Harare | Thursday
A ZIMBABWEAN white farmer and 30 of his labourers have been formally charged in court with murder after violence when his land was invaded at the weekend, the government press reported on Thursday.
John Bibby (70) had initially been accused of inciting violence and being an accessory to murder before the murder charges against him and his employees were presented in court on Wednesday in Marondera in northwest Zimbabwe.
On Saturday, several dozen militant supporters of government plans to redistribute mainly white-owned farmland to landless blacks invaded Bibby’s farm at Bita, about 1000 kilometres southeast of Harare.
Police said that Bibby’s workers beat to death two of the people who went to the farm to help some of their number take possession of ground which had been allocated to them by President Robert Mugabe’s regime.
In vengeance for the killings, the farm invaders set fire to the homes of agricultural labourers and the farm offices, according to the police account.
However, the Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU) has stated that the men who died were accidentally killed when they fell from one of the packed lorries transporting activists around the area.
The army has since been deployed at Bita to prevent further trouble and looting.
The incident came after the government agreed at September 6 talks in Abuja, Nigeria, to put an end to violence which has been a feature of the land reform programme and to call a halt to the illegal occupation of farms.
In exchange, the former colonial power, Britain, made a strong commitment to provide “substantial” financial support for land redistribution.
The CFU has stated that violence continues unabated since the Abuja deal, which was struck at a meeting bringing together several Commonwealth members and the organisation’s chief executive.
The union, comprised mainly of white commercial farmers, also said that 22 farms have been newly occupied since September 6. Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s top judge has refused a call by white farmers for him to step down ahead of a crucial Supreme Court hearing on acquiring white-owned land for resettlement by blacks.
Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku — who was sworn in by President Robert Mugabe in August after his predecessor was pressured to quit — dismissed the farmers’ application and proceeded with the case.
The lawyer representing the white-led Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU) argued that the composition of the Supreme Court gave rise to “reasonable apprehension” of a biased judgement against them.
The CFU’s lawyer Adrian de Bourbon has alleged that two of the newly appointed judges, Misheck Cheda and Luke Malaba, had benefited from land that already seized from white farmers.
The lawyer said the bench had been selected “to overthrow two previous decisions of this court.”
In December the bench — then made up of four senior judges and former Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay who eventually retired under pressure from the government — ordered the government to end violence on white-owned farms.
Mugabe last month appointed three additional judges to the Supreme Court, after suffering a series of losses from the previous bench, which had described the government’s land acquisition programme as unlawful and unconstitutional.
The judges in December threatened to suspend further land acquisitions, and gave the government six months to ensure that that its reforms were carried out in accordance with the constitution.
Mugabe’s government is now seeking a declaration from the court allowing it to proceed with its land acquisition programme.
The CFU has also alleged that the current Chief Justice has criticised some of the bench’s earlier rulings against the land resettlement exercise.
For the past 18 months white-owned farms have been invaded by pro-government supporters calling for a speedy hand-over of the commercial farms to landless blacks. – AFP ZA*NOW:
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Text of the Abuja agreement on Zimbabwe September 7, 2001
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