Police led farm invasion leaves hundreds homeless
By Alex Bell
29 August 2011
Another farm invasion, this time in the Chegutu area, has left hundreds of
people homeless, as the campaign to seize the remaining commercial land in
Zimbabwe continues.
Farmer Ken Bartholomew was forced off his property over the weekend while
awaiting an urgent court appeal to stop his Wakefield
farm from being taken over. Bartholomew is supposed to have court sanctioned
protection on his land, after winning a previous High Court order allowing
him to remain there.
But a magistrate earlier this month moved against this High Court order, and
Bartholomew and his farm workers were all forced off the land over the
weekend.
The eviction was carried out by police officers and a group of about 50
armed men, who destroyed Bartholomew’s property while they were evicting
him. Bartholomew and his family are now trying to find another home, but the
fate of his 200 strong workforce and their families, who were also evicted,
remains unclear.
Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) President Charles Taffs told SW Radio Africa
on Monday that the campaign against the commercial farming community “is
starting to accelerate again.” He said it was “particularly worrying that
the police themselves led this eviction, in direct contravention of a court
order.”
“In terms of the rule of law, this just shows how far gone we are,” Taffs
said.
Taffs also explained that the loss to the agricultural sector in terms of
labour, has been huge since the start of the land grab campaign in 2000.
“There are at least two million people who have been displaced since then.
So we have faced an almost complete labour drain, because most people have
either fled to other countries or worse,” Taffs said.
He added: “It just doesn’t make any political or economic sense to continue
this. We have a situation where there is a huge food deficit, where people
are losing jobs. It makes no sense to me.”
Taffs said there has been virtually no reaction from government, including
the MDC, despite what he said was a “general understanding” of what needs to
be done to stop the land attacks and the ongoing destruction of the
agricultural sector.
“We’ve spoken to government and our position is they need to put a
moratorium on land takeovers right now. We’ve told them that ‘if you
continue this there will be no investment in the country’, but no one is
saying anything, not the Prime Minister, not the Finance Ministry, no one,”
Taffs said.
Bartholomew is at least the fourth commercial farmer to be evicted this
month alone, with farm invasions being reported in Banket, Karoi and
Nyazura. In Nyazura, more than 2,000 workers and their families have been
left destitute since March because of a wave of invasions in the area.
Despite this there has been no move to protect them, their rights, or to
stop the ongoing unlawful seizure of land.