By ALEX DUVAL SMITH
BEATRICE - There is no land crisis in Zimbabwe, just "too much politics," says Crispen Vambe as he paces the soil from which he produces tobacco leaves of such a high grade that buyers from across the world rush to see his samples at the country's annual auctions.
Vambe is a black commercial farmer. This year, he will sell 600,000kg of tobacco, raising up to sterling 800,000 ($2.4 million) in valuable foreign currency for his country.
His average yield exceeds that of automated white-owned commercial farms in the area.
Yet Vambe farms on disparate parcels of land, using one tractor, 78 staff and curing barns and a steam room with no electricity. Five months of the year he sleeps in his tiny office so he can check curing temperatures every six hours.
"It is a lot of hard work," he said in an office lit only by bright sunlight flooding through a small window, "but I have been helped by many - by whites, by my wife and the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association which guaranteed my bank loan for three seasons. The ZTA has also just helped me buy a new tractor, duty-free, through a Japanese Government aid scheme."
Vambe, aged 34, has no time for the land-grabbers.
"Those people want something for nothing." He believes there is no shortage of farmland in Zimbabwe, just a lack of political will. "We have so much land that we are spoiled for choice.
"The farmer next door, who is professionally trained and happens to be white, has 400ha. Let's say the invaders take half of it and leave the rest to that good farmer.
"After three to five years, they will want to take the other half which will still be highly productive because that farmer is trained and can work the land. They are not and do not have the resources or business skills to succeed.
"Farmland should be for farmers not just anyone who wants a house. Someone who wants a house should be given housing land.
"Give me a piece of land anywhere in this country and I can produce a top yield. It is not magic, it is skill and experience. Communal farmers from a 30km radius come to me and ask me to harvest their land. I do that. I also hold field days and tell them to send their soil to the lab for tests. It is all about doing things properly."
Vambe, something of a local hero, has not seen his land invaded.
"I have relatives who are war vets and they have seen me create this farm from bush in three years."
Vambe believes it is only through more schemes such as that offered by the tobacco body - and aimed directly at qualified young farmers - that the racial imbalance in Zimbabwean commercial farming can be redressed. Only around 5 per cent of commercial farmers are black. He also believes that it is not until small-scale farmers qualify for title deeds - something which runs contrary to President Robert Mugabe's Marxist fibre - that the pauperising nature of subsistence farming can end.
But the ZTA scheme is small - it extends only to 10 farmers - and it is burdened by cronyism. Despite the publicity benefits it could derive from helping black farmers, the multinational tobacco industry does very little apart from sponsor a few growers' awards. Vambe was the Rothmans Smallholder of the Year in 1999.
Local hero slates land-grabbers
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.