Justice Francis Bere sitting in the Bulawayo High Court on Tuesday ordered the deputy sheriff to evict Nkomo who is also chairman of President Robert Mugabes ZANU PF party from Jijima lodge in Matabeleland North province to pave way for businessman Langton Masunda. You are required and directed to eject the said John Landa Nkomo and all persons claiming through him, his goods and possessions form and out of all occupation and possession whatsoever of the said ground and/or premises, Bere said in the order.
Jijima on a farm seized from a white farmer during the height of Mugabes chaotic land redistribution programme had been subject of an ownership wrangle after Nkomo, then land reform minister, allocated the farm to Masunda about five years ago only to try to grab the property allegedly after discovery at a later stage that the farm had a successful safari lodge on it. The dispute between Nkomo and Masunda over the lodge nearly turned fatal a month ago when the young brother to Masunda was shot five times by security officers employed by Nkomo.
The security officer, Eddie Sigoge, was charged with attempted murder and unlawful possession of a firearm and was granted bail when he appeared in court in Bulawayo last month. In ordering Nkomos ejection, Bere upheld an earlier ruling he made in 2006 where he found the attempts by Nkomo to cancel his original offer of the lodge to Masunda illegal.
The wrangle over Jijima lodge only helps to highlight the chaos, violence and thuggery that have characterised Mugabes land reforms he started in 2000. On paper, the land reforms were to benefit poor black peasant farmers deprived of arable land by former colonial governments but most of the best farms seized from whites ended up in the hands of Mugabes officials, their relatives and friends.
Land reform has led to hunger after Mugabes government failed to provide blacks resettled on former white farms with inputs and skills training to maintain production. Poor performance in the mainstay agricultural sector has also had far reaching consequences as hundreds of thousands of people have lost jobs while the manufacturing sector, starved of inputs from the sector, is operating below 15 percent of capacity.
Post published in: News