Harare — Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has built a secret, personal farming empire from at least five farms where the white owners were forced out during the evictions of 4000 commercial farmers.
This is the first indication of how Mugabe benefited personally from the land seizures he ordered in 2000 that destroyed Zimbabwe's commercial agriculture, the bedrock of the economy.
The country, now living with a power-sharing government between Mugabe and his arch-rival Morgan Tsvangirai, desperately needs to rebuild its shattered economy.
But Mugabe's private farming empire is an obstacle to the unity government and resurrection of agriculture, according to experts, because an audit of land ownership as part of structural reforms would expose the president's controversial control of about 3 000ha.
Many believe Mugabe's seizure of these farms is the primary reason he is stalling on the land audit the EU says it will fund.
Mugabe's private empire is in what used to be a district of intensive farming, Darwendale, about 48km north of Harare.
It began in 2000 with the normal commercial purchase of Highfield farm, a 495ha property near the communal area, Zvimba where Mugabe was born. About the same time, land seizures began all over Zimbabwe, when veterans of the liberation struggle began invading white-owned properties and forcing their owners to leave, often violently. A parallel official process was then launched by the government to take ownership of white-owned land.
* Cape Argus
