US embassy cable - 04HARARE1664

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 HARARE 001664 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR AF/S 
USDOC FOR AMANDA HILLIGAS 
TREASURY FOR OREN WYCHE-SHAW 
PASS USTR FLORIZELLE LISER 
STATE PASS USAID FOR MARJORIE COPSON 
 
SENSITIVE, NOFORN 
 
E. O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: EAGR, ECON, ETRD, EINV, PGOV, ZI, Land Reform 
SUBJECT: 600 White Farms Still Hanging On 
 
Sensitive but unclassified.  Not for dissemination to 
foreign nationals. 
 
1. (SBU/NF) Summary:  The GOZ has been issuing an 
increasing number of acquisition notices to the small 
number of remaining white farmers, but has not taken over 
many new farms, according to Doug Taylor-Freeme, 
president of the mostly-white Commercial Farmers Union 
(CFU).  He believes around 600 whites are still farming. 
Taylor-Freeme reiterated his willingness to engage in 
reconciliation talks with the mostly-black Indigenous 
Commercial Farmers Union (ICFU) but now wants the small- 
scale Zimbabwe Farmers Union (ZFU) included.   End 
summary. 
 
Lots of Acquisition Notices - Few Acquisitions 
--------------------------------------------- - 
2. (SBU/NF) Taylor-Freeme just concluded two-weeks travel 
to nearly every farming region of Zimbabwe.  He believes 
production of all commercial crops except cotton will 
drop from 2004 to 2005, but declined to offer concrete 
forecasts at this early stage.  The CFU president 
suggested that hard-line Agriculture Minister Joseph Made 
signed off on many recent acquisition notices while 
filling in for a vacationing Lands Minister John Nkomo. 
Taylor-Freeme believed the GOZ would find it hard to 
evict the final 600 white farmers, however, since most 
had already carved out deals with high-level ZANU-PF or 
local officials.  For the time-being, he felt prominent 
ZANU-PF politicians would find it easier to take farms 
from less powerful blacks than from surviving white 
farmers.  Still, Taylor-Freeme acknowledged that these 
whites would one day also lose their farms if the GOZ did 
not modify its policy. 
 
3. (SBU/NF) The CFU President continues to look for new 
ways to defend his membership's interests.  He estimates 
that a dozen sub-Saharan governments have now approached 
him to woo dispossessed white farmers, and that about 500 
have relocated elsewhere in Africa.  He said most 
remaining white farmers would now accept transferable 99- 
year leases, if offered by the GOZ.  Taylor-Freeme said 
he talks frequently with Reserve Bank Governor Gideon 
Gono, a long-standing CFU member.  Taylor-Freeme told us 
Gono even recently called President Mugabe on the 
speakerphone with Taylor-Freeme in the office, so that 
the three could brainstorm about reviving Zimbabwean 
agriculture.  (Comment: Although relations have soured 
over the past five years, the CFU used to enjoy better 
access to Mugabe than other private sector groups.)  On 
the other hand, the CFU president regretted that Lands 
Minister Nkomo will speak with him anytime over the phone 
but will no longer meet with him in person.  (Comment: 
GOZ hard-liners have accused vice-presidential candidate 
Nkomo of not being tough enough on white farmers.) 
 
4. (SBU/NF) Taylor-Freeme added that he has become 
skeptical of the opposition Movement for Democratic 
Change (MDC)'s prescriptions for agricultural recovery 
and is put off by the lack of businessmen in their ranks. 
All things being equal, he believes ZANU-PF's moderate 
Gono-Nkomo wing - if it ever took control of policy - 
could do a better job managing the economy than the MDC's 
present shadow cabinet. 
 
Merger Prospects for Farmers Unions 
----------------------------------- 
5. (SBU/NF) The CFU president said he remains prepared to 
sit together with the ICFU to discuss agricultural 
reconciliation.  However, Taylor-Freeme now insists that 
the small-scale ZFU, a third agrarian body that 
represents communal farmers, be included in talks.  He 
underscored for us how difficult it will be for CFU 
members who have lost farms to sit accross the table from 
those who now occupy them.  But he agreed that a "gradual 
merger of forces" toward a nonracial union of farmers is 
probably the most logical way forward. 
 
Comment 
------- 
6. (SBU/NF) Justifiably or not, Taylor-Freeme can take 
credit the GOZ has expropriated only about 50 white farms 
during the first of his two years in office.  By 
comparison, about 3,800 white farmers lost all or most of 
their land during the previous two CFU presidents' 
tenures.  Taylor-Freeme has taken a lower-key approach, 
urging his staff to be nonpolitical and treat ZANU-PF and 
MDC equally.  Only rarely is he now a target of scorn in 
the official media.  Still, the CFU president's options 
are limited, even if the acquisition pace remains just 
one every two weeks.  Taylor-Freeme's purported desire to 
now include the ZFU in merger talks may simply be a 
diversionary tactic, but it more likely reflects growing 
realignment.  With "land reform" now essentially 
completed, the interests of all Zimbabwe's farmers - 
black, white, commercial, small-holder - will be better 
served by moving the debate forward and focusing on how 
to restore productivity to a once thriving sector. 
Dell