In 2000, the late former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe turned the country’s agricultural sector upside down with his extremely contentious fast-track land reform program, parcelling land to farmers. Over seven million hectares (17.3 million acres) of land were redistributed to the country’s now poor resettled farmers like Dewa and Murewa.
For the late Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, parcelling out land to his black citizens was compensation for colonialism. About 4,500 white farmers were dispossessed, often violently, resulting in one million black Zimbabweans being resettled on the seized white-owned farms. Yet, that for many has not made their lives any better. Resettled farmers in Mwenezi were beneficiaries of agricultural inputs like fertilizer and maize seeds, for years, but they have had no success in farming on the seized pieces of land as they get next to zero yields each harvest season. Many of Zimbabwe’s resettled farmers like Murewa are having to contend with gruelling poverty.
Agricultural experts blame a lack of technical skills for resettled farmers’ failure on the land they seized from white farmers.
“The resettled farmers suffer because they allocated themselves large farms without technical know-how in terms of serious farming, and that’s why most of them are now very poor,” Denzel Makarudze, an agricultural extension officer in Masvingo, Zimbabwe’s oldest town, told IPS.
Climate change experts like Happison Chikova also blame growing climate change impacts for the continued failure of many of this country’s resettled farmers.
“Unpredictable weather patterns owing to climate change have worsened the poverty situation of the resettled farmers who have limited understanding of the changing climate,” Chikova told IPS.
Poverty Haunts Land Reform Resettled Farmers in Zimbabwe | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)
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