Harare - The jacarandas are flowering early this year behind a farmhouse in central Zimbabwe which is home to a group of Chinese workers who are growing tobacco for the first time.
The Chinese went into many sections of the economy under Zimbabwe's Look East policy, but avoided white-owned farms which were "liberated" by President Robert Mugabe's supporters in his ruling Zanu-PF.
The white farmer who planted the jacarandas among the granite hills of the area is not remembered well, as his widow abandoned the farm shortly after he died of a "sore leg", according to Robert Makosa, 42, who worked there 20 years ago.
Makosa was later employed close to that farm by a Chinese chrome mining company, San He, which is now spending heavily, getting its first massive tobacco crop into the ground. "We do mining and farming now," he said.
Not far from the bright green tobacco seedbeds on the farm, known as Tengenenge, is the famous village of the same name established for rural artists who wanted to avoid the Rhodesian war 50 years ago. They produce stone sculptures from verdite, opal and serpentine.
The village became a haven again, more recently, when Mugabe's supporters forced most white farmers from their homes and some of the workers fled there.
Many artists as well as some farmworker families live in small houses in the village, alongside thousands of extraordinary stone sculptures which survive under the dappled shade of groves of Msasa trees.
Since land invasions began, Zimbabwe has not been able to feed itself and the economy, so dependent on agriculture, crashed so badly Mugabe had to abandon the national currency when inflation hit 500 million percent.
"The Chinese are spending money," said one farmworker walking on the main road from nearby town, Mvurwi, about 85km north of Harare.
Munching on his small lunch of pap (no vegetables or meat) he said there were now plenty of jobs in the district after years of difficulties following the departure of the white landowners.
He and others said they are paid the minimum wage for new workers of about R58 a day, as well as accommodation, water and some power for cooking. Some will also get essential food supplies, mealie meal, sugar and cooking oil. One woman working in the huge tobacco seedling patch complained that she did not earn enough to afford vegetables for her children.
But another worker said it was "okay" to work for the Chinese and they were better then the "political" (Zanu-PF) people who forced white farmers to leave. Most of those farming for the first time were unable to maintain production on the land they took.
An insider in the tobacco industry said the Chinese company would be paying a hefty rental for the land it is now using for tobacco, to the Zanu-PF political men who forced the white farmers off.
"The Chinese will pay a percentage of the income from tobacco as rent. Some of that rental should be shared with white farmers who left their homes with nothing and received no compensation from the government. They probably don't know their old farms are now about to start making money again," he said.
Another of the five farms in which the Chinese are investing - and there may be more - is Welmode, near Mvurwi, about 90km north of Harare.
David Birrell was born on that 2000-hectare farm and grew tobacco until he fled to Harare in 2003 with his young family after two of his workers were killed. A year later he went to Australia.
Speaking from his home in Queensland, Birrell was pleased that there was investment in his old farm and that his former workers were having a better time.
"Some were thrown out of their houses after we left. I still think about the farm and Zimbabwe. It was hard to leave and be without family and friends and the life we were used to."
Boniface Kamuntu, 44, who worked for Birrell sent "best wishes" to him. "I hope his life is good."
He was pleased the "Chinas," as he called them, had come to invest in the farm as it was largely derelict in recent years. He and other workers are careful what they say.
Gho Feng, 40, who arrived from China a month ago to work on one of the company's farms, indicated he had never grown tobacco before, but would work side by side with Zimbabweans in the fields.
Chen Li Jin, 36, now lives in Birrell's home which has been repainted, but indicated he was worried about talking without permission and sped off on a motor bike saying he couldn't speak English.
He, like most of the other Chinese workers on tobacco farms now being revived, was also employed by the San He mining company, which has been accused by Zimbabwe's Environment Management Authority of massive degradation of the environment around its chrome extraction plant.
Experts who have seen some of the investment into these five farms say the new infrastructure including equipment manufactured by US company, Valley Irrigation, must have cost at least R130 million. Estimates are that the new Chinese tobacco farmers may grow about 1 200ha this year, which is an enormous crop.
Tobacco production has recovered since land invasions began as new growers who were given white-owned land were taught and mentored by international companies who lend them money to produce the crop. There are also thousands of new, small-scale growers, who produce lower grades of tobacco and use family labour. Then there is a hardcore of about 120 white farmers growing smaller tobacco crops than they did before, yet get top prices for their leaf.
But tobacco is only a fraction of Zimbabwe's more recent farming story.
Within half an hour north of Harare are signs of how the economy fractured with the invasions which saw about 3 000 white farmers evicted from nearly 7 million ha of land.
There are broken fences, fields scorched by fires, scarce livestock apart from goats, and few surviving indigenous trees as so many were felled by new farmers who could not afford to buy coal to cure their tobacco.
The land taken from white farmers was nationalised in 2005 and Mugabe and the constitution say the UK, which took the land in the first place in the 1890s, should pay the evicted white farmers for their seized land. The government says it will pay compensation for "improvements" to the farms, but has no money to do so. So far very few evicted white farmers have received more then token payouts.
All the seized farms, which were mostly private companies, and their balance sheets, are thoroughly valued by commercial and professional valuators and held on file for the day when the money is found.
Lisa Lee, (which is how her name was spelled by Zimbabwean workers, but the surname may be spelled Lia) the Chinese manager of the new tobacco project said this was the company's first farming season. Lee said she consulted with, and had been visited by several tobacco experts, including a "British man" before and during the start of this venture.
"We don't have an office in Harare. Our office is the farm."
She cut the conversation short and did not answer the phone again nor questions sent to her.
But while Chinese citizens may farm on these rich properties, the people who developed them, white farmers, may not return to their homes.
Peter Steyl, president of the Commercial Farmers' Union, which has shrunk dramatically in the past few years said he had not known that a Chinese company was investing and farming tobacco in this top growing area.
"This is interesting. I hope they will attend to the dams on some of these farms as many of them are silted up now and need urgent attention. We are very worried about many of the dams on the farms in Zimbabwe," he said and confirmed that the Chinese company appeared to be paying the correct minimum wage for new workers provided they had free accommodation and water.
Independent Foreign Service