Zim's Loss is Zambia's Gain

Source from:  Reuters May 29 2006 at 09:19AM  05/30/2006

Graham Rae says he will never go back to Zimbabwe - even if it meant getting his land back. Rae, 48, who now lives in neighbouring Zambia, is one of several hundred white farmers who fled Zimbabwe because of President Robert Mugabe's campaign to redistribute white-owned farms to landless blacks. "I have no intentions of returning to Zimbabwe," said Rae when asked whether he would consider a reported offer by Mugabe's administration to allow white farmers to submit applications to run farms under new 99-year leases. Rae said militants from Mugabe's Zanu-PF party tried to kill him before he left in 2001. "They planned to cut off my head because they said I was a serpent," said the farmer, who owned a 1 100ha farm near Bindura in the north-east. Rae, his wife Bernadine and their three children fled under cover of night after a tip-off that he could be killed. Now they live on Penyaonse Farm, perched on a hilltop north-east of Zambia's capital, Lusaka. Land remains an emotive issue across southern Africa, where despite the end of colonialism and apartheid huge ownership imbalances remain with much land still in white hands. In Zimbabwe, once one of Africa's most promising economies, the government launched a programme of land seizures in 2000, stripping white farmers of their property in a move critics said was partly responsible for the near total collapse of the once thriving commercial agriculture sector. As Zimbabwe declines, its neighbour Zambia has begun to prosper, and authorities say the 300 Zimbabwean farmers who have arrived since 2000 have played a role. Rae takes pride in being part of efforts to expand Zambia's agriculture sector. "Since the arrival of the farmers from Zimbabwe, tobacco output has increased significantly and more jobs have been created," says Jewette Masinja, the head of the Tobacco Association of Zambia. Masinja said the farmers had also introduced new farming methods and improved soils to enhance yields. Farm experts say the new arrivals have helped boost Zambia's total white maize output to 1,2-million tons this year from 860 000 last year. Enditem