Cathy Buckle's Weekly Letter From Zimbabwe !

All for Sugar.

Saturday 17th August 2007

Dear Family and Friends,

A month ago I received an email from one of the last few commercial sugar farmers still hanging on in Chiredzi. She described how in April a convoy had arrived at the farm and announced that the government were taking over their property and that the family had until September to wind up their business, give up their livelihood, get out of their home and off the land. The government delegation then proceeded to enter the family home and list all the things which were not to be removed as these were also being acquired by the State. These included fans and kitchen units and from the house the delegation moved out to the farm yard. Here they took details of tractors, machinery and farm implements and said these too were now the property of the State. The delegation said compensation for the listed items would be made "One Day" in the future at a price to be decided by State valuators when finances were available. The farming family are now, as I write, closing down their affairs and preparing to leave their home and property which grows sugar cane, citrus fruit and produces milk. In her email describing these last weeks, the farmer wrote that her children are well but very upset with these events and that they have so many questions about it all but there are not many answers.

This farming family are leaving to make way, not for a landless Zimbabwean peasant, but for the daughter of a high up political figure in the district. This story of what is happening to one farm and one family in Chiredzi has been repeated hundreds of times over in the last eight years. The continuing seizure of farms in Zimbabwe by the State makes less sense now than ever before in our hungry land which has the lowest life expectancy and highest inflation in the world. The story of the seizure of this sugar farm is particularly poignant this week as tragic news has emerged of how three people died when a sugar queue in Bulawayo turned into a deadly stampede.

Just a fortnight ago I described being in a supermarket with my fifteen year old son and witnessing a stampede for cooking oil. The sight and sound of the rush, the pushing and shoving and the frantic snatching is still clear in my mind. These events are being repeated every day all over the country as there is virtually no food to buy in our shops as the government continues to insist on price controls. The deadly stampede happened in Bulawayo where many hundreds of people were queuing for sugar. A supermarket Security Guard opened the gates, people surged forward and then a wall collapsed. The Security Guard died instantly. Another man died later of head injuries and broken limbs. A 15 year old school boy was trampled in the stampede, his limbs were broken and he too died later in hospital.

As a farmer who suffered the indignity and outrage of the seizure of home, business and farm by the State in 2000 and who was also given the unfulfilled promise of compensation, I understand exactly the agonies of the sugar farming family in Chiredzi. As a mother of a 15 year school boy my heart goes out particularly to the family of the teenager trampled to death in a sugar queue in Bulawayo. Like my son, this teenager would have been just a year away from writing his 'O' Levels, about to embark on his life and perhaps go on to do great things for his country.

In a week so many lives and families have been broken - and all for sugar but all because of politics. Knowing this and then hearing of the standing ovation at the SADC summit in Lusaka makes the events on the ground at home all the more tragic. Do the SADC leaders know? Do they care?

Until next week, thanks for reading.

Love cathy.