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The Daily Grind 20th July 2003 David Evans, 38, a farmer,
lives with his wife and two children on a 2,000-acre farm in northern Zimbabwe
partly occupied by war veterans and squatters. Interview by Lauren St John. The guinea fowl outside the security fence are a good alarm, because they start making a noise at 4.45am. So does the magnificent hammerkop bird who walks around our swimming pool trying to catch frogs. Come five o'clock I'll get up, make coffee and think about the day's work. Farming here now comes with daily problems; you have to try to get on top of things before they arise. Just before six, the labour arrive and we'll do a register. I'll have a meeting with the foreman and duties will be given out. This time of the year, we're curing tobacco. I have an African farm manager who's been with me for seven years; he's in charge of the day-to-day running of the farm. We'll check the temperature of the barns where the tobacco is being cured. He then checks on the work being done on the lands, and I'll follow. We'll meet to discuss how the reaping is going. I'm downscaling my crop, as a 400-hectare section of my farm is being taken over by war veterans. On November 10, 2002, I got a Section 5, which means that the government want to take your land. You're given 90 days to appeal. In February I got a Section 8, which is compulsory acquirement. It was a huge blow. On that section, I had 400 breeding pigs, 120 sheep and 100 cattle - and we're having to destroy them all. Today I've had to give notice to 30 employees. I feel sorry for them, but I could be farmless tomorrow. Most labourers disappear into the woodwork. Destitution is a foregone conclusion. At 8.30 I'll have breakfast with my wife. We'll have cereal and toast, if we've found bread in the shops. The rest of the day is mainly just weighing tobacco, packing it into crates and checking on all jobs. Tobacco is very labour-intensive. Tea is at 10 and the whole farm sits down for mahewu, a high-protein porridge. Come lunch time, I'll have a Coke and a sandwich and I might sleep for an hour. Commercial farming in Zimbabwe is just brick wall after brick wall after brick wall. Your profit margins are eaten away daily. When I first started farming, 12 years ago, my whole fertiliser bill was 400,000 Zimbabwe dollars. It's now close to Z$22m - if you can get it. Mealie meal, the staple diet of black Zimbabweans, would cost Z$580 for 50 kilograms, if you could get it - but you can't, so you buy it on the black market for Z$10,000. In mid-April, petrol went up nearly 200% to Z$450 a litre. You can't get diesel, fertiliser, milk or chemicals. We've had so many people leave the area. Just on my road, there are only three white farmers left out of 15. We feel completely isolated. It's like being on an island all by yourself. Every day my new 'neighbours' - black farmers resettled here by the government - come and want things fixed, and you think: 'Why should I?' Now there's animosity between both parties. We've lost some very good friends. It's hard on the women: they look to their friends. The men can go to the bar. My wife will come back from the supermarket and say: 'What the hell are we doing here? We're hated everywhere we go.' I'll come home in a bad mood, she retaliates, and we don't speak for about 12 hours. Everyone is on antidepressants - 'chill pills'. One farmer went to the district attorney to find out what was going to happen to his farm. The DA said to him: 'Do you know what an aeroplane is?' He said: 'Yes.' The DA said: 'Well, why aren't you on it?'If someone with power wants your farm, he can make life unbearable until you break. Three times we've had mobs outside our gate, banging drums and shouting abuse. The most afraid I've been is when 120 people were at our gate and my wife and kids were in the house. You're powerless. You just hope somebody will come and help. What you get now are incidents where someone - a war veteran or a person off the street, maybe - will say: 'Why are you still here? I'm going to come and take my plot.' You can't fight it. We work until 5pm, but if the guys finish by midday, they can go home. In the evenings I'll sit with my wife on the veranda and watch the sun go down. We live on a kopje, a small hill, with two dams below us. The water turns orange and you can hear the frogs, and the guinea fowl getting ready to roost. Sometimes you'll see kudu or sable walking about. You sit there in the peace and problems go out of your head. You think: 'There's no way I'll ever leave my house.' Dinner is meat and vegetables, and we'll watch TV. We're in bed by 10. It's hard to sleep because you're worried about the future. The doctor's given us sleeping pills. Leaving the country is not an option. We're Africans, we'll stay here. We were born here. So yeah, the joys of farming in Zimbabwe. Sunday
Times Magazine (UK) |