Four men pleaded not guilty in the Harare High Court on Wednesday to charges of murdering David Stevens (48) the first white farmer to die in President Robert Mugabe’s seizure of farm land.
Stevens was abducted from his farm, Arizona, in the Macheke area 100km east of Harare on April 15, 2000. He was savagely assaulted and then shot dead at point-blank range with a shotgun, in the face and in the back.
During Mugabe’s self-proclaimed war against the country’s white farming community another 12 farmers and 31 of their workers died. Only 600 farmers still out of 4 500 are still on the land. A state witness, whose name cannot be disclosed to protect the person from reprisals, was quoted on Thursday by the weekly Financial Gazette as telling judge Benjamin Paradza that he had seen the drunken veterans drinking Stevens’ blood.
”One of them went and knelt over Stevens’ body and brought a container filled with blood, which they mixed with alcohol and shared among themselves,” the witness said.
A group of 15 was said to have abducted and tortured Stevens. Five were arrested soon after the killing but they were released in December 2000 when state lawyers pleaded lack of evidence against them.
After Stevens was abducted from his farm, he was briefly rescued by police and taken to the nearby police station. The mob of veterans then stormed the police station and dragged him away, in full view of the several officers on duty.
The Commercial Farmers’ Union said it had copies of sworn affidavits from three white farmers, who tried in vain to rescue Stevens but were captured by the veterans.
Police have had these eyewitness accounts of Stevens’ ”execution” since the first week after the incident. Four of the veterans — Richard Svisviro, Muyengwa Munyukwi, Charles Matanda and Daniel Chitekuteku — were rearrested for the trial. However, police were not able to trace the fifth man, Banda Katsvamudanga, since his release in 2000, the Financial Gazette said. – Sapa