cops have NOT turned over a new leafThe ministers statements could not have been further from the truth as experienced by his dealings with the police, said W.A.I. Ferguson, the managing director of two companies operating as the Wildlife Conservation Area,
Although I cant comment on what is happening in other areas of Zimbabwe, what is happening in the Beit Bridge District, is in direct contradiction and worse, than the claims in the media, said Ferguson in a letter to the minister.
The ZRP Beit Bridge Rural and District Office have refused to provide the Messenger of the High Court any assistance to carry out a High Court Order and, even worse, have pursued a policy of arrests and harassment in defiance of the order granted by the High Court.
These same officers have refused to accept reports and provide RRB numbers for serious criminal acts of theft of company assets, poaching and assault of company staff as they claim it is political.
Ferguson provided the minister with full details of the long list of harassment to which his son and his staff had been subjected in a 10-year long crusade by a senior minister to remove his companies from the Farm.
Members of our staff were told by Police and National Parks Officers and numerous communal farmers that there is a senior minister behind the police behaviour, he said.
He has won a lengthy court battle but still the police refuse to implement the judgement.
The judgement grants the eviction of all occupants other than company staff from the properties, and interdicts the Police to assist in the removal of all illegal occupants and to further to assure that the Companys Safaris and General and Trophy Hunting operations are not interfered with by any one.
It would seem that these Police Officers and National Parks, dont, or dont want, to understand the true legal position which lays out clearly that the companies are in law the Legal Occupants and the Appropriate Authority in terms of the Wildlife Act, Ferguson wrote to Makone.
This is disgusting and uncivilised behaviour and a serious infringement of ones Legal and Civil rights with distinct racial overtones, and its about time action is taken to rein in this culture of belligerent behaviour by the Police, he added.
Makones response is awaited.
Post published in: News