vigilant TV

Via Tim Blair, Zimbabwe’s government appears to be expanding its program of seizing farmland and halting the production of food. Emphasis mine:

ABOUT 45 new commercial farms have been given notice to cease operating in the past 10 days despite assurances by the government that the designation stage of its fast-track land reform programme was complete, the Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU) said this week.

CFU president Colin Cloete said of the 45 farms served with eviction notices under Section 8 of the Land Acquisition Act, only up to four were properties that had previously been listed for compulsory acquisition and the rest were new additions.

Farmers’ group Justice for Agriculture rubbishes President Mugabe’s claim that the current food shortage is due to drought: no crops were planted in the first place, so the drought hasn’t killed anything.

[David Connell of Justice for Agriculture] said many people allocated farms under the A2 or commercial farming phase of the land reform programme had not taken up the land.

“The A1 model is doing better,” he said. ‘For A2, I think 95 percent of those allocated land are absentee. In a way, you can’t blame them. The areas are remote and, discounting the fuel problems, they have no cars.

“Don’t even talk about the drought because under A2, there was no crop at all so drought doesn’t come in.”

– Financial Gazette Online, Govt eyes 45 new farms in fresh wave of designations.