CFU legal adviser, Marc Carrie-Wilson, said in a report that persecution of former white commercial farmers had not relented, nearly three years after the much-celebrated September 2008 signing of a power-sharing pact between President Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai.
"Criminal Prosecutions of approximately 170 Commercial Farmers for contravening section 3(3) of the Gazetted Lands (Consequential Provisions) Act [Chapter 20: 28] are pending," Carrie-Wilson said.
The prosecutions are likely to be hurried by the state to enable evictions of the remaining farmers to make way for incoming beneficiaries.
Carrie-Wilson said CFU records also indicated that approximately 32 commercial farmers and 29 farm workers had been convicted since 2009, whilst eight farmers were acquitted.
"The majority of those acquitted have already vacated the farms and are precluded from returning, whilst others are simply remaining in their homesteads but cannot continue their operations," he said.
The Attorney General's Office has, since 2009, stepped up prosecution of white farmers it claims are refusing to vacate land acquired by the government for the purpose of redistribution to landless blacks.
This is despite the fact that the Southern African Development (SADC) Tribunal ruled in 2008 that the government's land reform programme was discriminatory and illegal under the SADC Treaty.
Post published in: Agriculture