37 given the obvious acts of omission that followed the land reform process, then the current economic crisis of the State would be magnified many times over. Here it should be pointed out that the verification of these losses is already in process, and has been in process for several years, and thus all the assertions here about damages can be empirically tested against hard evidence in the form of receipts and other proof held by former farmers. The losses experienced by the commercial farm workers are a different story, for, whilst there clearly are actual losses and losses of earnings, there is also the enormous humanitarian crisis into which more than two million people were precipitated. Assuming 350,000 full-time employees and 250,000 seasonal workers, and a family size of at least 5 persons, this suggests a population of 3 million people, which may be an over-estimate, but 2 million is still not a trivial number of people to be affected. Here a comparison with the numbers of people affected under Operation Murambatsvina is instructive. As was seen earlier, the eviction of the farmers resulted in an enormous range of benefits and services disappearing with them. Housing, safe water and sanitation, health services, education, and a number of social benefits all disappeared. It was not possible to determine the exact effects on the farm workers and their families, but it is evident that the consequences for the farm workers have been at least as catastrophic as the effects of Operation Murambatsvina. However, there are a number of good reports on the farm workers, and these can amplify the present findings, but there remains a very pressing need for a concerted effort to be made to understand what has happened to these people, and what are their current needs. 5. Conclusions At the outset, it was pointed out that the need for land reform in Zimbabwe is disputed by noone, although the Zimbabwe government argues that this is the major bone of contention in its conflict with the international community. The point of this study was to gain a better understanding of the experiences of commercial farmers and their farm workers, and it is clear that there were both unacceptable and enormous violations and losses for both groups. The gross human rights violations, and the violations of rights generally, were much greater than has been previously assumed. It is also evident that the patterns of violations and those involved in the perpetration of these violations are not commensurate with conflicts over land between land owners and landless people. The picture is much more supportive of the general thesis advanced earlier; that of a systematic campaign around elections in which land was a stratagem for political actions, as has been asserted previously by many commentators, including the A Preliminary Report on Human Rights Violations on Commercial Farms, 2000 to 2005.