Lowveld farm seizure cases go to court Monday
By Tererai Karimakwenda
12 January, 2012
A group of commercial farmers whose properties in Zimbabwe were confiscated
are due to appear in Chiredzi Magistrates’ Court on Monday, facing the
criminal charge of “illegally occupying State Land without a permit”.
The land in question refers to their houses on the farms, which they
continued to occupy after losing the rest of their land and agricultural
equipment, as top officials in the Mugabe regime grabbed prime land under
the banner of the so-called land redistribution programme.
Peter Henning’s farm was confiscated in 2003 and is one of the accused in
court on Monday. He told SW Radio Africa on Thursday that his property was
protected by a bilateral trade protection agreement, but this made no
difference. Henning is South African and the others facing similar charges
are Mauritian and Swiss. Zimbabwean Robert Style is also in court on Monday
for refusing to leave his farm.
“We all have bilateral agreements.” Henning said but he explained that the
Zimbabwe government refuses to honour these agreements that are meant to to
provide protection.
Also due to stand trial on 16th January are Mauritian nationals Benoit
Lagesse and Benoit Fayd’herbe and Swiss national Theresa Warth.
The chaotic seizure of commercial farms by the Mugabe regime has caused much
suffering in the farming communities and destroyed the country’s food
production created mass hunger and a dependency on donor hand outs.
“It has been traumatic. I had a large staff and all my senior staff died
from stress. There was nothing I could do. Not even hospitalization. They
all died from stress because they could not find work in their trade
anywhere and it killed them,” Henning said.
Charles Taffs, President of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), said there
has been an escalation of farm seizures and intimidation following Robert
Mugabe’s speech at the ZANU-PF congress in December. Mugabe said the
remaining white-owned farms should be urgently taken.
Regarding enforcement of protection agreements, Taffs said nothing has been
done by the coalition government.
CFU figures show that Zimbabwe faces the lowest yield of maize in 50 years
this year. “About 247,000 hectares were planted which should give us 350,000
tonnes of maize, versus consumption needs of 2 million tones. We are in
serious trouble,” Taffs explained.
The farming expert said Malawi has stopped exporting maize to neighboring
countries due to a drop in their own production, leaving Zimbabwe with no
hope of importing from there.
Regarding the affected farm workers, Taffs said roughly 2 million people
were housed on commercial farms – about 350,000 families. The government’s
figures claim that 166,000 families were resettled. This is less than half
the total evicted from the farms but the CFU also dispute these figures and
say resettlement has been absolutely minimal.
The regional human rights tribunal in Namibia ruled that Zimbabwe’s land
redistribution was racially discriminatory, constitutionally illegal and
dispossessed owners had to be compensated for their loss.
But the Zimbabwean government ignored the ruling and SADC leaders suspended
the tribunal’s operations, rather than deal with the Mugabe regime.