Arda, together with several Zanu (PF) supporters, forcibly took over Bennett’s farm during the height of the land invasions in 2004. Immediately after taking over the farm, the authority forced some of Bennett’s workers to sign up as their workers and took over the vast coffee plantations, farming equipment and the farmhouse. Seven years after Arda’s violent take over, the coffee plantations have been replaced by chicken runs.
“There is no more coffee production at Charleswood farm. All the coffee bushes have been burnt. Arda is now breeding chickens and selling them to the locals at a cost of $6 per bird,” said a worker.
He added that most of Bennett’s former workers had left employment due to non-payment of wages.
“A lot of workers have left. When Bennett was the owner of the farm we used to get our salaries on time but now we can go for several months without payment. Why did they not continue with the lucrative coffee production?” said another worker.
The estate used to be a major producer of coffee for export and had Export Processing Zone status. Sources also told The Zimbabwean that the coffee mills at the farm had also been vandalized. Arda is allegedly leasing out some of Bennett’s former staff houses to gold panners and Russians who are mining diamonds in the estate.
Charleswood estate had secured a deal to sell coffee to foreign buyers, including a Korean company called K&Z Incorporated, before the invasions. Efforts to get a comment from Joseph Made, the minister of Agriculture and Farm Mechanisation, were unsuccessful.
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