Mohadi ally invades conservancy

SOUTH Africa-based business mogul and farmer Erasmus Nare — a known Vice-President Kembo Mohadi ally — has reportedly invaded Denylynian Animal Conservancy downstream of the Zhovhe Dam in Beitbridge.

BY REX MPHISA

Nare’s first attempt to invade the conservancy, alongside 13 others a few years ago, was unsuccessful after it was fiercely contested at the High Court by the now deceased owner, Ian Ferguson.

Nare told Southern Eye yesterday that he was now occupying the property although the court order issued against him and the Minister of Lands,
Agriculture and Rural Resettlement, the Matabeleland South Zanu PF provincial chairperson Rabelani Choeni and a local lands officer, still subsists.

“I was invited by the other settlers for partnership in farming. Our documents have gone to Harare for finalisation,” Nare said, without elaborating.

Ferguson’s son, Ian Jnr., this week said Nare had deployed his guards on the farm who he accused of interfering with wildlife water-points.

“They are shutting down water for wild animals. We have been patrolling with members of the police, but the invaders’ guards are cutting fences and shutting water for wild animals,” he said.

“They have used fence poles stolen from the game farm a few metres away from where they stole them. They cut fences and we have been having sleepless nights with poachers.”

Denlynian is one of the few wildlife conservancies in Beitbridge where various species of wildlife sought refuge as the human and wildlife conflict increased with the takeover of farms in 2000.

In 2006, the government, through a Cabinet decision, agreed that citrus farms and animal conservancies would not be put up for resettlement.

But a lands official at Beitbridge in 2010 is believed to have corruptly parcelled out land on Denylynian and Benfer Estates, which Ferguson (Snr.) successfully contested.

After Ferguson contested the move, then Lands, Land Reform and Rural Resettlement minister Douglas Mombeshora overturned the application in line with Cabinet’s decision.

A lawyer close to the case said there was an eviction order against Nare and the settlers, and a writ had been obtained.

“It is a matter of giving them notice and going to evict them. They have no claim to the farm and it is particularly interesting that people ignore our own laws,” said the lawyer.

Nare has gone on to build a state-of-the-art lodge inside the farm albeit in the peripheries of the Zhovhe Dam.