Plight of farm labourers ignored

Zimbabwe’s 700,000 farm labourers and their dependents are not being considered for resettlement under the government’s controversial land acquisition scheme, trade union and human rights activists told IRIN. They said the labourers would be left without homes or jobs as their employers’ farms are taken over.

According to Philip Munyanyi of the General, Agriculture and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe (GAPWUZ), the labourers and their dependants represent a population of around two million people. About 45 percent of them are from neighbouring countries like Malawi and Mozambique.

Under President Robert Mugabe’s new “fast-track” land reform programme, some 3,000 mainly white-owned commercial farms have been earmarked for acquisition and redistribution to around 500,000 landless black households. But “the farm labourers and their dependents have been excluded from the provisions of the government’s Land Acquisition Act,” Munyanyi told IRIN.

He said the land invasions by liberation war veterans and their supporters - which started in February - have forced many farm labourers off their employers properties. “As farm owners abandon their occupied farms, the labourers have suffered intimidation and assaults by the invaders, forcing many to flee the farms,” said Munyanyi.

Many of them have nowhere else to go. “Farm labourers lose their farm accommodation on land acquired by the government. As they have no other relatives in Zimbabwe, they set up squatter settlements in and around the farms, which increases landlessness,” Pesanai Mazambani of the human rights organisation, ZimRights, told IRIN.

In the political violence that accompanied the farm invasions, labourers were targetted as supporters of the oppostion Movement for Democratic Change by the veterans backed by Mugabe. “The resettlement programme is being carried out on a partisan basis. The people to be resettled on acquired farms are all members and supporters of the ruling ZANU-PF party,” Mazambani said.

The farm occupations have also had a negative effect on GAPWUZ. “We have been denied access to our members in the farms by war veterans since the start of the invasions,” Munyanyi said. Most of the labourers on occupied farms have gone without pay for months, which has had a knock-on effect for the union. “Union property has been attached by court order as some of the officials claim their unpaid wages,” Munyanyi added.

He said that since 1992, when the government started acquiring limited amounts of land for resettlement, about 50,000 farm labourers had lost their jobs and accommodation. Munyanyi added that labourers received no compensation or security of tenure after the farms were taken over. “The union plans to lobby MPs to amend the legislation to protect the interests of farm labourers in acquired farms,” he said.