Rural Zimbabwe Empties as Mugabe Land Reform Policy Unravels
- Agrarian economy collapses following farm seizures, drought
- President Mugabe says land reform addresses injustice
Zimbabwe's President Robert Gabriel Mugabe
Photographer: Giles Clarke/Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
Forests engulf fields that used to produce some of the world’s best tobacco around the northern Zimbabwean town of Banket, while barns that once stored the leaf stand empty, their corrugated iron roofs ripped off and sold for scrap. Most of the farm workers have left.
“We are 15 here now, from roughly 50,” said 25-year-old Bruce Mahenya, who lives in a mud-and-grass hut behind a defunct trading store on a farm about 95 kilometers (60 miles) northwest of the capital, Harare. “My mother, father and brother have gone. I said I would remain alone in case things get better, but it’s hard.”