News Analysis: While Mugabe turns white farmers into criminals, Zimbabwe slips closer to famine

As the midnight deadline for white farmers in Zimbabwe to surrender their land moved closer last night, the quandary facing Mike Clark, a cattle rancher, grew ever more acute.

Even though Zimbabwe, and indeed the rest of southern Africa, faces a potentially devastating hunger crisis, nearly 3,000 white commercial farmers have been told that they must stop farming and forfeit their lands, some with crops that they were readying themselves to harvest.

Mr Clark and 2,900 other white farmers are determined to defy President Robert Mugabe's latest decree and remain on their farms. Yet they know only too well the consequences of refusing to obey Zimbabwe's ruthless dictator.

Mr Clark has seen 11 of his colleagues murdered in cold blood by Mr Mugabe's supporters in state-sanctioned violence. He has also witnessed the killing of hundreds of black opposition supporters who have dared to stand up to Mr Mugabe's tyranny.

But Mr Clark said he has to reconcile his fears with reality. "I can't just be expected to wind up 50 years of hard work in a few days and surrender everything," he said.

"This new law has virtually criminalised the farming profession. It's now a crime to produce food for my country at a time when the masses are starving ... What a mess."

From today, white farmers risk two years in jail or a $Z20,000 (£240) fine, or both, if they dare attend to one of their sick animals. They will be jailed if they carry out even the most insignificant farming activity on their property.

The only option left for the them is to leave their land quietly and go to start a new life elsewhere. Under the terms of the legislation, Mr Clark has until 10 August to move off his land permanently.

On 10 May this year, Mr Mugabe's government amended the Land Acquisition Act to order farmers whose properties had been earmarked to stop farming and vacate their properties by midnight tonight.

The Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) estimates that 2,900 white farmers, representing about 90 per cent of the CFU's 3,200 members, were affected by the decree. But most have no option but to defy the ruling.

"A lot [of farmers] are just going to stay as they cannot stop farming in 45 days ... It's unrealistic," a spokeswoman for the CFU said. "Farmers have been pushed to the wall and we will have to stand our ground and see what happens."

Another farmer, who did not want to be named, said: "It's just the same as being stripped of your citizenship and being told to go and get a new country somewhere in the air to give you a new passport.

"It's ridiculous ... I have no option but to just hang around and see what happens next."

Farmers do not know what to do next if they agree to surrender their land to Mr Mugabe. Most of the affected farmers are citizens of Zimbabwe and have nowhere else to go. Many do not even have alternative places to keep their basic household goods after being forced off their land. They will have to go onto the streets.

Zimbabwe has largely dropped off the radar screen of international policymakers and the international media in the aftermath of the March presidential election, widely believed to have been stolen by President Mugabe.

Yet the political crisis is deepening and the economy continues to haemorrhage. Year-on-year inflation to May was pegged at 122 per cent, while the unemployment rate has risen to 70 per cent. And now the President seems determined to chase the last few remaining productive farmers from the country.

Mr Mugabe's decision to sponsor his supporters to begin a violent campaign to occupy and seize white farms from February 2000 has led to agriculture, the mainstay of Zimbabwe's economy, shrinking by about 60 per cent.

Zimbabwe used to export food throughout the southern African region. Now shortages of daily basics like sugar, cooking oil and the staple maize meal have become the order of the day. At least 80 per cent of Zimbabwe's 13 million people are now living below the poverty line.

The World Food Programme (WFP) raised the alarm earlier this month, warning that at least six million people, almost half of the population, will need emergency food aid in Zimbabwe. Yet international donors have not been forthcoming to the WFP's calls for help to avert mass famine.

The WFP estimates that Zimbabwe needs to import at least 1.5 million tonnes of maize to avert famine. But the organisation has managed to raise less than 30 per cent of the US$60m (£40m) it needs to avert disaster in Zimbabwe.

Mr Mugabe's failure to reform his policies and his determination to crank up the pressure on opponents have only served to frustrate efforts by donor agencies to get support for Zimbabwe from rich nations.

A few days ago Mr Mugabe arrested and charged 100 opposition supporters for holding "illegal rallies". A dozen journalists have been charged for publishing "false news".

"If anybody had thought that after winning the presidential election Mr Mugabe would come back to his senses ... then they were obviously mistaken," the University of Zimbabwe law professor Lovemore Madhuku said.

"What we have seen is the Zimbabwe crisis getting worse by the day as Mr Mugabe seeks to secure his controversial re-election and silence critics."

It is not only the white farmers who will lose from Mr Mugabe's drive to confiscate their properties.

Landowners have been left with no option but to lay off at least 232,000 farm workers due to the uncertainties created by Mr Mugabe's land seizures.

Nor have black farm workers benefited as they had hoped to from the government's resettlement programme.

Several civic society groups had urged the Mugabe government to give them preference under the scheme because of their agricultural experience, gained from working with white landowners.

And the government had promised that its land resettlement programme would alleviate the poverty of ordinary Zimbabweans by giving them plots of land on which to grow crops.

But despite that, the Farm Community Trust (FCT), a non-governmental organisation dealing with farm workers, estimates that only less than two per cent of the 220,000 black families allocated land so far are black farm labourers.

And the General Agriculture and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe (GAPWUZ) says that many farm workers are living in abject poverty.

The union is mobilising resources to provide food relief to such workers, most of whom had been left sidelined in the allocation of the land because of the disturbances on the commercial farms.

Indications are that farmland seized by Mr Mugabe from whites has instead been distributed among his relatives, friends, ministers, cronies and party supporters. The reports have done little to mollify the whites being dispossessed of their land.

But Mr Clark believes that the situation in Zimbabwe, once a breadbasket for Africa, might still be salvaged.

"We need to urgently sit down as Zimbabweans, black and white, and define what is good for our country," he said.

But unless Mr Mugabe alters the direction in which his government is going, many believe there is no chance of that happening.

A Nation in Crisis

¿ 6.1 million people need food aid. The famine is the result of the worst drought in 20 years and the disruption caused by land invasions.

¿ Maize planted by large-scale farmers has declined from 74,000 hectares in 2001 to an estimated 61,800ha – 62 per cent lower than 1999-2000.

¿ Cereal production at 670,000 tonnes has dropped 57 per cent compared to last year and 67 per cent compared to 1999-2000.

¿ Maize production at 480,000 tonnes is estimated to be 67 per cent less than last year and 77 per cent less than 1999-2000.

¿ Cereal import needs, including maize, is up to 1.8 billion tonnes.

¿ More than one in four children is believed to be malnourished.

¿ Some 75 per cent of the population has been classified as poor.

Source: World Food Programme 2002