The Sunday News
Jonathan Maphenduka
IN 1994 I became one of the first emergent black farmers to benefit from Government’s empowerment programme in the agricultural sector in Matabeleland. The farms had been surrendered to Government following political disturbances that took place soon after independence.
The idea by white farmers was that the farms would be returned to them after the security problem had been pacified to enable them to continue farming on them.
Instead of returning the farms to the former owners, Government paid for them and the farms became available to be allocated to black emergent farmers. There were 57 of them in Mangwe and another six in Kezi. Government transferred their management to the Agricultural and Rural Development Authority (Arda) to which Government arm all applications were to be submitted.
I was still four years away from retirement but I moved quickly to occupy my new farm and employed labour to look after my cattle until 1998 when I relinquished my employment with The Chronicle. I had been allocated three farms with a total of 6 000 hectares on a five-year caretaker basis, at the end of which time I had a 2 610ha unit to myself.
My neighbours to the south were Justice Luke Malaba and Justice Misheck Cheda. The neighbours, however, came four years later when I had successfully established myself by the end of 1998 when my five-year lease was due to expire. I was then allocated a unit and granted a 99-year-lease with an option to buy.
Between the end of the dissident problem which followed the surrender of the farms to Government and the beginning of allocation of the farms in 1994, Arda had built up large heads of cattle on the surrendered farms. I had written to Minister of Lands and Agriculture, Kumbirai Kangai asking Government to authorise the sale of breeding cattle to the new farmers. Arda was in those days headed by Liberty Mhlanga with Joseph Made as his deputy. The minister responded by instructing Arda to sell cattle to the new farmers and the local manager, one Theo Ndlovu was instructed to organise sales in both Mangwe and Kezi.
This facility might have failed if it was not for the Cold Storage Commission’s (CSC) cattle finance scheme which was available to commercial farmers. I used this facility to buy 111 bullying heifers and eight bulls and other producers. I was granted a five-year agreement with the Cold Storage Commission to repay the loan.
I had 60 head of my own cattle to add to the stock purchased with the CSC loan. This meant that I had around 170 head of cattle (mostly breeding stock) when I started farming in Mangwe and worked under the watchful eye of both the Ministry of Lands and Agriculture and the CSC.
In the 1960s when I worked in the Sabi Valley I had learnt the science of breeding pedigree stock and during the liberation struggle (when I lived in Fort Victoria) I had bought cattle from a farmer who had decided to emigrate to escape independence, and kept them on a retired farmer’s property in what is today Masvingo Teachers’ College.
Moreover, as a herdboy, I had learnt enough how to keep cattle healthy by dipping them regularly. We had in the country a Minister of Lands and Agriculture, Kumbirai Kangai who was a great supporter of the Mangwe project and officials of his ministry paid regular visits to my farm and reported back to the ministry. It was as if I was being used as an experiment to establish if Africans could make it as commercial farmers. Once when Minister Kangai and I met at a gathering of villagers in the Matopos, where a dam was being handed over to villagers by an NGO, Give-A-Dam, the minister made me stand up and announced: “You see this man here, if you want to know what is happening in Matabeleland, ask him”, he said.
We shall see later that when trouble started brewing on the Mangwe farm, Minister Kangai was the first to warn me. One of my most successful years was 1996 when the farm’s calving rate rose to an astounding 160 calves. I was in good books with the CSC. That calving rate enabled me to repay the loan in a record three years with two years to spare.
I retired from Journalism in 1998 to become a full-time farmer and it was a wonderful experience to watch my herd grow and by 2003 (when trouble came) I was running 700 head of my own cattle, but I was to lose 400 head of them and eventually lose the farm and my 99-year lease on it which I had to return to the ministry.
It all started when the country ran out of foreign currency to procure fuel and the then President Robert Mugabe announced that the function was to be left to private importers and the entry into this industry of new players. While arrangements were being made to facilitate the takeover of privately owned filling stations and raise the necessary foreign currency, the country ran out of fuel. Motorists had to wait for up to three weeks to get enough fuel to do business. I was in the queue while my farm (very much against Government policy) was being vandalised and destroyed and my cattle stolen, snared and those that escaped the plunder, just went wild.
Fences were stripped from four of the eight paddocks (including those with the only two dams) on the farm and the cattle suffered untold trauma and, to escape being snared, many of them left the farm, never to be seen again. After driving my farm workers away, the vandals had moved to the homestead and took everything they could lay their hands on, including digging up door frames and taking them away. The most valuable items that disappeared were boxes of my tools for which there is no value.
During the 1996 Zanu-PF National People’s Conference at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF), Minister Kangai accosted me and announced that Governor Stephen Nkomo had approached him and demanded to know how I had been allocated the farm.
“I told him that you had applied for the farm and we had given it to you and that we are happy you are doing very well”, said the minister. He urged me not to worry and added: “As long as I’m minister responsible for the farms, I will not allow anyone to disrupt your operations.”
But then a fatal thing happened and the minister lost his job. After that I believe the then Governor stepped up his campaign against me and there was total breakdown of law and order, during which rampage members of the law-enforcement agencies were involved with the villagers. Who was to ensure Government policy that no farm occupied by an African was to be invaded and subjected to what happened to my farm?
Chief Justice Luke Malaba survived by mounting armed guards to protect his property, but Justice Misheck Cheda lost his farm and, like me, had to relocate elsewhere. I’m now farming on less than 500 hectares away from Mangwe, after Ministry of Lands officials in Plumtree (in sympathy) recommended a smaller unit where I’m working to combine a small herd with developing an irrigation project. My crime, according reports, was that I was believed to be a member of Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party.
