A white commercial farmer was chased off his land in Zimbabwe and the manager of a coffee plantation was beaten up by gun-toting men, the owners of the properties told Agence France Presse (AFP) on Thursday.
Allan Warner, a South African farm manager, received 12 stitches on his head after he was beaten up by a group of about 15 armed men at a coffee farm near the town of Chipinge, in southeastern Zimbabwe.
”We were on the farm on Wednesday morning when we were attacked by a group of militia armed with a Uzi automatic gun,” said coffee farmer David Wilding-Davies.
”Shots were fired and a farm manager was attacked with a steel pipe, resulting in him having to get 12 stitches,” Wilding-Davies, a Canadian investor who bought the Ashanti coffee farm in 2000, told AFP by telephone.
Another commercial farmer in the area, Gideon Mostert, who earlier this year won a stay of execution against an eviction order, said he was told to ”go off the land”.
”I have packed up all my belongings and have moved,” he added, saying that he was living in a trailer-home in the town of Chipinge, about 430km southeast of the capital Harare.
Police spokesperson Wayne Bvudzijena said that ”he was unaware of any incidents in Chipinge”.
He said the only case reported was that of a white farmer who was assaulted last month and added that the case was currently before the courts.
Zimbabwe has since 2000 seized about 4 000 farms and redistributed them to new farmers under its land reform programme, which aims at redressing colonial imbalances when white farmers owned most of the country’s arable land.
A controversial constitutional amendment approved by President Robert Mugabe earlier this month allows the state to assume ownership of farms immediately after a property has been listed for expropriation, making it impossible for white farmers to seek legal redress.
Fewer than 500 white farmers remain in the country. The white Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU) has condemned the incidents and urged authorities to ”stop this campaign of assault and harassment of its members and blatant flouting of international human rights”.
CFU spokesperson Kim Devlin said however that ”at the moment it appears that the incidents were isolated”.
Running on empty
Crippling fuel shortages in Zimbabwe’s second city of Bulawayo have brought almost all essential services to a halt, the mayor said on Thursday.
Japhet Ndabeni-Ncube said Bulawayo’s entire fleet of municipal vehicles was off the road, and burst sewerage and water pipes were left unrepaired.
Only five of the city’s 12 ambulances were able to run at the moment, and the number of fire engines has also been reduced, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) mayor said.
”The general services of council are not being carried out,” Ndabeni-Ncube said, adding that this was impacting heavily on the welfare of the city’s 1,4-million residents.
Bulawayo, with its wide tree-lined avenues and low-rise colonial-era buildings, is not the only city to be badly affected by Zimbabwe’s current fuel shortages.
Last week the capital Harare was reported to have only one fire engine on the road with just a quarter tank of fuel left. Municipal authorities said they were being forced to buy fuel on the black market to keep municipal services operating.
Earlier this month the government hiked the price of diesel and petrol by more than 100%, but the measure has not improved availability. As fuel becomes scarcer, it is reportedly being sold on the black market for as much as Z$120 000 ($4,61) a litre.
Zimbabwe is in the throes of economic crisis, marked by acute shortages of foreign currency needed to import essential requirements like fuel.
The privately-owned Daily Mirror earlier reported that the price of bread had increased dramatically. While the government last month set the price of bread at Z$7 500 (28 US cents) per loaf, it was now selling for at least Z$13 000 (50 US cents).
More sophisticated varieties of bread are selling for between Z$25 000 and Z$32 000 (96 US cents, $1,23) per loaf, the paper said.
”We have received reports of bread going up to Z$25 000. What we understand is that the price of bread is controlled and it is illegal for bakeries to increase prices,” Tonderai Mukeredzi, the public relations manager of the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe (CCZ) told the paper.
Last month bakers said bread would have to retail at Z$12 000 a loaf to earn a 20% return. But the authorities were said to be against a hike of that margin.
Previously bread sold at Z$4 500 (17 US cents) a loaf. – Sapa-AFP, Sapa-DPA