5 000 families evicted from farms
http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk
Written by JOHN CHIMUNHU
Friday, 19 February 2010 14:37
HARARE — At least 5 000 families were displaced from commercial farms in Zimbabwe in 2009 as President Robert Mugabe’s supporters intensified a campaign to evict the few remaining white commercial farmers from their properties, according to the International Organisation for Migration IOM).
The organisation that among other things works to provide humanitarian assistance to migrants in need, including refugees and internally displaced people said: “New displacements and related vulnerabilities have continued to arise as farms are taken over by new owners and farm workers are evicted from their homes.
“IOM has recorded over 5,000 households that resided in farms that were taken over in 2009, many of whom have been evicted by the new owners.” Mugabe’s supporters from his Zanu (PF) party and in the military have
continued seizing white-owned farms despite formation of a unity government between the veteran leader and former opposition chief Morgan Tsvangirai. The one-year old power-sharing government had promised to end farm seizures and audit Mugabe’s chaotic and violent land reforms of the past decade to pave way for an orderly land redistribution programme.
But the administration has failed to conduct the land audit in part because of lack of funding and also because of stiff resistance from Mugabe’s supporters who have also defied last year’s ruling by the Southern African
Development Community to stop farm seizures.
The IOM said it was working to assist people displaced from farms but said it had faced difficulties delivering aid in some case because internal displacement was a considered a politically sensitive matter in Zimbabwe.
Compounding problems in Zimbabwe, according to the IOM, was the fact that the country has experienced massive and unacknowledged (officially) internal displacement of people due to the land reforms implemented since 2000 while some government programmes such as the controversial 2005 urban clean up campaign known as Operation Murambatsvina have seen whole communities left without shelter.
Hundreds of thousands of people were left without homes or means of livelihood after the government bulldozed hundreds of shantytowns and informal settlements during the clean up campaign it said was necessary to keep cities clean and fight crime.
The IOM said: “Although there are no official statistics accurately quantifying the magnitude of displacement in Zimbabwe, a significant number of people have been uprooted or placed at high risk of displacement in the
last decade throughout the country.”
The group said it has assisted more than 500 000 internally displaced people in Zimbabwe between 2006 and 2009.