Old Anger Over Land Is Mugabe's Weapon

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Mugabe Claims Election Victory

Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe is officially sworn in as president after a sharply criticized runoff vote that was boycotted by his only rival, Morgan Tsvangirai.

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Farmers say many of these new plots have been sliced too small for viable commercial cultivation. Government promises to help, meanwhile, have proved empty. Seed, fertilizer, tractors and subsidized fuel have been delivered late or not at all.

Despite heavy seasonal rains, Paulo's meager corn crop is brown and wilted. Other food sources are so scant that he has already spread the corn kernels on the ground for drying so they can be milled a few weeks early -- an embarrassing sign of poor planning in rural Zimbabwe.

Yet for all its shortcomings, the farm is about all that Paulo has to show for a life of hard work, including decades as a "tea boy" serving refreshments at a company run mainly by whites. His wife and children live on the farm, as do 13 grandchildren. Should the opposition take it away -- as Mugabe alleges they will -- Paulo would be left destitute. It's more than enough, he said, to make him vote for the ruling party again.

"The only reason I voted for them was because I want to protect my land," Paulo said. "Farming is what I want to do now."

Rudo Isa, 31, with seven children to raise, is nervous too. Without her 15 acres, she's afraid her family would starve. It wouldn't take much. The last time she had enough cooking oil to make a proper meal was a month ago, she said. With no money for transport, her six school-age children walk six miles each way to school every day.

Having cast her lot with Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, she worries things will get worse if the opposition takes power.

"We are just waiting to see what the new leadership and president are planning for us at the moment, but I am afraid because I believe they could tell us to leave," Isa said.

Kuda Kapuya, 31, says that Tsvangirai supporters have threatened to kick his wife and two kids off their land.

"They've been taunting me, telling me that their chance has come," Kapuya said.

Tsvangirai has repeatedly said that he has no such plans. Farms that have been resettled, or ones that are being usefully cultivated, will not be taken away, no matter who the owner was before the land invasions, he said.

The fears in Arcturus are not entirely without foundation. Reviving Zimbabwe's moribund economy -- joblessness tops 80 percent, inflation exceeds 100,000 percent -- will require restoring the nation's once-vibrant agriculture industry. And whites, who traditionally owned and ran the farms, will be unusually well-positioned to benefit from any new agricultural initiative.

Tsvangirai said he will start by selling off the farms of Mugabe cronies who have more than one. After that, he will target those farms cultivated so poorly that the fields are gradually being reclaimed by the vast Zimbabwean bush.

It's a description that, depending on who is making the judgment, might apply to parts of Arcturus. With harvest time just weeks away, some corn plants do not even reach a man's knee. Yet talk of taking any of this land away -- however distant, conditional and abstract -- has already provoked a backlash, here and across rural Zimbabwe.

"If they do that . . . it would be a problem for Zimbabweans," said Joseph Chinotimba, an official with the war veterans' association. "We are trying to protect the gains of liberation, the gains of land reform."

As Mugabe scrambles to hang on to power, it's clear that his signature land initiative has succeeded more as political tool than as policy.

Paulo remains loyal to the president but so poor that his pants are riddled with blue patches. His farm is so devoid of food that hungry rats began nibbling on his feet one recent night, leaving painful sores.

As Paulo waited for the early harvested corn to dry in the sun one recent day, he ventured out with an empty plastic container in search of pumpkin leaves, which Zimbabweans boil as a relish to eat on sadza, the national staple dish made from corn meal. When food is truly short, they will eat boiled pumpkin leaves alone.

On this day, though, when Paulo returned, the container was still empty, and he threw it to the ground in defeat.