Farmers compile blacklist as farm attacks continue

The list was revealed in a CFU report unveiled at the groups annual general meeting in Harare last week. The report follows the governments continued refusal to protect farmers from ongoing attacks and harassment by powerful army generals, government officials and ZANU PF loyalists.
CFU Vice President Deon Theron said in the report: This is probably one of the most important records which we are keeping, and will be extremely useful in the future.
During our compilation of this list of names, whether beneficiaries or perpetrators of violence, which have been taken from our above reports, it has been shown that there are a number of names that repeatedly appear on many of the reports, Theron said.
This has clearly shown that those individuals are not merely beneficiaries of property, but are suspected of being the major organisers of the ongoing conflict.
CFU President, Trevor Gifford has said the information was being sourced for national healing purposes.
At some stage in the future, said Gifford, justice and reconciliation would be part of the healing, and without justice there would be huge difficulty in getting reconciliation.
The CFU says it has recorded more than 1800 incidents on farms between August 2008 and June this year, including violent attacks, vandalism and looting of property, assaults on farm workers, burning of crops and incidents in which the police have flatly refused to assist farmers. According to the CFU, only 400 white commercial farmers remain on the farms, and of these, up to 170 are currently facing prosecution for defying governments order to vacate their farms, which have been designated for reallocation. A total of 66 farmers have been convicted and these include their workers.
The government meanwhile, has defiantly refused to honour a judgment passed by the SADC Tribunal in Windhoek in November last year, which barred the State from further repossessing white owned land. The government further rubbished a March 5, 2009 judgment by the same tribunal, which held it in contempt of its first order and referred the matter to the upcoming SADC summit.