In its latest clampdown on civil liberties, Zimbabwe’s government announced plans on Wednesday to seize tractors and other equipment from white farmers thrown off their properties under President Robert Mugabe’s farm seizure programme.
Owners selling, damaging or immobilising their machinery face a fine or up to two years in jail, said the presidential decree, published in an official notice.
“It’s suddenly a crime to have a piece of equipment you cannot use because you have been forced off your farm,” said John Worsely-Worswick, head of the Justice for Agriculture farmers’ organisation.
The decree empowers the Agriculture Ministry and its representatives to “enter any land or premises to ascertain whether there is any farm equipment or materials not being used for agricultural purposes”.
Mugabe has said the farm seizures, which began in this Southern African nation three years ago, were an effort to correct colonial-era injustices that gave about 4Â 000 whites about one-third of the country’s productive land in a country of more than 12-million people.
The notice said farmers could claim compensation for all property ceded to the state. Worsely-Worswick said despite its promises the government has failed to pay compensation for seized land and owners are skeptical about payment for confiscated equipment.
He said many displaced farmers have stored their equipment in hopes of returning to their farms or selling it to survive.
“This is daylight robbery. It is vindictive and intimidatory. Mugabe is keen we give up altogether and pack and go,” he said, arguing that the presidential order violates constitutional rights of ownership.
The Commercial Farmers Union, representing a few hundred white farmers still on their land, said its lawyers are studying the decree.
Vehicles, tractors and other equipment farmers took from their properties have been kept in warehouses, storage lots or auction houses.
The often-violent farm seizures, along with erratic rains, have been blamed for crippling Zimbabwe’s agriculture-based economy, leading to record inflation and unemployment and acute shortages of food, gasoline and essential goods.
The independent Famine Early Warning Systems Network estimated earlier this month that as many as six million people, including about one million urban residents, will need food aid in the first three months of next year. — Sapa-AP
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