South Africa has decided against granting asylum to white Zimbabwean opposition politician Roy Bennett, who fled his country two months ago amid fears for his life, his lawyers said on Friday.
Bennett, a former member of Parliament for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), sought asylum in South Africa in March after Zimbabwean police sought to question him over the discovery of an arms cache that security agents claimed was to be used to overthrow President Robert Mugabe’s government.
”His asylum application has been turned down,” said Jacob van Garderen of South Africa’s Lawyers for Human Rights, who is helping Bennett make his case.
Bennett plans to appeal the decision by the home affairs department, Van Garderen told Agence France-Presse.
”It’s true he is looking for political asylum in South Africa,” said MDC spokesperson Nelson Chamisa at the time.
Bennett lost his large coffee plantation in eastern Zimbabwe during Mugabe’s land reform programme launched in 2000, which saw nearly 4 000 of the 4 500 white Zimbabwean large-scale commercial farmers evicted from their land which was given to landless Zimbabweans.
The feisty lawmaker was in trouble in March after the discovery of a huge arms cache, in which a former white soldier, Mike Peter Hitschmann, was identified as the kingpin, and fled the country to avoid arrest.
Zimbabwe state authorities said Hitschmann, whom they described as a member of a shadowy organisation called the Zimbabwe Freedom Movement, was involved in stashing arms at various locations in the country.
State media reports said a Kalashnikov 47 assault rifle, seven Uzi machine guns, four FN rifles, 11 shotguns, six CZ pistols, four revolvers, 15 tear gas canisters and several thousand rounds of ammunition had been found at Hitschmann’s home.
The MDC denied any links to Hitschmann and claims he is a police reservist.
Jailed
Bennett was released from prison in June last year after serving eight months for shoving the justice minister during a heated debate in Parliament. He was jailed in 2004.
In the incident, Bennett traded blows with Patrick Chinamasa, the Parliamentary leader of the ruling Zanu-PF legislators and Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Minister, allegedly over racial insults during a debate over changing the country’s laws concerning livestock theft.
Bennett had charged at Chinamasa as he was making comments that ”agitated” Bennett.
”Again for the umpteenth time, he [Chinamasa] took attack and threw racial and all sorts of abuse at me. I confronted him and pushed. He fell over,” said Bennett, one of the three white MPs in the 150-member Parliament.
”Didymus Mutasa [the anti-corruption minister] kicked me from behind and I turned and pushed him,” said Bennett.
”These things get to you and you react and that is what I did. I don’t regret it,” Bennett said.
”Whatever the consequences, I am ready to die for Zimbabwe. I am a Zimbabwean, I am not a white man, I am not a black man,” he said.
A correspondent for the state-run Ziana news agency had said Bennett ”grabbed Chinamasa by the throat, shook him violently and pushed him to the ground”.
”While the minister was struggling to sit up, Bennett charged at him again, stood with his legs spread over him and threatened to assault him further,” he said.
Bennett had said he was opposed to the changes to the proposed law that was being discussed during the altercation, which will make it a mandatory for anyone convicted of livestock theft to be imprisoned for nine years.
The Zimbabwe Parliament at the time voted 53 to 42 ballots for the immediate imprisonment of Bennett. He was the first legislator in the nation’s history to be jailed by the Parliament.
Opposition officials at the time described the imprisonment of Zimbabwe-born Bennett, an outspoken and fluent speaker of the local Shona language, as vindictive.
Before the vote ratified the sentence, a Parliamentary panel, dominated by the ruling party, sentenced Bennett to a year in jail with hard labour for assaulting the two ministers.
Bennett, in a 35-minute address to Parliament, said he was ”sorry for the disturbance” on May 18 2004. — Sapa-AFP