AFP, Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe | Tuesday
ZIMBABWEAN police have burned down huts and brick houses built by liberation war veterans who occupied a white-owned farm just south of the capital – but the veterans have vowed to stay on the land.
A reporter said dwellings erected by the veterans for about 100 black Zimbabweans on the Stoneridge farm in Chitungwiza, 10km south of Harare, were reduced to smouldering ruins.
But defiant war veterans refused to move, calling the crackdown an act of betrayal.
”Police officers started to set everything on fire and destroy everything around them,” said Chipo Dziki, one of the occupiers. ”They took us by surprise, it is betrayal.”
”We will stay until we get our land”, said another occupier, Mbuya Chembire. ”Even (President Robert) Mugabe won’t make us move.”
Witnesses said more than 100 police officers went to the farm on Monday night and ordered veterans to remove their belongings from their houses before setting the buildings on fire. Police did not order the veterans off the land.
The farm had been occupied since May, and war veterans had allotted parcels of land to about 100 people.
Since February, veterans of Zimbabwe’s independence war have led sometimes violent occupations of white-owned farms to urge the government to speed up its land reform plan.
Violence stemming from the occupations has left at least four white farmers and three black farm workers dead. Many others have been beaten and terrorised.
The state-owned daily Herald said the action against veterans showed that police were beginning to restore order.
The police have previously been accused of standing by or supporting the land occupations, which have largely been approved by Mugabe.
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