Land invaders bash Mugabe relatives
By Staff Writer
Tuesday, 01 November 2011 13:55
HARARE – President Robert Mugabe’s cousin Chief Zvimba and 16 others are
smarting from violent attacks by newly resettled farmers as the black on
black war over farms intensifies.
Chief Zvimba, real name Stanley Urayayi Mhondoro, told the Daily News that
he had gathered his relatives to help prepare his tobacco fields when the
settlers launched the attack at Lion Kopje Farm in Banket last week.
“Eleven settlers and former farm workers and others mobilised from three
nearby farms came to my farm and attacked my relatives that were working in
the tobacco field,” Chief Zvimba said.
The chief said the assailants were from Mushangwa, Gumbu and Enddose farms.
“They wanted to burn the tractor but they ended up not doing this. They
attacked the tractor driver and farm workers with catapults, sticks, wire
and open hands,” the chief said, confirming he was a close relative of the
president.
The relatives who had come to help the chief all sustained different degrees
of injuries and were ferried to Chinhoyi hospital with the worst affected
receiving 14 stitches on the head.
Chief Zvimba ruled out politics saying the issue was purely a fight for farm
occupation.
He said four of the settlers were offered land at a farm 20kilometres from
his farm at Montgomery but were reluctant to go.
Cases of blacks targeting fellow blacks for farm takeovers have further
tainted Mugabe’s often violent land reform programme, which was touted as an
empowerment tool for landless blacks who received farms formerly owned by
whites.
Recent farm violence has, however, not been limited to black-on-black land
wars. Reports of farm attacks have been on the increase in farming areas
such as Chegutu where farmer Bruce Campbell was attacked in March this
year.
Campbell struggled with a mob of farm invaders at his property.
In September, another white farmer Collin Ziestman was brutally murdered at
his farm. His wife Tinka was also assaulted by unknown assailants.
Immediate past president of the Commercial Farmers Union Deon Theron said
the violence on the farms mirrored the general atmosphere in the country.
“What has happened shows that there is no law and order. People are allowed
to get away with breaking the law. It really shows that accountability isn’t
what it used to be because what we see today is that certain people are not
being held responsible for their actions,” Theron said.