White farmers in court: They grew food

from the UKTelegraph

Ten white farmers appeared in court in Zimbabwe yesterday accused of growing crops on their land — in a country where millions of people will need food aid within the next few months.

The case in Chegutu district, 70 miles southwest of Harare, exposes the perversity of President Robert Mugabe's policies. Commerical agriculture was the mainstay of the economy in the days when Zimbabwe was a food exporter...

The farmers, aged from 38 to 75, produce a variety of food from chickens to oranges and have already given two-thirds of their farms to the government for resettlement. All but one still work their remaining land intensively and say they intend to try to continue....

"The position is that food shortages or no food shortages, we are going ahead to remove the remaining whites," he said recently. "Too many blacks are still clamouring for land and we will resettle them on the remaining farms."

In fact many farms were given to members of the government and their cronies, and one minister has admitted that the new farmers have failed in their cultivation efforts.

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