Harare – Contrary to expectations that the Zimbabwe government’s land resettlement exercise would benefit landless peasants, Joseph Made, the agriculture minister, has allocated prime farms to top army, government and Zanu PF officials under the murky commercial settlement scheme.

Among the officials allocated prime land were war veterans; Joseph Chinotimba, the leader and self-styled commander of farm invasions, Elliot Manyika, the youth development minister, Augustine Chihuri, the police commissioner, Webster Bepura, the Bindura mayor and top President Robert Mugabe loyalist, Menard Muzariri, a senior Central Intelligence Organisation operative and Dick Mafiosi, a Mugabe loyalist.

The Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) said farm seizures had become more violent as top ruling party officials had resorted to forcibly evicting individual farmers and taking their properties under the A2 scheme, ostensibly meant to promote black commercial farming. Jeni Williams of the CFU said some of the recipients of the farms under the A2 scheme were moving on to properties before the completion of the requisite legal formalities on land acquisition. Chihuri, the police commissioner, reportedly chased away a farmer and seized his property in the Shamva area.

However, Chihuri denied ever harassing the farmer. The A2 scheme was introduced after the government said it had completed resettling people under the much criticised fast-track land resettlement exercise. The ministry of agriculture established a committee to vet applications of potential beneficiaries of land under the A2 scheme.

However, an official close to the committee said most of the people it had recommended had been sidelined in favour of the influential people. Zimbabweans have generally agreed that land redistribution is necessary to correct the inequities in land ownership created by decades of colonialism.

However, there is now a growing consensus that President Robert Mugabe is merely using the land issue to benefit his supporters and friends and ensure their loyalty ahead of a crunch presidential election next year. Most of Mugabe’s supporters who were allocated land under the fast-track model had no farming expertise.

In fact reports said many of them have since deserted their new pieces of land and sold all the equipment and seed packs they had been allocated to help them start farming.