Society: The other side of Chirumhanzu’s Cheza
AT the launch of a new agriculture development company African Farming Solutions eight years ago, former Commercial Farmers Union president Charles Taffs said farming was a business and not everyone can necessarily be a farmer.
“Farming must be done professionally and to do otherwise is to promote poverty and perpetual dependency and we must move away from this phenomenon,” Taffs said then.Critics of the land reform programme led by the late former President Robert Mugabe concur with Taffs’s assertions as vast tracts of once productive farmlands lie idle today, with overgrown weeds and bushes.
Although in successive years the Zanu PF-led government has attempted to conduct land audits particularly on underutilised farms, most farm holders still use farms as weekend retreats and occasionally visit the farms for braais.
Over the years, opposition politicians have struggled to get land, despite the ruling Zanu PF party maintaining that allocation of land was non-partisan.Those in the opposition who are into farming business have bought the land, but still face the risk of evictions by Zanu PF activists or people with close links to the party.
One such is Citizens Coalition for Change Chirumanzu South candidate in the August 23 elections, Patrick Cheza, who has defied the odds and is running a 125-hectare piece of land at Mahamara Farm sub-division 43, about 80km from Mvuma along the Mvuma-Kwekwe Road.
A visit to the farm by NewsDay Weekender last week revealed land which is being fully utilised mostly for the benefit of the community and the nation at large.Farm manager Edward Mufandaedza, an agriculture graduate from the Midlands State University (MSU), said they are into mixed farming, a venture that has also benefitted several students from universities.
“We have 96 beef cattle now and at one time, the number went up to 200 cattle, but we occasionally downsized the herd because of the farm size,” hesaid.“We also have goats and the breeds include Boers and Kalahari as well as a cross breed of sheep.”
Mufandaedza said horticulture was the backbone of the farm.“We grow tomatoes outside and in greenhouses and we have a good market in Gweru, Kwekwe and recently Chirumanzu, where we have weekly supplies,” he said.“We also grow cucumbers in the greenhouses, butternuts and maize. Our cucumbers and butternuts have a good market.”-newsday
