170 farmers await trial – CFU
http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk/
About 170 white farmers are awaiting trial while more than 30 others have
already been convicted of refusing to vacate farms illegally occupied by
Zanu (PF) thugs, an official of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) said last
week.
05.08.1106:26pm
by Vusimusi Bhebhe
CFU legal adviser, Marc Carrie-Wilson, said in a report that persecution of
former white commercial farmers had not relented, nearly three years after
the much-celebrated September 2008 signing of a power-sharing pact between
President Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai.
“Criminal Prosecutions of approximately 170 Commercial Farmers for
contravening section 3(3) of the Gazetted Lands (Consequential Provisions)
Act [Chapter 20: 28] are pending,” Carrie-Wilson said.
The prosecutions are likely to be hurried by the state to enable evictions
of the remaining farmers to make way for incoming beneficiaries.
Carrie-Wilson said CFU records also indicated that approximately 32
commercial farmers and 29 farm workers had been convicted since 2009, whilst
eight farmers were acquitted.
“The majority of those acquitted have already vacated the farms and are
precluded from returning, whilst others are simply remaining in their
homesteads but cannot continue their operations,” he said.
The Attorney General’s Office has, since 2009, stepped up prosecution of
white farmers it claims are refusing to vacate land acquired by the
government for the purpose of redistribution to landless blacks.
This is despite the fact that the Southern African Development (SADC)
Tribunal ruled in 2008 that the government’s land reform programme was
discriminatory and illegal under the SADC Treaty.