Reform recipients in Zimbabwe see Mugabe as heroic

David Chiguvare, who spent years slogging away on a white-owned farm outside Harare, is now living the dream of being his own boss, courtesy of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's land reforms.

While Mugabe's scheme has been widely blamed for triggering the collapse of the economy, Chiguvare has nothing but praise for his efforts to redress the land ownership imbalance.

"For many of us, the land reforms were a dream that came true and it took a brave leader like President Mugabe to do it. He is a hero," the 42-year-old said as he recalled the days when he was at the beck and call of his employers.

"I was doing all the work on the ground literally running the farm on behalf of my employer," he said.

"Every year my employer took his family on a two-month holiday to Europe, leaving me in charge. Each time he returned and saw everything swinging but all I got was a pat on the back for a job well done," he said.

Employing full-time workers and hiring hands from a neighboring shanty-town, Chiguvare grows wheat, tobacco, soya beans and corn on his Bunkers' Hill farm, just south of Harare.

But critics say much of the land either ended up in the hands of his cronies or with people who had neither the skills nor the tools to succeed.

Once the region's breadbasket, supplying wheat to countries such as Zambia and Malawi, Zimbabwe's agricultural sector has gone into a nosedive since the start of the decade when expropriations began.

Some million people -- nearly one-third of the population -- are now in need of food aid, the UN World Food Program has said.

Victims the land reforms hold Mugabe responsible and are determined to end his 28-year rule at elections this weekend.

Ian Kay, forced off his farm six years ago, is vying for a parliamentary seat on behalf of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

Kay he does not want to just turn the clock back to the days when all the best land was in white hands. A thorough review of the badly flawed land reforms is necessary, however, he said.

While Kay now imports coal, he wants to return to his old farm, south of Marondera.

"I was born there, my parents are buried there. The land was paid for, the developments that are there: we did them," he said.

For Chiguvare however, any such move would be a slap in the face to veterans of the 1970s liberation war, many of whom took part in invasions of the white-owned farms.

"This is what the whole liberation war was about and we cannot go back to the situation which led the heroes of this country to take up arms," he said.