OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Saturday
A ZIMBABWEAN game park which is internationally known for its advanced techniques in training and domesticating African elephant has been listed for seizure in the latest round of land grabs by President Robert Mugabe’s government.
The Imire game park, in the Wedza area 100km east of Harare, also has a thriving population of black rhinoceros, one of the most endangered species on earth.
The park was one of 108 white-owned farms listed for seizure as officials intensified moves to try and resettle thousands of blacks on the farms before the summer rains in line with Mugabe’s election promises in June this year.
Friday’s “preliminary notice to acquire land”, published in the state-controlled daily Herald newspaper, brings to 2 295 farms the government has listed since June.
Malcolm Vowles, deputy director of the Commercial Farmers’ Union, said groups of government officials, including soldiers, had formed “land committees” in farming districts to accelerate resettlement.
They were visiting farms and telling farmers that their land was being resettled “almost immediately”.
The farmers would be allowed to stay and carry on with crops already planted, but they would have to “coexist” with new settlers.
About 40 farms had been “officially” resettled, he said.
Work on many of the country’s 4200 commercial farms has been disrupted since February when guerrilla war veterans began a campaign of land invasions.
Mugabe backs the occupations, saying the veterans are involved in a “peaceful demonstration to claim their land”. He has also urged the police to ignore court orders to remove the squatters, and he has passed laws to remove the obligation for government to compensate farmers for the confiscation of their land.
The lawlessness on the country’s commercial farms is one of the main reasons for Zimbabwe’s isolation by the international community, which condemns Mugabe’s “land reform programme” as a violent, racist land-grab that will destroy the country’s once-robust economy.
This week, state radio quoted a senior government official as complaining that “settlers” officially allocated land on white farms in the Kadoma area 150km west of Harare were now selling their land to people living in nearby towns.