Bigwigs in fresh land grabs
Financial Gazette 31/5/2018
Tabitha Mutenga Staff Reporter
ZIMBABWE last year experienced renewed land expropriations, with an increase in cases of powerful politicians and their cronies evicting beneficiaries of the land reform programme, especially those on prime agricultural land and wildlife sanctuaries.
A few remaining white farmers were also targets of the evictions, according to a State of Human Rights report compiled by the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum.
Some of the farm seizures were halted by the emergence of a new government led by President Emmerson Mnangagwa, which came into power after a military intervention forced former president Robert Mugabe to resign in November.
Launched last week, the report highlighted that property rights violations were rampant in the agricultural sector.
“In 2017, land invasions and arbitrary evictions continued unabated. To our knowledge, no white farmer from year 2000 up to now has been compensated for improvements to the land they had prior to the fast track land reform programme and no agreed valuation mechanism/matrix has been set by the government to determine the value of developments on the acquired farms,” the report said.
The report noted that two Chiredzi farmers, brothers Jeffrey and Henry Sommer, had almost lost their thriving intensive crocodile farming venture in a fresh land grab spree in the Lowveld, even after they had reportedly parcelled out some of their land to locals.
“The disturbances at the farm, with an annual export value of $1 million, threatened the future of more than 62 workers and the 23 500 reptiles at the farm.
“The Sommers were on the verge of losing their 71-hectare farm after one Gilbert Nyasha invaded it armed with an offer letter he received in 2012.”
The report also said that in June 2017, the military and several ZANU-PF politicians invaded Blackfordby College of Agriculture, one of the best agricultural training institutions in southern Africa.
There were concerns that equipment worth thousands of dollars could be seized from the tertiary institution.
The farm in Concession, Mashonaland Central province, measuring 1 350 hectares is owned by Tetrad Investment Bank, which is under provisional judicial management.
Also, on October 30, 2017, police officers raided and demolished Mazowe villagers’ homesteads at Manzou Farm in Mashonaland Central without a court order to justify the forced evictions. During the evictions, the police officers destroyed homesteads, household furniture and the villagers’ crops including maize and groundnuts. By destroying their homesteads and evicting them, officers had violated the farmers’ fundamental rights, including their right to property.
However, on March 2, 2018, the villagers were awarded more than $30 000 as compensation by the courts.
“In November 2017, ZANU-PF party activists reportedly invaded a white-owned commercial dairy farm just outside Chinhoyi town. This invasion came after former President Mugabe, who was seeking re-election in polls due in 2018, urged his supporters in June 2017 to grab all the few retraining white-owned commercial farms in the country to pave way for Zimbabweans who did not have access to land,” the report said.
In December 2017, it was reported that four out of 17 farmers resettled in 1989 in Mpapa in Mwenezi under a programme by Triangle Ltd, now Tongaat Hulett, had received letters of eviction.
They were ordered to wind down business at their 50-hectare farm by the end of December 2017.
The letters stated that the farms were gazetted in 2017 for compulsory acquisition by the Lands and Rural Resettlement Ministry on behalf of the Government of Zimbabwe and were now State land.