Mutasa ranting again (06-02-07)

an eviction order
and this only after the farmer has been convicted, this means that some
3600 odd farmers were illegally evicted from their farms, many violently. This
has constituted a gross human rights abuse to these farmers and their
workers who have suffered probably most of all.

The one thing that I would like to straighten with the world media is
the misconception that Mugabe has taken the land for the landless.
Any investigation into what has happened in the last seven years and
even before that, the Gukurahundi (Matabeleland massacres), Murambatsvina
(destruction of the shanty towns etc.) and how he has beaten down with
force any opposition to his will. Who has all the most productive farms
anyway? It’s the elite, the Generals, his ministers and even important people who
are not Zimbabweans. He has put the very same people in charge of all the
Parastatals. (Government owned businesses) Mugabe had to have something
to give all his followers so to keep them loyal and the land was the only
thing he had left. He is desperate to stay in power until he dies, because he
faces genocide, and many other human rights charges, as did Hussein,
Mengistu and Charles Taylor. No! he did not take the land from the
white farmers to give to the landless; he took the land to keep himself in
power.
Several times the Commercial Farmers Union in Zimbabwe offered to
assist the Government with a legitimate redistribution of land, there were still
thousands of hectares of land available for this and many farmers were
willing to sell land for this exercise.

Several issues must be borne in mind about these tragic events.

1.This is a racial programme – a form of racial cleansing just as
savage as anything carried out by the Apartheid regime in South Africa with their
forced removals that are now being reversed by the South African
government.

2.The people affected own their farms and their homes – over 80 per
cent had permission from the Mugabe regime to buy their properties after
independence in 1980 when it was compulsory for farms to be offered to
theState for land resettlement if it was being sold.

3.These land owners are protected by the past and present
constitution.
They have broken no laws and have in good faith, planted crops that are
nowmaturing.

4.No compensation of any kind is being offered and what has been put
on the table represents a tiny part of the value of these assets.

5.Nearly all the farms taken over by force in the past 7 years are now
derelict and unproductive.

This is insanity and we will have every right to lock Mutasa and his
cohorts up in a mental asylum for what they are doing.

Harare says will arrest defiant white farmers
Harare – The Zimbabwean government says it will soon arrest white
farmers who failed to meet a weekend deadline to move out of their properties
to make way for newly resettled black farmers. State Security Minister
Didymus Mutasa, who is also in charge of land reforms, told Zim Online on
Monday that the police will swoop on the defiant white farmers who ignored the
3 February deadline to quit their farms. Under the government’s Gazetted
Farms(Consequential Provisions) Act, white farmers had until last Saturday
tomove out of the properties or face arrest. At least 150 out of the
remaining 600 white farmers were issued with eviction notices last year under the
new Act. The main white farmer representative body, the Commercial Farmers
Union (CFU) at the weekend advised its members to defy the directive to move
out saying arrests were the only way their case could be heard. “We are
still assessing who is gone and who has refused. Those who are clever have
already left their farms as required by law. “Those that are saying they will
defy the law will soon find out that they are not clever at all when the
police start doing their job. They will be arrested,” said Mutasa.

Mutasa is a close confidante of President Robert Mugabe. The security
minister last month caused a stir when he said that the government was
going ahead with plans to weed out all the remaining white farmers with only
a “few lucky ones” to remain on their properties. “We want to bring
finality to the land issue and those who stubbornly stand in our way will face
the music. We have enough laws, enough jails for anyone who compromises
government policies by deliberately breaking the law. We are not afraid
of white farmers, and our history shows that,” added Mutasa. Between 400
and 600 white farmers remain on the land out of the about 4 000 who were
farming in Zimbabwe before the government launched its chaotic and often
violent land redistribution exercise seven years ago. Zimbabwe, which is
grappling with its worst ever economic recession, has since 2000 relied on food
imports and handouts from international food agencies because the new
black farmers failed to maintain production on the former white farms. –
zIMoNLINE