutionalized xenophobia" is very interesting. We have a constitution that is in conflict with itself. By this I mean that every ones rights are protected in the bill of rights and then later white people are banned from owning agricultural land. For me this is just another term for apartheid. A good constitution protects minority rights.
 
IM: Government has announced that it will soon import about 700 000 tonnes of maize to avert hunger, following a bad 2014-15 harvest, with food production down by 49%. What can be done by the authorities, to increase food security in the country?

DC: Food security comes as a result of the rule of law and a long term policy on property rights. There will never be food security in Zimbabwe until these two fundamental rules are implemented. Geographically, Zimbabwe is situated where droughts are part of the climatic cycle. Food security comes about when you are able to carry over surplus from the good years. Last year was climatically an excellent agricultural year. There should be more than enough in storage to carry us through this year.
 
IM: In your honest opinion, how do you compare the country's food security situation before and after Mugabe's fast-track land reform. Please quantify your response?

DC: Mugabe's fast track land reform program was designed purely and simply to keep him in power. A food secure country has independent people who are in control of their destiny and thus vote accordingly. Mugabe would no longer be president if he presided over a food secure country. So for the country the lack of food security is disastrous, but for Mugabe it is intentional.

IM: The new black farmers, according to Mugabe have scored some positives in some agricultural sectors, but an equal number have failed to fully utilize the land, resulting in wastelands. What are the implications, which the country faces if productivity and utilization of the land remains derelict?

DC: In short the diaspora will grow. The number of street children in Bulawayo increases daily, literally you cannot park anywhere in Bulawayo without your car being surrounded by these children asking to look after it in return for small change. They are not being educated and then on the street corners we have people with university degrees selling airtime. At the recently held SADC summit both the presidents of Botswana and South Africa, supported by the president of Mozambique raised issues which are a direct result of the failed land program. Yes, there has been some success, particularly with tobacco but at what cost to the environment. I believe last years tobacco crop was a peak which was cured by thousands of tons of indigenous wood. This crop was also funded by the tobacco companies and as a result there has been no maize in the rotation. During drought years food security was secured by the maize grown in rotation with tobacco and financed by commercial banks on the back of bankable property rights.
 
IM. If you were to be the minister of agriculture, what would your policy on commercial farming postulate?

DC: In my past I have been chairman of the National Association of Dairy Farmers and in fact occupied this position when Dairibord was privatized and was intimately involved with that privatization. Private sector and government worked incredibly well together and we ended up with more than three thousand first time investors on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange. I also sat on a committee called the Zimbabwe Joint Resettlement Initiative (ZIJRI). The aim of this committee was to find two million hectares of commercial land and resettle it with agricultural advice from the commercial farmers and financial assistance from the international community. Our connection to government was through Olivia Muchena, a minister from the presidents office. In the first meeting she told us that the initiative could not proceed unless we agreed on two things and that was that under know circumstances would a commercial farmer take the government to court and secondly we would not publicize what was happening on commercial farms. I immediately resigned from that committee which collapsed a couple of months later. This was an instant where the government was not prepared to work with the private sector. As a result of this experience I established an organisation called Justice for Agriculture. The policy that we created in this organisation is a policy that as far as I am concerned would have turned this country into the bread basket of Africa again. The policy was very simple. It was to take the six and half thousand pieces of titled land registered in the deeds office and subdivide them into forty thousand pieces of titled land. This would have created place for another thirty five thousand new commercial farmers. The professional people that would have been involved in this exercise from surveyors to engineers, accountants, lawyers, bankers and venture capitalists would have been immense. The production of raw materials would have been huge and thus create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the downstream processing industries. Strangely, this policy is more implementable now, than it was in 2002. I have not come across an A1 or A2 farmer who does not now understand the value of a secure property right.
 
IM: Centenary Farm, is into horticultural produce, and appears to be doing modestly well despite the dire economic situation. How do you manage to be scoring a success story, and could you give us a brief analysis on the state of horticulture in our country?

DC: The history of Centenary farm has been stud breeding ( herefords and senepols) milk production feedlotting and the production of supporting crops.Horticulture was developed to try and secure forex. However you are now been paid US dollars for tomatoes cabbages and onions. These are also ideal vending commodities and sadly Zimbabwe is now a vending economy. This has allowed us to keep our head above water but we long for the day when once again freight aircraft fly out of our airports with fresh produce for international markets.

IM: Someone once told me that Zimbabwe has the best agricultural soils on the continent, and it also has the capacity to feed the world. What is our current capacity in feeding ourselves, and if the sector is to turnaround to the bread-basket days, what capacity or potential can we talking about, in providing enough for ourselves and the regions beyond?

DC: As a result of what has happened I now have friends farming in Nigeria, Angola,Tanzania, Mozambique and Zambia all offer superior natural agriculture conditions to Zimbabwe .Only Botswana and Namibia have inferior conditions. What Zimbabwe did have was the best property rights for agriculture land in the world.These allowed the development of a massive water resource ( Zimbabwe had more privately constructed dams than any other country in the world) Intern this allowed double cropping,crop rotations, plantation crops etc.I have many friends who built up there soils over ten or fifteen years with surplus fertilizing mulching nitrogen fixing crops etc.Brian Oldrives farming Gods way will take a piece of soil over a ten year period and allow production to increase literally from zero to 15 tonnes/ha.None of this is possible with an offer letter, which despite government denial has a 30 day notice clause. Ask Mutasa or Miliswa.If the property right that existed on commercial land prior 2000 was extended to communal areas then the world becomes Zimbabwe s oyster, if not Zimbabwe will never again feed its self.
 
IM: What future do white commercial farmers have in Zimbabwe, and do you think that if there is a new democratic dispensation, those who have left us will come back home, to revive the farming economy?

DC: I would prefer you to ask what future does commercial agriculture have in Zimbabwe.The diaspora is 95% black . My pray is that when a new democratic dispensation is ushered in it will secure the rights of commercial agriculture. This will allow the diaspora to return in mass and for Zimbabwe to challenge the asian tigers. Commercial farmers are a rare breed the attrition is huge. I went to Gwebi the best course in the world for commercial farmers. Fifteen years after graduation only one third where still farming.However if you do want to racialize it in 2025 I see a Zimbabwe with 40000 commercial farmers of which probably 12 to 15 hundred will be white.

IM: Do you fear for your life in the wake of sustained attacks to abandon your farm?

DC: This needs to be put in context.Mugabe has said he needs to strike fear in the heart of the white man.(Martin Olds was friend of mine) He has said he does not want to see a white face and then he criticizes the King of the Zulus. Surely what is good for the goose is good for the gander. The Mugabe family has called their milk products the ALPHA and OMEGA to me this is a direct challenge to GOD and GOD is not mocked. I pray daily for this family. My life is in Gods hands.