By Sebastian Nyamhangambiri 

HARARE – A Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) deputy governor, Edward Mashiringwani, last week invaded a white-owned farm, contradicting calls by the central bank to stop farm invasions blamed for destabilizing the mainstay agricultural sector. 

RBZ governor Gideon Gono is among a group of top government and ZANU PF officials worried about the rapid decline in agriculture and who have pushed to stop fresh farm seizures – albeit without success. 

Mashiringwani, who is responsible for financial markets, banking operations and national payment systems at the RBZ, last Wednesday stormed Friedwall farm located 150 km north-west of Harare claiming the government allocated the property to him. 

A ZimOnline reporter, who happened to be at Friedwall farm on other business when Mashiringwani invaded the property, witnessed the RBZ official personally break open the gate and pull down part of the fence to let in a tractor and a group of people believed to be his workers. 

“I want to get to the fields and start tilling the land in preparation for the coming rains, after that I will take over the whole farm,” Mashiringwani nonchalantly told the owner of the farm, Louis Fick. 

Mashiringwani told his workers to camp at the farm and to till the fields in preparation for this coming season’s crop before he drove off. 

Attempts since last week to get comment on the matter from Mashiringwani have been fruitless, while Gono was also not immediately available for comment. 

Fick, among the fewer than 600 whites still farming in Zimbabwe after President Robert Mugabe’s government grabbed land from most of the country’s about 4 000 white farmers, refused to discuss the invasion of his farm. 

Henrick Olivier, chief executive of the Commercial Farmers Union that represents white farmers, said: "A report was made to us about Friedwall farm. The RBZ deputy governor definitely went to Fick's farm with a couple of guys and asked him to wind up and move out.” 

Fick practices animal husbandry, keeping 3 000 pigs and about 1 500 cattle at his farm. He also breeds fish and crocodiles. 

Zimbabwe, also grappling with its worst ever economic crisis, has since 2000 relied on food imports and handouts from international food agencies mainly due to failure by new black farmers to maintain production on former white farms. 

Poor performance in the mainstay agricultural sector has also had far reaching consequences as hundreds of thousands have lost jobs while the manufacturing sector, starved of inputs from the sector, is operating below 30 percent of capacity. - ZimOnline