[Let those scumbag bastards who are keeping Mugabe in power try to grow food. See if they can. I doubt they can. I am enjoying watching the Mugabe regime squirm after driving out the White farmers.

I still think Zimbabwe can be taken by revolution. Look at how Mugabe now has to divert some of his officers and troops towards food production. Mugabe can be overthrown. It amazes me that the whole political opposition can’t even get their act together to try. How sad. Jan]

The Zimbabwean government has begun to deploy thousands of soldiers to state-owned commercial farms where they are expected to produce food under a new farming operation called “command agriculture”.

Following his unprecedented admission that his land-grab policies had not ensured food security, President Robert Mugabe told Zanu-PF’s annual conference recently that the government should now be at the forefront of agriculture.

Officials in the Zimbabwe National Army said more than 5 000 soldiers would be deployed on farms owned by the state-owned Agricultural and Rural Development Agency (Arda) to produce food under a plan called Operation Food Security.

They said the deployment had already started on farms in the three Mashonaland provinces and in Manicaland.

‘I don’t understand why they think they can convert soldiers into farmers’

“We have a professional army with multi-skilled officers in engineering, agriculture, construction and many other sectors of the economy. Whenever there is a disaster, the army is called upon by the government to intervene and help the civilian operation,” said an army officer who did not want to be named.

“It goes without saying that there is a crisis in the country – a serious food crisis – and it only makes sense that the government wants to use the army’s expertise to ameliorate this situation.

“We are not at war and have all the time to work on farms.”

Officials in the army’s public relations directorate did not return calls for comment.

But State Security Minister Didymus Mutasa, who is also in charge of land reform and food-aid distribution, has confirmed and defended the use of soldiers in farming in an interview with a Zimbabwean publication.

Farming experts are pessimistic

“They (the army) have been helping in other government operations. The army has agricultural experts and the manpower, and we are sure they will come in handy,” Mutasa said.

It is understood that the government plans to re-confiscate some of the under-utilised farms allocated to mostly government supporters and put them under the army’s control.

Mugabe has already expressed frustration with what he calls “cellphone farmers”, whom he says have not put their allocated land to good use.

But farming experts are pessimistic.

A chief executive at a major farming supplies company dismissed the plan as “an indirect admission of failure”.

He said: “I don’t exactly understand why they think they can convert soldiers into farmers.” – Independent Foreign Service

This article was originally published on page 2 of The Star on December 20, 2005

Source: Independent Online (IOL)
URL: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click…/p>