A fresh wave of farm takeovers hit the southeastern Lowveld in Zimbabwe this week with Zanu-PF supporters and land officers seizing five plots with a ready-to-harvest sugarcane crop.
The farm owners, most of them South Africans, have since appealed to the South African embassy in Harare to intervene, reports the Zimbabwe Independent.
In a letter to Willem Geerlings, first secretary at the SA embassy, the farmers alleged that a Chiredzi lands officer, identified only as Mukonyora, another official identified as Guruvheti and a farmer, identified as Jambaya, invaded Hippo Valley Settlement, Holding 16, and gave the owner 30 days to vacate the property.
“Today, April 11, 2006, the Chiredzi lands officer Mukonyora and Guruvheti arrived on the farm to inform Wayne Petzer that the remainder of the farm has been taken over and that he has 30 days to get off,” reads the letter.
The letter said that the new farmer had walked around the homestead and told Petzer that he could harvest five hectares of the sugar cane and would be compensated for the remainder of the crop.
The team demanded that Petzer leave behind air conditioners, a borehole pump, a swimming pool pump, a hammer mill and two tractors..
“On the property there is a main homestead, a self-contained cottage and a large separate snooker room with kitchenette and toilet. The lands officer Guruvheti wants to immediately move into the snooker room. They insist that the current people in the cottage must move out immediately and that Petzer should have moved out by May 11, 2006,” the letter says.
The sugar-milling season starts on April 20, showing that the farm takeovers are targeted at reaping the sugarcane crop, said the newspaper.
Farmers in the area said harassment of sugarcane growers have been prevalent in Chiredzi, particularly towards the harvest period.
“The land officers have a long history of plot-hopping antics, especially Guruvheti,” one farmer said.
“We suspect that Guruvheti is still running his other plot on Fairrange [Mapanza] where he has placed a relative.”
Other farmers facing problems in the area include those on farms 14, 12, 17, 51 and 13.
At farm 13, the owner, Pierre Guimbeau, was surprised to be visited by a Masvingo province lands officer, identified as Nyokwe, on April 9, armed with an offer letter dated March 28, 2006 and signed by Lands Minister Didymus Mutasa.
“Nyokwe is transferring from Farm 53, where he averaged 10tonne/ha last season and has since abandoned this plot,” one farmer said.
“Nyokwe says he wants to negotiate the crop with Guimbeau who has put in all the inputs into this crop.” – Zimbabwe Independent