Evicted Farmers Continue to Feed Zimbabwe

In a supreme irony, the bulk of the imported maize being supplied to starving Zimbabweans from Zambia is coming from the white commercial farmers who were evicted from their lands during Mugabe's chaotic land invasions. Some of the dispossessed farmers moved to Zambia where they developed new farms. It is now being found that most of the 300,000 tonnes of maize imported from Zambia to feed the millions of Zimbabweans facing starvation, comes from these farmers who had their land stolen by Mugabe's ZANU-PF government.

National Suicide

The Zimbabwe Minister of Agriculture, Joseph Made, reported that 45% of Zimbabwe maize crop planted last season was a complete write-off. Zimbabwe needed at least 2.2 million tonnes of maize to feed itself annually, but since the chaotic land reform programme begun in the year 2000, over 5,000 white commercial farmers had been evicted and their homes and farmland looted. Most of these farms have fallen into rack and ruin.

Reversal of Fortunes
The United Nations has declared that they need to supply US$200 million for aid efforts to provide food security for more than 1.4 million starving people. The irony is that while Zambia used to have to live on grain supplied from South Africa and Rhodesia, Zambia is now able to export grain, grown by ex-Zimbabwean farmers, to Zimbabwe!

Feeding Those Who Stole Their Farms
The Grain Marketing Board depot in Insiza noticed that bags of maize grain received from Zambia had been supplied by Michael Handris, a former Karoi commercial farmer. Numerous other villagers who received maize bags noticed that they bore the names of former white commercial farmers who had been evicted from their very area.

Admission of Failure
The fact that former Zimbabwean farmers were supplying maize needed to make up Zimbabwe's maize deficit has greatly angered senior ZANU officials, and the Minister of Agriculture, who have now ordered the Grain Marketing Board to destroy all the Zambian bags and repackage the grain in local bags.

"While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption." 2 Peter 2:19

Dr. Peter Hammond

Frontline Fellowship
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