US embassy cable - 04HARARE1860

UNCLAS HARARE 001860 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR AF/S 
USDOC FOR ROBERT TELCHIN 
TREASURY FOR OREN WYCHE-SHAW 
PASS USTR FLORIZELLE LISER 
STATE PASS USAID FOR MARJORIE COPSON 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
E. O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: ECON, EAGR, ETRD, EINV, PGOV, ZI, Land Reform 
SUBJECT: GOZ Seizes 4 White Farms this Week 
 
Sensitive but unclassified.  Not for Internet posting. 
 
1. (SBU) Summary: Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) 
officials tell us the GOZ recently accelerated its 
acquisition of mostly-white commercial farms under fast- 
track land reform, causing four CFU members to lose their 
farms per week at present.  However, the CFU officials 
note in that in the last three years farm expropriations 
always peaked around the October-November planting season 
and, accordingly, they expect the acquisition pace to 
slow in December. End summary. 
 
500-600 Whites Still Farming 
---------------------------- 
2. (SBU) CFU Vice President Christopher Hawgood and 
Director Hendrik Oliver called on the Ambassador on 
November 10.  They estimate that 500-600 whites are still 
farming in Zimbabwe, down from 4,500 in 2000.  Although 
the CFU continues to lobby the Reserve Bank and Lands 
Ministry for a moratorium on farm seizures, they 
acknowledge that many dejected white farmers are 
reluctant to invest in new output and may abandon their 
farms after harvesting the current crop.  Hawgood 
believes that the remaining white farmers have survived 
"by hook or by crook," steering clear of opposition 
politics and building ties to divergent elements within 
the ruling ZANU-PF.  He insists the GOZ took over Kondozi 
Farm due to support that part-owner Peter de Klerk 
provided to the opposition MDC.  (Note:  Kondozi was a 
large horticulture exporting farm in the Eastern 
Highlands and employed 6,000 workers.  In an ultimately 
unsuccessful bid to forestall expropriation, De Klerk 
sold 52 percent of the farm to black Zimbabwean 
businessman Edwin Moyo in 2003.  The farm is now 
dormant.) 
 
3. (SBU) The CFU Vice President noted that GOZ farm 
acquisitions have spiked in October-November over the 
past three years because prominent GOZ officials want to 
lay claim to farms after crops are already in the ground. 
"The pressure at this stage is boiling," he said. 
However, CFU officials expect the acquisition pace to 
slow again in December.  CFU officials have also started 
providing Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono with a weekly 
report on allegedly unlawful seizures, but they do not 
believe Gono has had much impact halting the takeovers. 
CFU officials expect a dominant ZANU-PF victory in next 
March's parliamentary elections.  They hope a less- 
threatened President Mugabe will dismiss Agriculture 
Minister Joseph Made, fast-track land reform's main 
architect, and impose a moratorium on future 
expropriations. 
 
Comment 
------- 
4. (SBU) Like many eternally-hopeful Zimbabweans, CFU 
leaders believe the ruling ZANU-PF will adopt a more 
moderate course after it further marginalizes the MDC and 
consolidates its grip on power next March.  The CFU, 
however, is unable to point to any evidence to support 
this optimistic prognosis.  Time will tell whether this 
is a sound policy or starry-eyed optimism.  Under the 
present leadership, CFU officials have began to restore a 
relationship with the GOZ, by strategically 
disassociating from MDC partisanship and seeking 
increased access to moderates like Gono and Lands 
Minister John Nkomo.  Yet these CFU officials still seem 
unwilling to address their broader image problem.  Many 
Zimbabweans in and out of the GOZ regard the CFU as a 
white fraternity that never shed its Rhodesian 
allegiance.  The CFU could win enormous goodwill - and 
possibly save some remaining white-owned farms - by using 
its formidable skills base to assist emerging black 
farmers (at least those who obtained farms before the 
GOZ's controversial fast-track land reform) and by 
reaching out to the mostly-black Indigenous Commercial 
Farmers Union (ICFU).  It is uncertain, however, whether 
the farmer body will move in this direction. 
 
Dell