Harare | Tuesday
A ZIMBABWEAN white farmer charged with murder over violence on his land saw his bail application postponed on Monday as President Robert Mugabe’s government accused commercial farmers of “economic terrorism”.
A high court judge put off the bail hearing for three days in the case of John Bibby, a 70-year-old farmer arrested with more than 20 of his labourers after two government supporters died in September 15 clashes on his land.
Bibby’s lawyer, Ray Passaportis, said that the judge postponed the case until Thursday, after the government’s lawyer applied for more time to examine the evidence.
Information Minister Jonathan Moyo, one of Mugabe’s top aides, meanwhile accused the country’s 4 000 or so white farmers of colluding with journalists to commit “economic terrorism”.
Moyo told the state-run Herald newspaper that the Zimbabwe correspondent of Britain’s Independent newspaper, Basildon Peta, had assisted white farmers to spread false reports about the situation on their land.
“Commenting on what he does dignifies economic terrorism at a time when we should be combating it,” Moyo was on Monday quoted by the Herald as saying.
The Commercial Farmers Union last week stated that 570 tobacco farms had seen recent work stoppages, while 20 farms had been invaded by pro-government activists after the government had pledged to stop all invasions.
Veterans of Zimbabwe’s liberation war spearheaded the sometimes violent occupation of commercial farmland by activists of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front from early last year, in support of plans for land redistribution to the black majority.
The government early this month agreed to halt farm invasions in return for foreign financial support for land reform.
The incident on Bibby’s farm was one of several to follow that agreement.
Bibby has already spent nine days in custody, his lawyer said on Monday, describing the court postponement as “grossly unfair”.
The state alleges that Bibby and his workers attacked land occupiers trucked in for resettlement on Bibby’s Bita farm in Hwedza, 100 kilometres southeast of Harare.
However, Bibby’s security guards said the two men died after falling from a lorry and being run over by the government supporters who were ferrying them from farm to farm.
On September 7, the government signed a Nigerian-brokered deal in Abuja, committing Harare to stop violent invasions of white-owned farms in return for international funding of land reform, led by Britain as the former colonial power.
The meeting in the Nigerian capital gathered Commonwealth leaders concerned at Zanu-PF’s implementation of land reforms and accompanying violence and intimidation which has claimed well over 30 lives.
The government has taken the mostly white CFU to the Supreme Court to ask the nation’s highest court to declare the land reforms legal, and to declare that government has restored rule of law on the farms. – AFP
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