HARARE - Police Commissioner General Augustine Chihuri (Pictured) has spurned repeated requests for a crisis meeting with Zimbabwes commercial farmers, dashing any hopes of an end to lawlessness and violence on their properties.
The Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) had requested meetings on behalf of its members, who have borne the brunt of land seizures by President Robert Mugabes government.
The farms have, for months now, been besieged by marauding groups of militant supporters of Zanu (PF) under the guise of the land reform programme.
CFU vice-president Charles Taffs told The Zimbabwean that Chihuri, himself a beneficiary of Zimbabwes controversial land reform programme, had ignored their requests for a meeting.
We have asked for appointments with the commissioner, but they keep being cancelled at the last minute, said Taffs.
There seems to be a lot of indiscriminate crime that includes beatings, robberies, burning of property and theft of crops, but there is very little or no reaction from the police force at all.
The police keep telling us they cant react because these are political crimes.
Crime is a crime regardless of the politics of the day. The police force must be impartial and they are not acting in an impartial manner in this case, he said.
We want a just solution for this country. We are not enemies. We want the country to work again.
Only 400 out of the more than 4,000 commercial farmers who worked Zimbabwean land nine years ago have braved relentless abuse by the government, which seems determined to seize the remainder of the land.
President Mugabe is adamant Zimbabwes land belongs to the indigenous black population.
Mugabe told a Zanu (PF) youth conference two weeks ago that he would not hesitate to prosecute commercial farmers who were defying his governments orders to vacate their farms.
The government has refused to abide by a November 2008 order passed by the regional SADC tribunal that barred the continued seizure of land by the Zimbabwean government.
Post published in: News