At least 40 more white farmers face eviction in Zimbabwe after they received orders from the government to cease operations and vacate their land, a farmers’ union said on Monday.
”So far 40 eviction notices have been given out by the government,” Emily Crookes, a spokesperson for the Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU), said.
Crookes said that the number could rise as not all affected farmers may have notified the union.
”Some farmers have received threats from unidentified people while others are doing their best to contain the situation,” said the spokesperson. ”Others are just waiting, assessing the situation from their houses.”
She said several timber and coffee-plantation owners were among those who have been ordered to leave, while other sugar-cane farmers in the south-eastern Chiredzi district face a similar predicament.
Crookes said the eviction notices effectively barred the affected farmers from working on their land.
At least 500 white farmers remain in Zimbabwe following controversial land reforms, which saw President Robert Mugabe’s government seizing at least 4 000 farms for redistribution to landless blacks.
The land reforms have been blamed for food shortages in what was once Southern Africa’s breadbasket, with critics saying the majority of those who have benefited from the land reforms lacked the means and skills to farm.
Lands Minister Didymus Mutasa confirmed that a new batch of eviction notices had been distributed without giving an exact number.
The minister told Agence France-Presse that the government would forge ahead with the programme, which the government characterises as a correction of historical imbalances that favoured white colonial settlers.
”The fact that we are issuing out eviction notices shows that there are some people who are in need of land,” Mutasa said.
”When we are finished with the land reform, we will speak for ourselves and we will let the whole world know.”
‘Your farm has been acquired’
In September ZimOnline reported that the Zimbabwean government had renewed seizing white-owned farms, despite official statements that the process had ended.
”Your farm has been acquired by the government and we therefore request you to wind up your business before the start of the rainy season,” Masvingo provincial governor Willard Chiwewe wrote to local farmer John Sparrow.
”You are advised to comply with this order since you risk being forcibly removed … We also take this opportunity to tell you that you are not allowed to move out with any of your farming equipment,” the letter added.
This was despite the government saying that farm evictions had ended as it was concentrating on raising production on land already acquired from whites.
Influential Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Gideon Gono, as well as vice-presidents Joseph Msika and Joice Mujuru, on separate occasions this year publicly called for an end to farm evictions.
A former official of the white-representative Commercial Farmers’ Union in Masvingo, Mike Nickson, described the situation as unbearable. Farmers had no option but ”to surrender our properties in order to save our lives”, he added.
Under the government’s land-seizure laws, a farmer cannot challenge the expropriation of his land by the government in court and faces jail for removing equipment from the farm. — Sapa-AFP