HARARE Seventy-nine-year old widow Hester Theron was last Friday slapped with a three-month wholly suspend jail term for disobeying a court order to vacate her farm near Beatrice, her home since 1957.Theron the mother of Commercial Farmers Union president Deon Theron was given up to December 8 to vacate the 2 000 hectare Friedenthal farm to make way for a new black owner allocated the property President Robert Mugabes controversial farm redistribution programme.
Her son said: She has been sentenced to three months in prison wholly suspended for five years and must vacate the farm by 8 December. Mugabe has over the past decade driven most of Zimbabwes white farmers off the land in a campaign the derailed the mainstay agricultural sector to plunge the country into food shortages and economic crisis.
The Zimbabwean leader insists are his land reform are necessary to correct a colonial land tenure system that benefited whites and deprived blacks of arable land.
But critics say Mugabes 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 governments stated one-man-one-farm policy.
The Southern African Development Communitys Tribunal has declared Mugabes land reforms discriminatory, racist and illegal under the regional Treaty.
He has simply ignored the Tribunal ruling and instead allowed his followers to step farm seizures while also saying he will withdraw Zimbabwe from the Tribunal over its pronouncements on his farm expropriation programme.
Post published in: News