US embassy cable - 05HARARE935

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 HARARE 000935 
 
SIPDIS 
 
AF/S FOR BNEULING 
NSC FOR SENIOR AFRICA DIRECTOR C. COURVILLE 
USDOC FOR ROBERT TELCHIN 
TREASURY FOR OREN WYCHE-SHAW 
PASS USTR FOR FLORIZELLE LISER 
STATE PASS USAID FOR MARJORIE COPSON 
USDOL FOR ROBERT YOUNG 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/31/2009 
TAGS: EINV, ECON, PGOV, ZI, Restore Order/Murambatsvina 
SUBJECT: CFU ON RESTORE ORDER AND OTHER EVENTS 
 
 
Classified By: Charge d'affaires Eric T. Schultz a.i. for reason 1.4 d 
 
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Summary 
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1. (C) Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) President Douglas 
Taylor-Freeme told the CDA on July 6 that RBZ head Gideon 
Gono was interested in luring white farmers back to Zimbabwe 
and protecting those still here from further seizures. 
However, Gono,s influence had not been able to prevent the 
seizure of white commercial farms accelerating to five a week 
since the March elections and his plans for &command 
agriculture8 would fail to entice white farmers to return or 
to invest more.  Freeme said Gono sought to restore 
productivity to the commercial farms by using the former 
white owners as managers and the people displaced by 
Operation Restore Order as cheap labor.  The government would 
&own8 the farms.  Freeme cautioned that he had heard the 
GOZ was also planning to transport IDPs to remote areas 
outside the view of international media and relief agencies 
and leave them to their fate even as food stocks ran out 
sometime in July.  End Summary. 
 
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Current Status Of White Farmers 
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2. (C) Freeme told the CDA that the members of his 
organization fell into three categories: those who were still 
farming but not investing, those who would consider returning 
under the right circumstances, and those who sought only 
compensation for their lost farms.  Of the first group, he 
said there were approximately 850 white farmers remaining in 
Zimbabwe with 450 of them fully operational.  However, he 
reiterated that none, including himself, were putting money 
into the farms to upgrade irrigation systems and the like. 
The situation was far too unstable. 
 
3. (C) In fact, Freeme said, there not a single white-owned 
farm that the government had not already &acquired8 through 
the courts it was just a question of when the government 
moved to physically seize the farms.  Freeme said despite the 
moderate rhetoric from RBZ governor Gono, the government had 
actually accelerated its seizures of white-owned farms since 
the election with the pace now roughly five farms a week. 
Freeme speculate that the pace had quickened because the 
government needed to reward those who  had helped ZANU-PF 
&win8 the election and aside from land they had little to 
give at this point. 
 
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Relations with Gono; Future Prospects 
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4. (C) Freeme said Gono,s theory was that 20 percent of the 
farms provided 80 percent of the production.  Many of those 
farms were still in white hands; others had languished since 
ownership changed hands.  Gono wanted to protect these farms 
from government interference and to restore their 
productivity.  Gono had for instance, told Provincial 
Governors and other local officials to stop taking commercial 
farms because they provided the foreign exchange needed for 
hospital, school, and church supplies in local communities. 
However, his entreaties were falling on deaf ears, as 
evidenced by the continuing seizures of farms. 
 
5 (C) Freeme said that although no formal offer had yet been 
made, Gono also clearly wanted some of the dispossessed white 
farmers to return to farming in Zimbabwe as he had intimated 
in his May 19 address to the nation.  Freeme said Gono 
understood that Zimbabwe was in competition with neighboring 
countries for these farmers, who had the experience and 
skills needed to restore productivity to the agricultural 
sector.  Gono was particularly interested in luring back 
horticulturalists and diary farmers, ideally to manage the 
farms now owned by ZANU-PF insiders.  This was a non-starter. 
 The whites would not return to manage farms they had once 
owned. 
 
6. (C) Freeme said white farmers would also be reluctant to 
return as owners of the farms without better assurances from 
the government.  The biggest obstacle remained the 
government,s attitude toward private property.  As part of 
its plans for &command agriculture8 the GOZ was moving to 
nationalize all farmland and then grant farmers 99-year 
leases.  Gono had shown him a draft of the proposed lease. 
It was inheritable but not transferable.  In addition, the 
GOZ planned to establish a commission to oversee agriculture, 
which could take the lease away at any time for failure to 
farm productively.  Freeme said a lease of this type could 
not be mortgaged to raise needed investment capital and if 
the government followed through with this plan agriculture 
would collapse. 
 
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Operation Restore Order and Food Security 
----------------------------------------- 
 
7. (C) Freeme said there was little doubt in his mind that 
part of the government,s motivation for Operation Restore 
Order had been to create a pool of cheap agricultural labor 
to work on the commercial farms.  Part of that pool of 
laborers would be comprised of the war veterans and other A1 
farmers that the GOZ had encouraged to settle on white farms 
and now intended to evict from those farms.  Ironically, even 
as it was doing this, the government was encouraging settlers 
to move on to the remaining white farms as part of its 
efforts to seize them. 
 
8. (C) Freeme said he thought the operation was also intended 
to intimidate the population and prevent any expressions of 
discontent.  The operation was really no different than what 
had happened to white farmers a few years earlier.  The 
government had set out to destroy a potential source of 
opposition without regard to the economic or humanitarian 
consequences.  In that regard, he said he had heard that the 
GOZ intended to transport IDPs that were not needed for labor 
to remote areas away from the view of the international 
community and leave them to their fate, which could be a grim 
one given that Zimbabwe,s food supply would run out by the 
end of July, no new grain contracts had been signed, and the 
last 100,000 metric tons from old contracts would have been 
delivered by mid-July. 
 
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Comment 
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9. (C) Freeme's account confirms that Gono's interest in the 
return of some white farmers, while genuine, will likely 
prove illusory.  Moreover, we would agree with Freeme that 
Gono,s plans for restoring productivity to the agricultural 
sector are also unlikely to succeed.  The GOZ's vision of 
&command agriculture8 and ruling party control are 
incompatible with the market solutions the sector needs. 
Without leases or titles that can be used as security for 
loans, the sector will remain starved of capital.  The GOZ's 
savage campaign to direct the country's displaced masses to 
provide labor to the commercial farms is also doomed to 
failure in the long run; most of these people are likely to 
return to the cities as soon as they get the chance rather 
than accept the equivalent of serfdom. 
SCHULTZ