Police arrest farm murder suspects
by Patricia Mpofu and Tobias Manyuchi Wednesday 24 November 2010
HARARE – Zimbabwe police have arrested two suspects over the killing of a
prominent white farmer last month, in a rare case when police have acted
swiftly against crime on commercial farms.
Former Zimbabwe Tobacco Association president Kobus Joubert was four weeks
ago shot dead at his farm near Chegutu town by armed robbers who got away
with money and two pistols.
The mainly white Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) said on Tuesday that it had
been told by the police that they had arrested the suspects and also
recovered the two pistols stolen during the robbery.
“We have been notified by Police CID that arrests have been made of people
suspected of being involved in the tragic murder of Chegutu farmer Mr Kobus
Joubert last month,” CFU director Hendrik Olivier said.
“We can also confirm that two pistols, which were allegedly stolen from Mr
Joubert during the robbery and the subsequent murder have been recovered and
positively identified.”
The shooting of Joubert at point-blank range once again drew attention to
the deteriorating situation on the few remaining white owned farms where
land invasions and violence have continued with the unity government of
President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai doing nothing
to restore order on farms.
Less than 400 white farmers still own land in the country, down from nearly
5,000 a decade ago when Mugabe began his chaotic and often violent programme
to seize white-owned farmland for redistribution to blacks.
Dozens of white farmers have been killed on the commercial farms in the last
decade, while police have routinely refused to intervene in cases where
white farmers have come under siege from land invaders.
In August 2008, Joubert, his wife and some of their farm workers spent weeks
camped on a highway roadside after they were evicted from their farm by a
senior ZANU-PF official but returned to their property after the late Vice
President Joseph Msika intervened. — ZimOnline