Harare | Sunday
SOME 150 men occupied a farm in central Zimbabwe on Saturday, in the first reported invasion since a breakthrough deal on land reform was signed two days earlier, the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) said.
CFU representative Jenni Williams said the farm invasion took place at around mid-day on Logan Lee farm in Beatrice, 40 kilometres south of the capital Harare.
“They did not want to talk. They had just come to destroy his property,” she said.
On Thursday, Commonwealth ministers meeting in Abuja brokered a deal between Zimbabwe and former colonial power Britain on land reform.
Zimbabwean Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge had said there were to be no more farm invasions.
Williams said the group of invaders were thought to be from the neighbouring Tsunga resettlement scheme. They assaulted farm workers and burnt down 20 farm houses, before leaving the farm.
The farm manager, Angus Brown, escaped unharmed, but he and his wife and baby were threatened.
“They were told, ‘You will not live until the end of the day’,” Williams said.
“If there is any sincerity behind the agreement from Abuja, then it needs to get to the ground urgently,” said Guy Watson-Smith, the CFU chairman for the Mashonaland East region.
“The most disturbing aspect of this afternoon has been that police were informed at 12:45 pm, but failed to react until after the event at 5pm, when the groups had already wreaked havoc and left,” he said.
Police representative Wayne Bvudzijena said that he had no information about the incident.
At the meeting in Abuja on Thursday, Zimbabwe agreed to end illegal occupations of farmland and in return, Britain agreed to make a “significant financial contribution” to funding a land reform programme.
Mudenge said in Harare on Friday that, with money from the international community to buy land for resettlement, the violence ravaging Zimbabwe’s countryside would end on its own.
“Without frustration (over land reforms), we expect that people will be acting in their usual way. As we know, the people of Zimbabwe are by culture and civilization a peaceful people,” he said.
Meanwhile, police stormed the Bulawayo offices of the main opposition party on Saturday and arrested three members, on the first day of mayoral elections, said an opposition candidate.
“We were surrounded by riot police. They took away one of our vans and arrested the bodyguards of one of our MPs,” said the mayoral candidate of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Japhet Ndabeni-Ncube.
The city on Saturday saw over 7 000 voters cast their ballots peacefully in mayoral elections pitting the MDC’s candidate against the candidate for the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF).
Ndabeni-Ncube said five Land Rovers and “a truckload of riot police” descended on the MDC offices in Bulawayo shortly after 6pm. They arrested the bodyguards working for Bulawayo South MDC MP David Coltart, Ndabeni-Ncube said.
Although there was no reported violence during the Saturday polling, the MDC accused Zanu-PF of transporting thousands of their supporters from out of town to vote for their candidate.
MDC secretary-general, Welshman Ncube, said they had taken pictures of the buses allegedly involved in ferrying the ruling party supporters into the city. Zanu-PF denied the allegations. – AFP
Text of the Abuja agreement on Zimbabwe September 7, 2001