- Production figures skyrocketing.
- Former white commercial farmers join the party.
- Diasporans can’t resist the lure of land.
When President Emmerson Mnangagwa arrived at his family’s Pricabe Farm in Sherwood, Kwekwe, on 11 March 2023, he was walking with a spring in his step. The beatific smile on his face as he waved to the crowd spoke volumes about a President enjoying his tenure of office. As has become the norm on such joyous occasions, before taking his seat, President Mnangagwa treated the 15,000 guests who turned up for the field day celebrations to his signature Kutonga Kwaro dance during which he flips his hands like a bird about to fly. Clearly, the President was in an effervescent mood. After all, the miracle at Pricabe Farm is ample proof of a President who is walking the talk when it comes to transforming Zimbabwe’s agricultural landscape.
As soon as he was done with the dancing, President Mnangagwa was on the podium. He reminded his guests, “Our task, our challenge, is to make our land productive, and the government must assist our farmers at every level to be productive. We must modernise, we must mechanise for us to be self-sufficient. It is a priority of our government and for our people to be food secure. We are now in the second year of being food secure. We will never again, under the systems and model of agriculture we have introduced, be food insecure.”
To sum it up in one word, the President was “bullish.”
Our Editor-in-Chief Munyaradzi Huni, who has travelled extensively around the country’s A2 and A1 farms, takes an in-depth look at some of the interventions and policies being implemented by the Second Republic to boost production and productivity, and ultimately food security. The revolution in the country’s agricultural sector is nothing short of a miracle whose time has come. Everything is falling into place. Even the formerly antagonistic Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU), and Zimbabweans in the Diaspora (some of whom claim to be asylum seekers), are all coming to the party. The miracle unfolding before our eyes will soon shock the world. Read on…
There was a time when the country’s enemies were having a field day attacking the historic land reform programme, which switched into top gear in 2000. Led by the country’s former freedom fighters, thousands of restless Zimbabweans moved into farms occupied by about 4,000 white commercial farmers who, since 1980, had been playing hide-and-seek with the government, refusing to surrender land to the black majority.
Without taking a holistic look at the land reform exercise, the country’s enemies went into overdrive attacking it. I was the political editor of the country’s biggest weekly newspaper, The Sunday Mail, at the time and so I was in the thick of things. The US and European Union (EU), who claim to be the champions of media freedom, decided to punish me by adding my name, and five others, to their sanctions list. But, as far as I was concerned, being slapped with the sanctions was a badge of honour for defending my country. Without an apology then or now, I was practising what they call “patriotic journalism.” When you do anything driven by conviction, you tend to sleep well.
A stampede to attack the land reform programme
Back to the rabid critics who relentlessly attacked the land reform programme. There was a stampede to write negative stories about the programme because the negative Zimbabwean story was selling like hot cakes at the time. The media frenzy was not confined to practicing journalists alone, but ex-diplomats as well. I vividly remember reading an emotionally-charged article written by the former US Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, in December 2003 titled “How to kill a country: Turning a breadbasket into a basket case in ten easy steps – the Robert Mugabe way.” Power was clearly angry on behalf of white former commercial farmers, with the sole purpose of giving the impression that Zimbabwe was doomed.
The last time I checked, Power was serving as the administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and it is my wish that someone with access to her advises her to pay a visit now to Zimbabwe. She will be shocked to see that the doom and gloom she spoke about has now been replaced by a boom.
As Power was letting emotions cloud her thinking, many sober-minded people wondered why it never occurred to the supposedly educated diplomat and others of her ilk that after the redistribution of the land, the country’s agricultural sector would obviously take a knock but, with time, Zimbabwe would recover. Their obsession with negativity was nauseating.
After staggering during the first years, by 2010, Zimbabwe started showing visible signs of recovery. In an interview in 2010 with the BBC, which also used to viciously attack Zimbabwe’s land reform program, Ian Scoones, the lead author of a study titled “Zimbabwe’s Land Reform, Myths and Realities,” acknowledged that he was “genuinely surprised” that the “land reform exercise has not been the complete disaster widely portrayed.” This was quite humbling coming from Scoones, an academic plying his trade at the UK’s Institute of Development Studies.
“People are getting on with things in difficult circumstances and doing remarkably well… What we have observed on the ground does not represent the political and media stereotypes of abject failure; but nor indeed are we observing universal, roaring success,” Scoones told the BBC.
There was no reason to doubt Scoones because he had worked on land, agriculture, and rural development issues in Zimbabwe for over 30 years. Of course, in 2010, there was no “universal, roaring success” because Zimbabwe was still fine-tuning the land reform program. The study by Scoones should have given the country’s enemies the clearest hint that Zimbabwe was about to find its feet in its bid to turn the land reform exercise into a “roaring success.”
Even though the signs of recovery were obvious, the country’s enemies continued to spray black paint on the program. To his credit, the then President Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF stood firm in his defense of the exercise. History will record that President Mugabe, with the unwavering support of former freedom fighters, championed the redistribution of land to the black majority and went on to defend the exercise against incessant attacks from the country’s enemies. Gushungo (President Mugabe’s totem) played his part before going to sleep forever on 6 September 2019 at a hospital in Singapore.
All eyes on President Mnangagwa
When the Second Republic came into power in 2017, many people were curious to see how President Mnangagwa was going to handle the land issue. During his Acceptance Speech at the National Sports Stadium on 24 November 2017, President Mnangagwa assured the nation: “Whilst there is a lot we may need to do by way of outcomes, the principle of repossessing our land cannot be challenged or reversed. Dispossession of our ancestral land was the fundamental reason for waging the liberation struggle. “It would be a betrayal of the brave men and women who sacrificed their lives in our liberation struggle if we were to reverse the gains we have made in reclaiming our land…” In his speech, the President also touched on the thorny issue of compensation for white former commercial farmers. He said, “My government is committed to compensating those farmers from whom land was taken, in terms of the laws of the land. As we go into the future, complex issues of land tenure will have to be addressed both urgently and definitely, in order to ensure finality and closure to the ownership and management of this key resource which is central to national stability and to sustained economic recovery. We dare not prevaricate on this key issue.
Therefore, I exhort beneficiaries of the land reform programme to show their deservedness by demonstrating commitment to the utilization of the land now available to them for national food security and for the recovery of our economy…”
At the time, quite a number of people were wondering “what trick in the book” the President could play to ensure the country achieved national food security and how he was going to use the land reform exercise as the basis for economic recovery.
Having cleared the air, President Mnangagwa started laying his ducks in a row. His first masterstroke was the appointment of Air Marshal Perrance Shiri as the Minister of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Development in 2017. The appointment was hailed by many people, including some in the opposition, because Shiri was known as a pragmatic leader with vast knowledge in agriculture. However, just as Shiri was getting into the groove and as the Second Republic was oiling the machinery to transform the country’s agricultural sector, the former freedom fighter passed away on 29 July 2020.
The Shiri and Masuka masterstroke
Shiri’s death was a major setback for the Second Republic, and many wondered who was going to succeed this likable, humble but industrious minister. On 14 August 2020, President Mnangagwa demonstrated his determination to transform the agricultural sector by appointing Dr Anxious Masuka to succeed Shiri. Dr Masuka is a technocrat with a very strong industrial and agricultural background, having been a forestry and agricultural researcher for 13 years with over 100 science publications and more than 15 books and handbooks on forestry, agriculture, and policy and strategy under his belt.
Prior to his appointment, Dr Masuka served as the executive director of the Zimbabwe Agricultural Society (ZAS), where he is credited with championing the transformation of the society to make it more relevant to the current agricultural development imperative. Anyone who has worked with Dr Masuka will tell you that he is hyperactive, proactive, and robust in the way he goes about his duties. “A workaholic” is just one of the many adjectives used to describe Dr Masuka, who reports for work around 6.00 am. He expects the same from his subordinates. Thus, an “early bird” director who reports for work at 6.30 am had better have a very good explanation. And so, with such an eager beaver as the Minister of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water, and Rural Development, it was back to serious work again for the Second Republic.
Detailing the Second Republic’s plans, policies, and projects on the land
In a paper titled “Achievements in the agriculture sector under the Second Republic,” Dr Masuka says, “Since the advent of the Second Republic, some five years ago on 17 November 2017, the President, His Excellency, Dr E.D. Mnangagwa, has implemented a raft of policy, strategic, and legislative interventions to undergirdle the transformation of the agriculture sector through the Agriculture and Food Systems Strategy (AFSTS) (2020-2024)which he launched in Harare in August 2020. The AFSTS has found full expression in the National Development
Strategy 1 (NDS1).
“Since the launch of the AFSTS, heightened stakeholder engagements were made, while much-needed sector leadership was provided to accelerate agricultural transformation in both space and pace dimensions. Resultantly, much was achieved, including a record wheat harvest in the just-ended season; the introduction and subsequent consolidation of the climate-proofing agenda (Pfumvudza/Intwasa); the launch of the Rural Development 8.0 paradigm; the innovative land-based financial capitalization of the Agricultural Finance Corporation (AFC); transitioning from land distribution to focusing on production through submission of ‘Annual Production and Productivity Returns’ by farmers; and accelerated irrigation and mechanization development to undergird and sustain transformation that leaves ‘no household and no village behind,’ while rebuilding agriculture ‘household by household, plot by plot, farm by farm, enterprise by enterprise, and value chain by value chain.’
“This eco-chamber strategy resonates with the President’s mantra of ‘rebuilding Zimbabwe brick by brick, stone upon stone, leaving no one and no place behind, nokuti nyika inovakwa nevene vayo.’
“By most assessments, because of the President’s vision for agriculture, we have now exceeded the US$8.2 billion agricultural economy envisaged by 2025 under the AFSTS. In 2021, agriculture grew by a stellar 36%, when we produced a record maize crop of 2.9 million metric tonnes.”
The six outcomes that made the difference:
Dr. Masuka said AFSTS was deliberately calibrated to produce six outcomes: food security for the nation, elimination of food imports, increased and diversified exports, enhanced value addition and beneficiation, increased employment creation, and livelihoods improvement for the attainment of Vision 2030.
“The six outcomes all resonate with the President’s philosophy that agricultural development will cause rural industrialization. Rural industrialization will cause rural development. And, in turn, rural development will catalyze economic development for the attainment of Vision 2030.
“To accelerate development that leaves no household and no village behind, we have further categorized farmers as follows:
“The first category is the 3 million rural households, some 61% of the population (9.2 million people) who we seek to transform from subsistence farming to surplus-oriented farming. The second category being the 360,000 old resettlement and A1 farmers who we seek to transform from surplus-oriented farming to commercial farming. And the third category being the 23,000 A2 farmers who we seek to transform from commercial farming to perennially and serially successful businessmen and businesswomen.
“Furthermore, for ease of reference for the transformation of rural areas (communal, old resettlement, and A1 farmers), the ministry launched the Rural Development Paradigm dubbed ‘Rural Development 8.0,’ which comprises a series of outcome-based and impact-oriented Presidential interventions positively impacting the attainment of Vision 2030, along three channels:
“Channel one being crops (cereals and oilseed crops for food security, nutrition, and commerce; channel two being horticulture (nutrition and commerce), and channel three being livestock (nutrition, commerce, and restoration of status and dignity).
“Rural Development 8.0 comprises the following eight Presidential interventions:
“The Presidential Climate-Proofed Input Scheme, extended to three million households in rural areas, 500,000 households in peri-rural settlements, and includes Zunde Ramambo, where every village head, every headman, and every chief receives inputs (channel 1).
“The Presidential Climate-Proofed Cotton Scheme, extended to each of 540,000 households, some 2 million people (channel 1); the Presidential Blitz Tick Grease Scheme, extended to one million cattle-owning households, each receiving 1 kg tick grease (channel 3).
“The Presidential Rural Development Programme, which is the flagship of the Rural Development 8.0 (channel 2 and 3), was launched in Mangwe in December 2021. It targets to drill one borehole in each of the 35,000 rural villages in the country and establish a commercial one-hectare garden in each of the 35,000 villages. The program aims to give 10 fruit trees per household for the 3 million households and 50 sweet potato vines for each of the 3 million households. To date, we have received 15 drilling rigs and have drilled boreholes in over 634 villages. We will accelerate this drilling once all the 80 drilling rigs have been received in 2023.
The Presidential Community Fisheries Scheme (channel 3) aims to provide fish ponds in each of the 35,000 villages and 4,000 fish per village.
The Presidential Poultry Scheme (channel 3) aims to provide 30 million chickens, 10 per household for 3 million households.
The Presidential Goat Scheme (channel 3) aims to provide 3 million goats for 3 million households.
Vision 2030 Accelerator Model (channels 1, 2, and 3) is based on the replication of the highly successful Bubi-Lupane Model to cover over 450 irrigation schemes, impacting more than one million people.
The Brick by Brick magazine team has been on the ground for the past seven months and can testify that indeed, the Presidential support schemes outlined above are transforming rural areas. A shining example is the Sekusile-Makorokoro Nutrition Garden in Jinjika Village, Mangwe District, Matabeleland South. The project, which has seen its members building themselves modern houses and buying household property, falls under the Presidential Rural Development Scheme.
Fine-tuning the financing model,” adds Dr. Masuka: “For the transformation of A2 farmers, and A1 and communal farmers, the capitalization of the Agriculture Finance Corporation launched in 2021 was amplified by the President in 2022. This was after the transfer of agricultural state land to urban state land for that purpose. This innovation unlocked 10,000 hectares valued at approximately US$500 million, and AFC is poised to become one of the biggest development finance institutions in the country.
“Together with CBZ, under the auspices of the National Enhanced Agricultural Productivity Scheme, formerly Command Agriculture, an institutional financing mechanism for agriculture has now been firmly established by the President. With ongoing refinements, it is poised to propel the agriculture sector forward and well into the future.
“To consolidate the climate-proofing agenda initiated as Pfumvudza/Intwasa in the 2019/2020 season, in the 2022/2023 season, the government pronounced that ‘what is grown in an agro-ecological region is not determined by what the farmer wants, but is determined by the requirements of the agro-ecological region. Equally, what government supports in terms of inputs is determined by the requirements of the agro-ecological region and not what the farmer wants. This should assure households, especially in the vulnerable agro-ecological regions 3, 4, and 5, of food security while propelling national grain production to 500,000 metric tonnes annually.
“The government has launched the ‘concept of one Farmer Field School per village’ to catalyze agricultural transformation. To date, Farmer Field Schools have been established in some 27,716 villages out of the 35,000 villages. Veterinary Field Schools are now 7,975 and are being established across the country at every dip-tank.
“The President has directed the new policy that oilseed crops are cotton and sunflower, in addition to soybean. This should provide an additional US$200 million income to rural households, transforming communal farmers from economic spectators to economic participants because agriculture has become a business.
For the Climate-Proofed Programme, maize and traditional grains are strategic cereals, and the interventions in the sector are aimed at self-sufficiency. In 2021, there was a slight decrease in the area planted under maize from 1,951,848 hectares to 1,900,754 hectares due to the late onset of the rains in most parts of the country. A total of 2,274,927 metric tonnes of cereals were produced against a target of 2,200,000 metric tonnes. A total of 1,557,915 metric tonnes of maize was produced in the 2021/22 season, down from 2.9 million metric tonnes in the 2020/2021 season. A total of 194,100 metric tonnes of traditional grains were produced in the 2021/2022 season.
Because of the President’s interventions over the last two seasons, the country has become food secure. Currently, the cereal quantities in the Strategic Grain Reserve at the GMB are as follows: maize 361,470 metric tonnes; traditional grains 64,811 metric tonnes, cumulatively, 426,281 metric tonnes. This quantity is enough to see the country to the next season’s harvest, which begins in May 2023.
The government has plans to increase maize production to 3 million metric tonnes and traditional grains to 500,000 metric tonnes in the 2022/2023 season. The government has just announced attractive prices for these commodities, with the pre-planting producer price of US$335/metric tonne for both maize and traditional grains.
“As we now know, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia are the only two African countries that are self-sufficient in wheat. In Zimbabwe, the area planted under wheat increased from 66,434 hectares in 2021 to 80,883 hectares in 2022. Wheat production was 375,000 metric tonnes, a record for the country, compared to 337,212 metric tonnes produced in 2021.
Mechanisation the only way to go
The Minister went on to outline the Livestock Production Rebounding, explaining that the country now boasts 5,509,983 cattle, 4,259,176 goats, 710,226 sheep, and 314,335 pigs. He added that milk production was “17% up in 2022 compared to 2021, and we achieved more than 90 million litres in 2022 against the national demand of 120-130 million litres.”
In terms of mechanisation development, Dr Masuka says, “In order to raise efficiency of labour and enhance productivity, the government is implementing unprecedented mechanisation schemes. In 2022 alone, some 1,641 tractors were distributed to farmers, against a business-as-usual target of 800-900 tractors a year. AFC now offers tillage services to farmers after receiving the first batch of 200 tractors from the government in 2021. An additional 400 tractors will be allocated to the AFC ahead of the wheat season in 2023.
The government has formed the Mechanisation Development Alliance to galvanise public and private sector efforts to close the large-holder mechanisation gap of 20,000 tractors. The private sector had proposed schemes for 5,000 tractor units, and the government another 3,750 tractors under this phase of the Belarus Scheme. “For the communal and smallholder sector, the government launched the new paradigm that, for production to move to another level from a Theory of Constraints perspective, the ‘hoe and the ox-drawn plough’ are the biggest mechanical constraints militating against increased production and productivity. In this regard, the mechanisation gap was determined to be 25,000 two-wheel tractors, and the groundwork for closing this gap from 2023 has been laid.
In order to de-risk agriculture, the President announced an ambitious plan to irrigate 350,000 hectares by 2025, up from 171,000 hectares in 2020. The area under irrigation has increased to over 187,471 hectares as of November 2022.
The government has formed the Irrigation Development Alliance, comprising all stakeholders, to ensure that through public and private sector efforts, some 350,000 hectares will be under irrigation by 2025. The government has directed the commercialisation of all smallholder irrigation schemes. In 2022, a total of 304 irrigation schemes of the 405 schemes were commercialised against a target of 200 by the Agriculture and Rural Development Authority (ARDA).
In terms of dam construction, the President introduced a new concept that ‘the dam is not the project, but rather what the water is intended to do,’ widening the scope of the project definition to include the five elements (the dam, hydropower, fisheries, irrigation development, and potable water development for communities). All 12 current dam projects have now had their project scope expanded accordingly. This strategic policy shift will see all dams constructed being put to immediate use, unlike in the past where completed dams would be idle…
In an effort to improve the security of tenure, the President directed that securitised A2 Permits be issued instead of Offer Letters. Importantly, the President directed a policy shift that farmers no longer have to apply for 99-year leases; instead, the ‘Annual Production and Productivity Returns’ now form the basis for assessment and issuance of 99-year leases.
Although the maximum farm size is a good concept, the government has refined the system to ensure that location-specific assessments are made based on the new concept of the minimum economically viable unit, which is a better indicator of farm potential and a better determinant of a commercial approach to land redistribution for increased production and productivity.
In a major policy announcement, the President recently directed that a Special Purpose Vehicle be formed to accommodate all the 260,000 people on the land allocation waiting list, some 10,000 Diasporans, and more, through a land-owning and agricultural development vehicle, whose finer details are being finalised. People will not need to physically own a piece of land in order to participate in the business of agriculture.
Former white commercial farmers swallow their pride
Some critics will say, as usual, these high-sounding government plans and policies always die on paper, but then Dr Masuka is a man of action. Most of the time, he is on the ground meeting farmers, monitoring the projects, and supervising officials from his ministry. No wonder, as the Brick by Brick magazine team observed, he is very popular with farmers throughout the country.
With the transformation of the agricultural sector gathering momentum, the other pieces of the land reform puzzle are slowly falling into place. The compensation of former white commercial farmers may still be in the pending basket, but President Mnangagwa is giving it top priority in his bid to bring closure to the matter.
In July 2020, the government signed the Global Compensation Deed, under which it agreed to pay the white former commercial farmers US$3.5 billion for land improvements. The right to compensation is clearly spelled out in the Constitution, specifically Section 72 (3), which “provides for the payment of compensation for improvements only on compulsorily acquired agricultural land.”
There have been delays in raising the money, which must have given the country’s enemies ammunition to pile pressure on the government. But the chief executive of CFU, Sam Miller, told Brick by Brick in an interview published elsewhere in this edition that despite the delays, the farmers’ representative body no longer has the appetite to fight with the government.
When he was asked how close the government and the CFU were to finding each other to resolve the compensation issue, Miller said: “I think we are very close. We can meet with the ministers. We have good contacts with people all the way through. The director of lands, I can go and see him at 6.00 in the morning. What I am saying is that we can meet and talk. I think we have a good relationship.”
He added, “Now we can meet these guys officially and even unofficially. We have good meetings. There is a lot of positive discussion. Yes, there are a lot of other issues at play like now with elections coming, things have slowed down. People are working on the elections. From a CFU point of view, we are very, very encouraged and we are very happy to work with the Minister and the Ministry.”
When asked whether the other CFU members agreed with his position, Miller responded: “You got to understand, within the farmers, it’s like any community. You have the people who are at the forefront talking to the government, and then there are the guys in the back who don’t know what is happening. They think we are bad guys sitting up there. We understand that in both camps, there are still the radicals. It’s a fact.
“We have some members who have been saying let’s take the government to court because they are failing to pay us the US$3.5 billion. But that is gonna do what? If they want to go legal, that is fine, but our intention is that we are going to do this thing correctly. We are going to work with the government.”
The coming home of Zimbabweans in the Diaspora
It’s not only the CFU which has finally woken up to the reality that fighting the government is a lost cause. Zimbabweans in the Diaspora are slowly warming up to the government’s land reform programme, and thousands are flocking back to venture into farming.
Recently, the Brick by Brick magazine team met up with Walter and Joyce Chiyaka, a couple based in the UK, who were back in the motherland to monitor their farming project in Gokwe. Their inspirational story, which appears elsewhere in this edition, demonstrates beyond doubt that President Mnangagwa’s mantra that nyika inovakwa nevene vayo has finally caught up with Zimbabweans in the Diaspora.
“Of all the things that the President has said, the biggest of all is the mantra, nyika inovakwa vevene vayo. It is prophetic. No one is coming to bail us out. It’s either we swim or we sink… No one is going to do it for us. Forget the IMF. Forget the Bretton Woods institutions in their entirety. They are not for us. We are we. It takes us to get us from where we are to where we want to be,” said the couple. They left Zimbabwe in 2002.
Just to set the record straight. Walter and Joyce are doing very well in the UK, where they own a string of businesses, but they couldn’t resist coming back home to do what they enjoy most. In Gokwe, they do their farming on a 10-hectare piece of land (it’s not even a farm, but communal land) and they are doing extremely well. They are into sunflower, maize, groundnuts, and cowpeas production. They are also the proud owners of 132 cattle and 164 goats.
When asked whether there were any other Zimbabweans in the Diaspora who were keen on venturing into farming back home, Walter responded: “I know quite a number of people; we are on a WhatsApp group. We call ourselves ‘Zim Farmers in the UK.’ So we have formed some form of synergies with different people.”
Cheers to a miracle whose time has come!
In his 2017 inauguration speech, President Mnangagwa said, “In acknowledging the honor you have bestowed upon me, I recognize that the urgent tasks that beckon will not be accomplished through speeches, necessary as they may be. I have to hit the ground running.” Indeed, the President hit the ground running. In just five years, he has transformed the land reform program into a land reform miracle.
Next time you see the President walking with a spring in his step and dancing gleefully to Kutonga Kwaro, please bear with him. The Second Republic has gone through an eventful five years, and it’s his time to shine. And why not? All the land reform program pieces are now falling into place in terms of production and productivity, and millions of people, including the white former commercial farmers and Zimbabweans in the Diaspora, are coming to the party. There is deafening silence from the rabid critics because success speaks for itself. The land reform miracle is in full swing. Please do not disturb!
