THE 120 white farmers, remnants of Zimbabwe’s once-powerful Commercial Farmers’ Union, gathered yesterday to take stock of a fourth year of President Mugabe’s “revolutionary land reform”.

In previous years the union’s annual congress was held in a five-star hotel in central Harare. Yesterday it met in a farmers’ hall on the eastern outskirts of the capital.

The lavish buffet lunch was cut to buns and slices of roast beef donated by an agricultural company. The speakers included a “motivational speaker” to lift spirits.

Of Zimbabwe’s 72 farmers’ associations, only about 50 were represented, most now comprising just three or four members.

A year ago, Joseph Msika, the Vice-President, attended the CFU congress and promised that “no one will be left without a farm”. Within days, Mr Mugabe’s supporters began a final push to force white farmers and a million of their workers off the land. The CFU had 4,500 members in 2000. Today there are barely 600 full-time farmers left.

A few hundred others manage their farms while living in nearby towns for safety, or they have had their holdings drastically reduced. Production has fallen by more than half in the past year alone.

“As if destroyed by a major natural disaster, commercial agriculture in Zimbabwe lies in ruins, broken in three short years and with nothing to replace it,” Colin Cloete, the CFU president, said.

Agriculture used to be the mainstay of the Zimbabwean economy. It supplied food for famine relief operations in other parts of Africa. Now international donors were having to feed five million starving Zimbabweans.

Mr Cloete said: “This is inexcusable when you consider we had all the skills, the equipment, the infrastructure, dams, chemicals, seed and abundant labour, crying out for work.”

Output of maize has fallen to 180,000 tonnes from 810,000 tonnes in 2000. Tobacco production has fallen to 85,000 tonnes from 236,000 tonnes in 2000. Wheat, dairy, beef and cotton production has fallen by about two thirds.

Douglas Taylor-Freeme, the CFU vice-president, said that “disruption of commercial farming operations continues unabated and farm invasions, farmer evictions, human rights abuses and theft of property still occur”.

“Zimbabwe continues on its downward path to economic ruin with no relief in sight.”

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