NewZimbabwe | A TOP ZANU PF official’s hypothesis for the failure of the party’s land redistribution programme is that Britain and America have imposed sanctions on the country’s weather patterns.
The stunning revelation was made by former education minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu while addressing a public meeting in Bulawayo on Thursday.
Pressed to explain the decline in agricultural production, Ndlovu said Western countries are tampering with the country’s rainfall patterns in order to sabotage the land reform programme.
Zimbabwe embarked on the chaotic fast track land reform programme in 2000, forcefully taking prime agricultural land from the minority white farmers and parcelling it out to locals, most them supporters of the ruling Zanu PF party.
President Robert Mugabe says the programme was meant to correct historical wrongs in the distribution of land but opposition parties have accused Zanu PF of embarking on the programme as a way of propping up its waning fortunes.
Agricultural production has gone down drastically in the last fifteen years, with the government this year expected to import over 700,000 tonnes of maize from neighbouring to avert food shortages, partly caused by a dry spell sweeping through the country.
At independence Zimbabwe was said to be producing 28 million tonnes of maize, which declined to about 17 million tonnes in the 1990s.
“The West say we have failed. We have not; we are saying to them, bring the weather patterns to order and we will produce and even export to those countries,” Ndlovu said.
Ndlovu cited Stephen Hawking’s book Economic Hit-man, as containing damning evidence that western countries manipulated other nation’s rainfall patterns.
He reiterated his party’s official excuse that sanctions imposed on the country had wreaked havoc on the country’s economy.
Government is currently carrying out a land audit in various provinces and Zanu PF bigwigs who had been allocated large swathes of land are set to have some of the land repossessed. – NewZimbabwe