HARARE - Zimbabwean police on Thursday arrested three white farmers who are part of a group which took their case to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Tribunal challenging the country's land reform exercise.The three Matabeleland North farmers, Chris Jarret, Godfrey Goosen and
Saul Rogers were arrested and taken to Bulawayo Central police station.
One of the farmers coordinating the farmer’s legal challenge at the
Namibia based SADC Tribunal told ZimOnline yesterday that the three
farmers had been arrested but no charges had been laid against them.
"I can confirm that the three farmers have been arrested but their
lawyer Josphat Tshuma has not been told what their crime is though they
are already behind bars," said Ben Freeth one of the farmers who also
took his case to the SADC Tribunal.
He said the arrests are part of an attempt to discourage some of the
farmers who have already lost their farms from claiming compensation.
"Jarret lost his farm six years ago and is seeking compensation for the loss of his farm," said Freeth.
A chief superintendent Matsika has been identified as the officer in charge of the arrests.
No comment could be obtained from the police at the time of publication.
The SADC Tribunal ordered in a November ruling that the Zimbabwean
government should compensate the farmers who had lost their farms under
the country’s controversial and often violent land reform programme.
In its judgment the Tribunal ruled that the Zimbabwean government had
violated the SADC treaty governing the 15-nation regional bloc by
seizing the white-owned farms.
The Tribunal said the government was in breach of the treaty because its actions had been discriminatory to the farmers.
However President Robert Mugabe's government, which under the SADC
Treaty is required to uphold decisions of the Tribunal, has ignored the
ruling while top government officials and supporters of the ruling ZANU
PF party have continued to evict white farmers.
Government farm seizures which started in 2000 have resulted in the
majority of the about 4 500 white farmers being forcibly ejected from
their properties without being paid compensation for the land, which
Harare has refused to pay for saying it was stolen from blacks in the
first place.
The government has compensated some farmers for developments on the
land such as dams and farm buildings and says it is committed to
compensating all farmers for such improvements.
Land redistribution, that Mugabe says was necessary to correct a
colonial land ownership system that reserved the best land for whites
and banished blacks to poor soils, is blamed for plunging Zimbabwe into
food shortages after Harare failed to support black villagers resettled
on former white farms with inputs to maintain production.
Critics say Mugabe's cronies – and not ordinary peasants – benefited
the most from farm seizures with some of them ending up with as many as
six farms each against the government's stated one-man-one-farm policy.
Poor performance in the mainstay agricultural sector has also had far
reaching consequences as hundreds of thousands have lost jobs while the
manufacturing sector, starved of inputs from the sector, is operating
below 30 percent of capacity.
Zimbabwe has been hit by food shortages and a cholera outbreak that the
UN says has killed 3 229 people and infected 62 909 others across the
country – the worst death toll in Africa from an outbreak of the
normally preventable disease in 15 years – compounding the southern
African country's humanitarian crisis.
Zimbabweans hope a SADC-brokered unity government between Mugabe and
opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai would help ease the political
situation and allow the country to focus on tackling the economic
crisis and humanitarian crisis. – ZimOnline