Alamein Farm, also known as Ruzambu Farm, is a 5,000

hectare The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100- metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is ...

farm at Beatrice, in the Mashonaland East area of

Zimbabwe Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and ...

, 72 km south of the capital

Harare Harare (; formerly Salisbury ) is the capital and most populous city of Zimbabwe. The city proper has an area of 940 km2 (371 mi2) and a population of 2.12 million in the 2012 census and an estimated 3.12 million in its metropolitan ...

. It was a highly productive commercial farming operation, employing around one thousand people and producing large quantities of

tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...

maize Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. The ...

and Rhodes grass, as well as cattle and farmed game. The farm gained notoriety in 2002, when General

Solomon Mujuru Solomon Mujuru (born Solomon Tapfumaneyi Mutusva; 5 May 1945 – 15 August 2011), also known by his nom-de-guerre, Rex Nhongo, was a Zimbabwean military officer and politician who led Robert Mugabe's guerrilla forces during the Rhodesian Bush Wa ...

and his wife, Zimbabwean Vice President Joice Mujuru, evicted the farm owner and all farm inhabitants under the auspices of the Land Reform Programme, and became the first of President Robert Mugabe's inner circle to be found guilty of unlawful land seizures. Under General Mujuru, the farm continued to produce tobacco, maize and game. Farm workers also produced their own tobacco on land allocated to them. Further notoriety was to follow in August 2011, with the death of General Mujuru in the farm homestead in circumstances that many commentators and politicians describe as suspicious.

References

Mashonaland East Province Farms in Zimbabwe {{Zimbabwe-stub