Harare — Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has built a secret, personal farming empire from at least five farms where the white owners were forced out during the evictions of 4000 commercial farmers.

This is the first indication of how Mugabe benefited personally from the land seizures he ordered in 2000 that destroyed Zimbabwe's commercial agriculture, the bedrock of the economy.

The country, now living with a power-sharing government between Mugabe and his arch-rival Morgan Tsvangirai, desperately needs to rebuild its shattered economy.

But Mugabe's private farming empire is an obstacle to the unity government and resurrection of agriculture, according to experts, because an audit of land ownership as part of structural reforms would expose the president's controversial control of about 3 000ha.

Many believe Mugabe's seizure of these farms is the primary reason he is stalling on the land audit the EU says it will fund.

Mugabe's private empire is in what used to be a district of intensive farming, Darwendale, about 48km north of Harare.

It began in 2000 with the normal commercial purchase of Highfield farm, a 495ha property near the communal area, Zvimba where Mugabe was born. About the same time, land seizures began all over Zimbabwe, when veterans of the liberation struggle began invading white-owned properties and forcing their owners to leave, often violently. A parallel official process was then launched by the government to take ownership of white-owned land.

Highfield has since been amalgamated with five other neighbouring properties.

On several visits to the estate by Weekend Argus, it was clear that the six farms were now operating as a single business. Workers all said they were employed either by Mugabe or "Gushungo", his family name.

Guards from Gushungo Security and members of the police are at strategic points around the estate.

On June 27 the Zanu-PF-controlled Herald newspaper referred to Highfield as "the president's farm". But there has been no mention of the neighbouring land.

According to staff, the farms were initially taken over by the government's Agricultural Rural Development Authority, Arda, which poured in tens of millions of rands of Zimbabwean taxpayers' money under the direction of Joseph Made, the agriculture minister.

A small group of war veterans also occupied some of the land, but during 2006, workers say Arda's role was reduced, while the war veterans say they were asked to make way for Mugabe and were happy to move to another white-owned farm nearby.

The total estate, with unlimited water for irrigation, spreads around part of a government dam, Lake Robertson, more commonly known as Darwendale Dam, including homesteads, managers' cottages, workers' houses, huge barns, sheds, workshops, tractors, fencing and other equipment taken from the former owners, plus 19 almost-new centre pivots (overhead irrigation machines that move in a circular fashion) costing about R1.3 million each.

The estate is valued by estate agents at about R24m.

Staff say Mugabe grows maize, rice, wheat, sorghum, and sweet potatoes, and has a herd of Brahmin cattle, goats - and five camels, given to him by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Zimbabwean political analyst Brian Raftopoulos said he was surprised to learn of Mugabe's estate.

"This is part of Zanu-PF's rapid accumulation of property since 2000, and explains in particular the deep relationship between Zanu-PF's unwillingness to accede to a free and fair election, and its increasing control of the land," he said.

Mugabe argued in 2003, as part of his justification for seizing farms that no one should have more than one farm.

Trevor Gifford, past president of the Commercial Farmers' Union, said that since the properties were originally six different title deeds, Mugabe was "breaking his own rules".

"None of the owners of the five farms have been paid any compensation for them, which they should be, according to the law," he said.

Weekend Argus has asked Mugabe whether he has licences for occupation of the other farms, but has not received a response.

Since there is no official register of occupiers of Zimbabwe's formerly white-owned rural land, the exact structure of the estate remains unclear.

Three private limited companies matching the estate name are listed at Zimbabwe's company's registry as Gushungo Investments 364/06, Gushungo Enterprises 1021/06 and Gushungo Construction 19009/06, all of them formed in 2006.

Their activities are unknown, however, because contrary to Zimbabwean law, the relevant documents, including their annual reports and lists of shareholders and directors, are not available to the public.

Staff at the registry said they could not give any information about the files. "You know where they would be kept, not here," said one official.