Chinamasa Wife Wins Tobacco Award on Stolen Farm

Source from:  By Tererai Karimakwenda 01 August 2005  08/02/2005

Monica Chinamasa, wife of the Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, was awarded the 2004/2005 BAT Tobacco Grower of the Year Award at a ceremony in Harare Friday night. But many in the farming community who know her background say she is not a skilled farmer and she stole the farm for which the won the award.Mrs Chinamasa received a miniature trophy, Z$25 million in prize money and a certificate. According to the government newspaper the Herald, she averaged 3 500kg of tobacco per hectare during the last agricultural season from her 90 hectares of tobacco. But what The Herald is calling "her" hectares is land that actually belongs to Richard Yates, a white farmer who was forced to leave when the Chinamasas took the farm illegally. They re-named it Tsukumai Farm.Mrs Chinamasa is known to have destroyed another farm in Marondera before evicting Yates from the Headlands area. John Worsley Worswick of Justice for Agriculture said back in 2002-2003, she took over a farm from Peter Baker and destroyed his wheat crop. The farm had a dam from which she diverted water for her wheat crop, but she under-estimated how much water the wheat would need, and the whole crop died. Anger from people on the ground whom she had affected by this forced her to flee the area. And she wound up taking the farm in Headlands.Worsley Worswick said companies like British American Tobacco (BAT), sponsors of the Tobacco Grower of the Year award, should not award officials for stealing and should take into effect that the farm on which Mrs Chinamasa grew her tobacco was stolen. Enditem