The Economist Group today held a one-day conference on “The Future of Zimbabwe.” The high power meeting brought together business leaders, economists and political analysts to explore the question “When will Zimbabwe see a real recovery.”

One of the panel sessions was on Agriculture and food security, and the panelists included Sam Moyo of the African Institute for Agrarian Studies, and John Worsley-Worswick of Justice for Agriculture.

Ironically, the conference was held just two days after the farm house on Twyford Farm in Chegutu was burnt down. According to a report from the farm:

This farm is protected by a French BIPPA and a High Court order in my favour from 2007 and despite all that, I was ordered on the 18th March 2010 to pack all my belongings and fined $200 for illegally occupying the farm. Since then, my home has not been occupied by Jamaya Muduvuri who has an Offer Letter on Twyford. In February last year 30 thugs, led by Muduvuri, occupied the farm and Muduvuri proceeded to steal all my crops, farming equipment and vehicles. Yesterday he finished gutting the farm completely by burning the main homestead. It has taken one year for my profitable farm to become a totally abandoned land where no crop has been planted and the home has been destroyed. Furthermore, Muduvuri already has 4 farms to his name and mine was the 5th one.

What happened on my farm has NOTHING to do with any kind of land reform: the land has not been utilized, the equipment and crops have been stolen, all my animal stock has been slaughtered and finally my home has been burnt.

I look forward to hearing what the conference concluded. But surely we can’t have much hope in the future if we keep on reliving the past?

This entry was posted on September 16th, 2010 at 10:08 pm by Amanda Atwood and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.