Uncertainty as deadline looms for farm acquisitions

Zimbabwe's farm owners and farmworkers are in the grip of uncertainty as the government's deadline approaches for the country's mainly white commercial farmers to down tools and leave their land. From 25 June the first wave of farmers whose land has been earmarked for acquisition will, by law, have to stop farming. They will then have 45 days to wind up their affairs and leave the property. As the hours tick closer, farmers and farmworkers face an uncertain future in a country where up to six million people already face the spectre of not having enough food to last until the next harvest. Clemence Fungai, of Zimbabwe's General Agricultural and Plantation Workers Union, said: "We are in a quandary - we don't know what is going to happen, how we are going to be affected. We have to wait and see. If [farmowners] can't farm, farmworkers' employment will be terminated there and then." Fungai said that though the law was clear on when farmers had to stop working, and made provision for a fine or a jail term for those who flouted the law, it was not clear if farmworkers would be allowed to continue working without censure. He said that in addition to the uncertainty over work, farm schools would close. For many children, a farm school is their only source of education. If their parents are unemployed they won't have money to attend other schools. Fungai spoke to IRIN during a break at a meeting with the Agricultural Labour Bureau (ALB) where compensation for farmers and farmworkers was being discussed. ALB spokesman Ewen Rodger said not many farmers had received compensation from the government yet, and so were unable to pay their workers anything when they were forced to stop farming. "The compensation package [determined by government] is costly for farmers so most can't pay it from their own resources," he said. Estimates of the number of people who will be affected by the acquisiton notices vary. Rodger estimated that about 150,000 farmworkers, each with a family of five, could be affected by the first wave. As this was the traditional "off season", the figure was slightly lower than normal. Tim Neill, director of the Zimbabwe Community Development Trust (ZCDT), said a study was currently underway to determine how many farmers had been served the Section 8 notice and how many farmworkers would be affected. "We are running advertisements in newspapers asking for Section 8 farmers to contact us to find out what is happening. We don't yet know how many people will be affected but there is an upper limit of two million people. After June 25 we will know." Most farmers were still deciding whether to disobey the order to stop farming - and risk a fine and possible jail sentence - or to just leave, agriculture sources said. At a workshop in May, AFP reported Lands Minister Joseph Made as saying the government had so far taken 7.4 million hectares of land and divided it among 210,520 black families for small-scale farming. Another 54,000 people had applied for land under a scheme aimed at taking entire commercial farms and giving them to black owners, but only 13,000 had so far been allocated farms, Made was quoted as saying.