HARARE - Workers at President Robert Mugabe’s farm, Gushungo Dairy Estate Holdings, have poured cold water on recent reports that the veteran president and his wife Grace, a former typist, are model farmers. They said this after Mugabe commissioned a new state-of-the-art milking parlour sourced from South Africa last week, amid praises from his fawning ministers that Zimbabweans needed to emulate the Mugabes for “taking farming seriously”.

The farm in Mazowe, formerly known as Foyle Farm, was seized from Ian Webster and was at the time one of the best dairy estates in the world.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, workers told The Zimbabwean this week that the Mugabes’ “success” was based on free money acquired from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, and free labour taken from government-run agricultural enterprises such as ARDA.
A former manager at Gushungo Dairy Holdings, told this newspaper that over the last four years and on the instruction of Grace Mugabe, he and other managers applied for loans amounting to several million South African Rands from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe in their individual capacities.
“When we asked Grace if we would not end up being saddled with her personal debts, she would always tell us that she had already spoken to people at the Reserve Bank and that the money was awaiting collection,” he said.
Several employees had accompanied Grace to South Africa to identify the milking parlour, one of the top two in Africa.
“The highlights of our visit to South Africa to identify different farming equipment were the shopping binges that we would do as the woman was generous with the free funds,” added the manager, who, although he was contracted to and paid by ARDA, spent all his time working for the Mugabes.
“So really for the politicians to mislead the nation that the First Family are good farmers is simply not true. For quite a long time we provided free labour at the expense of the taxpayer, while money was being taken from the RBZ.”
An current employee at the farm said the trend had not changed. Agricultural experts from state enterprises were still being seconded to work at the estate.
“It is so crude to the point that agriculture minister, Joseph Made, is essentially the President’s farm manager. He spends most of his time supervising workers from government agricultural institutions,” said the employee.
Local government minister, Ignatius Chombo, was at a loss for words after seeing the equipment sourced using free RBZ funds.
“I have never seen a dairy of this kind. It’s a major challenge to all farmers. It has to be emulated. I am extremely impressed,” he said.
Mashonaland Central governor, Martin Dinha, also became tongue-tied after touring the complex.
He was quoted in a local newspaper as saying: “Gushungo dairy gives us a lot of proud (sic) as a province.”