Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, and his allies have seized nearly half the country’s commercial farms in a land grab widely blamed for economic collapse, an investigation claims today.

Mugabe has bought the loyalty of Cabinet ministers, senior army and government officials and judges with nearly five million hectares of agricultural land, including wildlife conservancies and plantations, according to the national news agency ZimOnline.

The 86-year-old president and his wife, Grace, are said to own 14 farms spanning at least 16 000 hectares.

ZimOnline’s investigation undermined the central claim behind Mugabe’s land reforms: that they are give the majority of black Zimbabweans their rightful inheritance. “Even though Mugabe has consistently maintained that his land reform programme is meant to benefit the poor black masses, it is him and his cronies who have got the most out of it,” it argued.

A “new, well-connected black elite” of about 2 200 people controls nearly 40% of the 14-million hectares seized from white farmers, ZimOnline found. These range in size from 250 to 4 000 hectares in “the most fertile farming regions in the country”.

The past decade of land invasions — which reduced 4 000 white farmers to 400 by murders, beatings and forced evictions — is held responsible by many for the demise of the “breadbasket of Africa”.

ZimOnline said government documents and audit reports showed the biggest beneficiaries of land reform were “Zanu-PF members and supporters, security service chiefs and officers and traditional chiefs who have openly sided with Mugabe and senior government officials and judges.”

It said all ministers and deputy ministers in Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party were multiple farm owners. These include his deputy, Joice Mujuru, and her husband, the former army general Solomon Mujuru, and their relatives, who own at least 25 farms totalling 105 000 hectares.

All Zanu-PF’s 56 politburo members, 98 members of parliament and 35 elected and unelected senators were allegedly allocated farms, and all 10 provincial governors have seized them, with four being multiple owners. Sixteen supreme court and high court judges also own farms.

The report said: “Of the nearly 200 officers from the rank of major to the lieutenant general in the Zimbabwe national army, 90% have farms in the most fertile parts of the country. This is replicated in the Zimbabwe republic police, Zimbabwe prisons service, air force of Zimbabwe and CIO [Central Intelligence Organisation].

‘Lusted for white blood’

“Constantine Chiwenga, the Zimbabwe defence forces commander, who is among a cabal of defence chiefs who have publicly declared that they will only serve Mugabe, has two farms near Harare, including the 1 200-hectare Chakoma Estates, which his wife seized at gunpoint, telling a terrified white farmer that she lusted for white blood and sought the slightest excuse to kill him.”

Mugabe has billed the land reforms as a black empowerment corrective to the injustices of colonialism, which left Zimbabwe’s land in the hands of a tiny white minority. A recent study challenged the prevailing view that the programme had been “all bad” for ordinary citizens.

But ZimOnline said that while at least 150 000 people may have had access to farms, the majority owned between 10 and 50 hectares and were Zanu-PF members.

“Critics who have consistently dismissed Zimbabwe’s emotional land reforms as a political patronage programme by the octogenarian Mugabe to reward supporters who have kept him in power are right after all,” it said.

ZimOnline noted that Zimbabwe’s agricultural production had fallen by 60% since 2000 when the land invasions began. Exports from the sector fell from $1,4-billion in 2000 to nearly $700-million last year, after dipping below $500-million in 2007. ZimOnline said many farms were “lying fallow either because the new owners are not that keen on farming or they simply abandoned the properties for new farms”.

Zanu-PF rejected the charge. Herbert Murerwa, the lands and rural resettlement minister, was quoted as saying: “The fact that a handful of people may have more than one farm does not detract from the overwhelming success of the land reform where the government has created 300 000 farmers over the last 10 years.”

The Commercial Farmers’ Union of Zimbabwe said today it was not surprised by the findings. Dean Theron, its president, said: “We are the ones it’s been happening to. We know the colonial history and are not opposed to land reform, but we feel very sad at the way it has taken place. The beneficiaries are not the intended ones. The farms have been dished out to people with connections.”

Eddie Cross, policy coordinator general for the Movement for Democratic Change and an agricultural economist, said: “It explains why Mugabe is so keen to avoid a land audit, and it certainly confirms everybody’s feeling that there’s a relatively small number of people in the land invasions and they’re Zanu-PF acolytes. The only surprise is that it has taken so long to come out.”

guardian.co.uk