Farmers pay to stay on land - newspaper

The Zimbabwe government is to investigate allegations that cabinet ministers, officials from the ruling ZANU-PF and war veterans have extorted millions of dollars from white commercial farmers to avoid eviction or the sale of their land. The country's Financial Gazette reported on Thursday that some farmers said they had paid money to have their farms removed from the acquisition list of the land reform programe, which targets more than 90 percent of white-owned farms in Zimbabwe. ZANU-PF secretary for administration Emmerson Mnangagwa told IRIN the government's department of Home Affairs and National Security have ordered the police to investigate the allegations. "Regarding the allegations against the party we will wait for the outcome of the government investigation. As a party we don't condone corruption at all," he said. The Zimbabwe government is currently running a controversial programme of acquiring white-owned farms without compensation, for redistribution among the landless. A farmer told the Financial Gazette that money had been paid to ZANU-PF chiefs and war veterans to have their farms delisted. Sources reportedly also implicated three cabinet ministers and two provincial governors. It was alleged that three Mashonaland Central farmers, Warwick, Duncan and Simon Hale, who have a farm in the province's Nyabira area, paid a large amount of money to Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association leader Patrick Nyaruwata and his secretary-general Andy Mhlanga. This was supposed to ensure that one of their properties was cleared of war veterans and was spared further invasions because it was not listed for acquisition. They were also supposed to be allowed to harvest soyabeans at another of their properties. The farmers would then have shared the proceeds from the sale of the 500-hectare soyabean crop with the war veterans, as long as work on the farm was not disrupted. Under the agreement, the two war veterans were supposed to receive a further amount from the sale of a wheat crop grown jointly by the Hales and war veterans. The deal fell through though after the war veterans failed to ensure that operations at one farm were not disrupted as agreed. Nyaruwata denied the extortion allegations saying the money was from the proceeds of a soyabean crop the war veterans had planted with the Hale brothers and that he was still owed money. Other allegations are that war veterans and farmers resettled under the land redistribution programme demanded that owners of designated properties should grow crops on a portion of the farms, at their cost, and then hand over the proceeds. Farmers who have refused have been prevented from growing any crops on their properties, the publication reported. At the World Economic Forum in Durban, South Africa, on Thursday, Finance Minister Simba Makoni said the country's critical food shortages had been made worse by the land reform programme. "It compounds, it exacerbates, but it is not the primary cause of the problem," Associated Press quoted him as saying. A Food and Agriculture Organisation and World Food Programme assessment said last week that a severe drought and land reform were the major factors in the collapse of agricultural production in Zimbabwe. About six million people - just under half the population - are in need of food aid as a result of the crisis.