"A constitutional amendment in April allowed the government to seize white-owned land without paying compensation. This has led to fears about the future of Zimbabwe's largely white-owned commercial farms, which comprise about 40 percent of the country's export revenue and employ one-quarter of Zimbabwe's workers. Seventy percent of that land has already been taken, often by force, from white occupants. "Unlike the white farmers, who could use their land as collateral for bank loans to buy the tractors and pesticides needed to properly utilize the land, the newly-settled black occupants do not OWN their farms. The state does -- the government holds the deeds and simply gives them farming RIGHTS." A Farmer's Struggle in Zimbabwe By RAVI NESSMAN .c The Associated Press CHIOTA, Zimbabwe (AP) - Langton H. Chikosha looks over his tiny patch of farmland and laments the slow death of his modest dreams. As one of Zimbabwe's landless blacks, he was given 12 acres of formerly white-owned farmland eight years ago from which he planned to cultivate a steady income to support his two wives and their 15 children. But with so little land and no access to the loans needed to buy the proper tools, pesticides and fertilizers, Chikosha, 53, has never been able to eke a profit from his farm. He has mostly reverted to subsistence farming. ``I am a farmer since forever,'' Chikosha said. But after years of hard work, ``you're left with nothing at all.'' Throughout Zimbabwe, thousands of squatters supported by President Robert Mugabe have occupied hundreds of white-owned farms, demanding the land be parceled out to the country's impoverished blacks. But for the 90,000 blacks who have already been given land, resettlement has rarely led to prosperity. Nearly two-thirds of the almost 7.5 million acres bought from white farmers and distributed to landless blacks have reverted to mainly subsistence plots. The government says it does not have the money to install the roads, water pipes and other necessary infrastructure to make those plots profitable. Chikosha and 39 other farmers live in Chiota, 40 miles southeast of Harare, on what was once a single white-owned farm that raised tobacco and cattle. Unlike the white farmers, who can use their land as collateral for bank loans to buy the tractors and pesticides needed to properly utilize the land, Chikosha and the other resettled black farmers do not own their farms. The state holds the deeds and simply gives them farming rights. Small government loans allow Chikosha to buy nothing more than a little fertilizer. Most of Chikosha's land sprouts maize, groundnuts and other subsistence crops. But he has reserved a tiny corner of his farm to nurse his dreams of prosperity - tobacco. Experts have told him that his tobacco plot has the potential to reap more than 6,500 pounds of the crop. Chikosha has never come near that output. Last year he harvested almost 2,000 pounds and earned $800, which just covered his costs. Other farmers don't even break even. Five of the farms in Chikosha's resettlement area were abandoned to weeds and logs after their farmers found it impossible to make a living. Still, the farmers in Chiota are better off than the millions of Zimbabweans who have no land. At independence in 1980, the government had planned to distribute farmland to 170,000 landless blacks by 1990. Twenty years later, the government has managed to resettle just 90,000 families. Few argue against the need for continued land reform in a country where 4,000 white farmers own one-third of the productive farmland, but opposition politicians say the government's efforts have been plagued by mismanagement and corruption. ``They have demonstrated over the last 20 years that they are unable to implement fundamental land reform themselves,'' said Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change. In the past 20 years, the government has purchased about 8.65 million acres of farmland from white farmers. But 740,000 acres of that land has yet to be distributed and another 1.2 million acres has gone not to landless blacks but to government officials and cronies. ``The people who really need the land have been marginalized in their own exercise,'' Tsvangirai said. The government has had the opportunity to acquire much more of the land under a law mandating that white farmers seeking to sell their land must offer it to the government. Since independence, about 70 percent of white farms have changed hands under this law, white farmers said. A constitutional amendment rejected by voters in February but passed by Parliament in April allows the government to seize the white-owned land without paying compensation. This has led to fears about the future of Zimbabwe's largely white-owned commercial farms, which comprise about 40 percent of the country's export revenue and employ one-quarter of Zimbabwe's workers. But others here have their own concerns. As he surveys his tiny plot, Chikosha laments that it may not be enough to support his family. ``I want more,'' he says.
