Hundreds of families made homeless by a police raid in which their huts were burnt down on a farm in Zimbabwe’s Mashonaland West province have accused President Robert Mugabe’s sister Sabina of exploitation.
In recent weeks police have begun evicting ”new peasant farmers” from farms in a move the settlers say is designed to clear land for senior members of the ruling Zanu-PF party.
The evicted farmers say the ruling party ordered them onto the farms in early 2000.
”The Zimbabwe Landless Farmers Association (ZLFA) is urging the minister of state for land reform, John Nkomo, to stop the processing of 99 year leases with immediate effect because the leases were being given to undeserving people who came through the back door,” read a statement from the newly-formed ZLFA’s chairperson Moses Mazhande.
”Our organisation is calling for the immediate disbanding of the eviction board headed by deputy police commissioner Godwin Matanga which has embarked on a violent and disorderly eviction of the poor and landless people of Zimbabwe to accommodate the rich and politically powerful,” Mazhande added, saying the ZLFA would ”lead a fresh wave of farm invasions if the corruption and disorderly distribution of land is not stopped”.
The landless farmers say that farm invasions to evict white farmers were ordered by President Robert Mugabe and then Cabinet secretary Charles Utete in February 2000.
Soon after the eviction of white farmers began, Zimbabwe’s state-controlled press published the names of thousands of peasant farmers who had been allocated land under the country’s ”land reform programme”.
”In our view the ministry of lands and agriculture used our names to mislead the people into believing the programme was transparent,” said Mazhande.
Meanwhile, former residents of a farm acquired by senior Zanu-PF officials are living in makeshift shelters on the side of the road. Many say their food stores were destroyed during their evictions. – Sapa