Armed police help Grace aide invade farm
December 2, 2015
OVER 20 armed police officers reportedly escorted First Lady Grace Mugabe’s aide, Deputy Police Commissioner Olga Bungu, to evict prominent dairy farmer and liberation war sponsor, Gillian Munn from her Mashonganyika Farm in Goromonzi last week.
BY RICHARD CHIDZA
The family claims to have been heavily involved in the liberation war, where they funded Zanu PF war efforts and continued to support the party well into independence. Last Monday, the family and its farm workers had their property thrown out of the farm and dumped outside, where they watched helplessly as the property was soaked by rain.
“Now I have become a hot potato. Emmerson [Vice-President Mnangagwa] knows that my husband was there at Lancaster [House at which the agreement to grant the then Rhodesia independence was inked in 1979]. But now he is scared, he cannot say anything.
“I have spoken to [Douglas] Mombeshora [Lands minister]. He says he wants me to continue going to his office, and instead of resolving this issue, he wants to give me an alternative farm. But I do not need an alternative farm. I want my farm,” she said.
“On Saturday, I was picked up and detained at Goromonzi Police Station until my lawyers came to my rescue. I was in police cells until Sunday. Now I have been moved out by Bungu, but she is still following me around. She wants my dairy equipment”.
Mashonaland East provincial police spokesperson, Nolbert Muzondo said if the farmer had a problem with police conduct, she had a right to lodge a complaint.
“It seems she has a complaint against police and our procedure is that she can use our national complaints desk at Police General Headquarters,” he said, without specifically responding as to whether police had used brute force in the eviction.
Munn is now operating from a nearby farm, where a colleague has sheltered her family.
She said she would be approaching the Constitutional Court (ConCourt) for redress.
“I am going to the ConCourt and I will sue this woman [Bungu] for everything she has. She has disregarded a High Court appeal that should have suspended any other judgment that could have been passed. She wants everything I won, including accusing me of vanadalising my own property. It is insane,” she said.
President Robert Mugabe has in the past reportedly assured the Munns that they would be protected but seems to have developed an indifferent attitude to the widow’s plight.
Munn’s late husband owned a printing and publishing company, Munn Publications, which used to publish Prize Magazine to prop up Mugabe’s rag-tag guerilla army during the war.
The 209-hectare farm, registered in 2002, produces nearly 10 000 litres of milk per month, grows about 110 hectares of maize and employs over 100 workers.