BONUS Matashu points to a three-ton truck he bought for $15,000 in cash and says that President Robert Mugabe’s often violent programme of seizing white-owned farms and giving them to black Zimbabweans turned around his life."This is the best thing that could have happened to me and my family and the generality of black Zimbabweans," the former machine operator says at his 6ha farm near the tobacco-farming town of Karoi, about 110km north of the capital, Harare. "I now lead a far better life."Mr Matashu was allocated land by the government in 2001 after a white-owned farm was seized and its former owner emigrated to South Africa, he says.He grew cotton for a decade before switching to tobacco. This year he earned $34,000 and won an award for being the best small-scale tobacco farmer in Karoi.During the turbulence of the farm takeovers, tobacco production in what was the second-biggest exporter of the top-quality variety of the crop known as flue-cured plunged to 48.3-million kilogra...
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