News

August 19, 2008

Policy Inconsistencies And Political Shenanigans Scuttle Efforts To Revive Zimbabwe’s Devastated Agricultural Sector

By Tawanda Karombo

The writing on the wall was always clear. It was always going to be the killer punch when the Zimbabwe government threw caution to the wind and expropriated vast acres of land designated to commercial agriculture. In the process, several white commercial farmers were displaced as Mugabe’s war veterans ran riot and occupied farms, with the political blessing of government and a cowed Mugabe.

Since then, Zimbabwe’s agricultural sector has all but stagnated and just about gone to the dogs. “Agriculture has collapsed. This year’s harvest of the key crops has been catastrophic. The ‘mother of all agricultural seasons’ has miscarried,” the European Commission ambassador to Zimbabwe, Xavier Marchal said recently. For most southern African states, agriculture is a pillar of the economy, something that Marchal observed in a recent address to the annual congress of the Zimbabwe Commercial...