Use it or lose it, Mugabe warns farmers

Use it or lose it, Mugabe warns farmers

• Renson Gasela: Zimbabwe must act now on food situation

• Matonga harvests, loots neighbour's farm

• AG gives ministers deadline on Kondozi loot

• Zimbabwe takes over black-owned farms

• Minister returns looted Kondozi pumps

• Man to hang for killing white farmer

• Mugabe wants white farmers back - Mutasa

• Farm workers claim harassment by soldiers

• Mutasa tells banks to shun white farmers

• 'Stay with us...and constitute a nation based on national unity'

By Staff Reporter

ZIMBABWE'S President Robert Mugabe warned on Monday that new black farmers either produced food on farms taken from whites or the land would be seized by the government.

Speaking at a Heroes' Day celebration, he also warned that "economic saboteurs" and illegal money-changers would be harshly punished.

"Those with land should use it to prove they were interested in farming in the first place," said Mugabe.

"Those who can't produce, be warned, we will take the land back.

"We now need to distinguish capable and committed farmers from holders of land who are mere chancers and who should be made to seek opportunities elsewhere," he said.

About 4 000 white farmers have lost their land, often violently, since Mugabe launched his widely criticised land reform programme in 2000 to redress the imbalances in land ownership from the colonial era.

Less than 600 farmers remain on their properties in Zimbabwe, once called a regional breadbasket, and the programme has been widely criticised as a failure.

Mugabe told thousands who gathered to celebrate Zimbabwe's fallen liberation struggle heroes: "If farming is not in your blood, switch to what you are good at.

"We want those with land to use it. We don't want to keep begging for food."

Critics blame the land-reform programme in part for the country's economic woes, saying the majority of its beneficiaries lack the skills and means to farm and rely instead on state handouts. - AFP
JOIN THE DEBATE ON THIS ARTICLE ON THE NEWZIMBABWE.COM FORUMS
newsdesk@newzimbabwe.com