A Zimbabwean-born British medical doctor, who took over a valuable piece of land from an experienced white tobacco farmer last year has not managed to grow a single tobacco crop.
And that is an embarrassment to Zimbabwe which stopped land invasions, officially, as the farm taken over was prosperous.
Less then a few hundred white-owned farms remain on small portions of the original land holding, and only one or two are still under threat of invasion.
Vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa said last month that so-called “new” farmers should get off the land they were given, which was taken from white farmers, if they did not produce crops.
He was particularly insistent about “new” farmers who have irrigation on the farms they were given since 2000.
“Wherever there are water bodies, they should be strictly used for agricultural production. Those unproductive people situated near water bodies will be removed and replaced by those people who are willing to utilise the land,” he said.
He launched a so-called “command agriculture” project at the start of summer last year, as drought and disruptions mean Zimbabwe has not been able to feed itself for the last 16 years.
Zimbabwean-trained medical doctor Sylvestor Nyatsuro launched one of the most spectacular land invasions in recent years when he forced white farmer Phil Rankin off his land last year.
Nyatsuro, who went to UK in 2000 as the economy began imploding, and later became a British citizen, ran a clinic in the northern UK for the last few years.
He bought an expensive five-bedroom house and sent his children to private schools.
His wife, Veronica, was friends with first lady Grace Mugabe and many observers in Zimbabwe believed she, the first lady, helped Nyatsuro take the remains of Rankin’s farm, including all the infrastructure.
They did not pay anything for either the land, or the two houses on the farm nor any of the fencing and equipment.
There wasn’t much left of the original land as Rankin had already given away two thirds of it to the government since the land reform programme began in 2000.
But he still managed to grow a large tobacco crop and had recently built a new dam to replace the one which was on land that was taken.
When Rankin was hauled out of his house by police a year ago and dropped far from his farm, he was busy with a tobacco crop which had cost him more then R4 million to plant.
But he was not allowed back onto the farm, or into his home, even though the Harare High Court ruled in his favour and said that he should be allowed to return.
Rankin remains bitter: “I don’t ever want to go back there, as I am hurt and do not know what to do and have no way of earning a living.”
Zimbabwe’s three main foreign earners are tobacco, platinum and remittances from the diaspora.
The only crop Dr Nyatsuro has grown is a few sparse fields of maize, much of them overcome by weeds.
Rankin’s workers continued to harvest the crop after he was evicted and some of it was sold.
Rankin says he is “anxious” about some of the workers who remain on the farm, as he said there are rumours some of them had not been paid. He says he has no cash to pay them.
Rankin, 58, says he is still in debt, has no home in which to live. But he says, he knows no other country in which to live but Zimbabwe.
The country’s latest constitution says it must pay evicted white farmers for the capital developments on their farms, but does not have the money to do so.
Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa said during the recent budget that land invasions had to stop.
Nyatsuro’s takeover of the farm raised many eyebrows in official circles, as the Rankins were productive tobacco farmers. Nyatsuro’s practice in Nottingham, UK, closed down mid-last year and was auctioned off last month.
The medical authorities in the UK, the Care Quality Commission, investigated his practice and say they found he was using an unqualified staff member to examine and treat patients.
It also found he stocked expired medicine and it also said the practice was “chaotic”.
Nyatsuro resigned and left the UK. He cannot practice in the UK, SA, or anywhere else if he wishes to remain on the UK register of medical doctors, without supervision.
He was not on the farm much recently. Neither he nor his wife answered their phones or e-mails. His Harare lawyer, Fungai Chimwamurombe, however, said the farm was “flourishing”.