The Final Twist for Whites
Once-loyal workers turn on departing white farmers

3^rd August 2002

Harare: The final obstacle to Robert Mugabe's campaign to be rid of white farmers is crumbling as thousands of farm workers turn against their employers.

Under the President's radical land-reform program, next Thursday has been set as the deadline for most of Zimbabwe's remaining 3000 white commercial farmers to leave their homes or face up to two years in jail.

Tony Tanner, 42, a tobacco farmer 25 kilometres south of Harare, was one of the few untouched by the past 29 months of state-sponsored invasions of white-owned land. Now he has been locked in his homestead for three days by once-loyal workers.

Farmers and workers are in dispute over the level of severance pay as employers depart.

"We have paid millions in legal terminal benefits," Mr Tanner's wife, Debbie-Lyn, said. "But they want more because they say they know the Government will not help them after we leave. They have heard of workers on other farms who have been paid more.

"We can't leave the farm and the police laughed at us and told us to pay the workers. I've got two sick kids and need to get them to the doctor. There is no-one we can turn to for help."

The Tanners are under extreme pressure to pay more in order to complete the grading of the tobacco crop on their 1400-hectare farm for sale at auction, Mrs Tanner said.

At least six of their neighbours in the Bromley farming district have also been prevented from leaving their homes.

Before the disputed presidential election in March, Mr Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party established a rogue union that has led workers' uprisings on farms.

An official from the original union, the General and Agricultural and Plantation Workers' Union, said: "Many farmers don't want to sack workers, but they are forced to.

"They have to pay terminal benefits, determined by the Government, and some have not grown crops for two years and have no money. We try to mediate. Workers know they'll have no jobs next week, and they want as much as they can get now. It's extortion."

The Telegraph - London