The chairperson of the provincial lands committee, ZANU PF’s Martin Dinha, handed down the order on Monday. He said that a team of police officers, district administrators and other government officials would be dispatched to the farms on Tuesday to pressure the white farmers to wind up their operations and leave. The farms have been earmarked for seizure under the land grab campaign that a regional human rights court said is unlawful.
Charles Taffs, the President of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) expressed concern for the fate of the farmers, saying such actions “undermine the agricultural sector.”
“This is a biased and racist campaign and it is of huge concern, especially since the country is starving. These farmers were farming in good faith and had started irrigating,” Taffs explained.
ZANU PF’s Dinha is also part of the Zimbabwean legal team that has been fighting against a landmark ruling in a South African court, which has upheld the regional ruling in Zimbabwe’s land grab. The Supreme Court of Appeal in South Africa last month dismissed an appeal lodged by the Zim government against the court decision, which ordered the compensation of some farmers who lost land in Zimbabwe.
Taffs told SW Radio Africa that this court decision could likely have triggered the latest threats against the remaining white farmers in Zimbabwe, explaining that “every time we do something like this, there is a counter measure by the government.”
The order from Dinha followed a similar, country wide directive from the Attorney General Johannes Tomana last month. Tomana said that all farmers who were “resisting” eviction must be arrested.
Taffs explained that another likely cause of this fresh campaign against the farmers is the fact that the country is once again headed towards elections.
“White farmers always bear the brunt of things when we head towards elections. And it’s already happening across the country,” Taffs warned.
Meanwhile, a group of Dutch farmers who lost land in Zimbabwe have stepped up their campaign to force the Zim government to compensate them for their seized land. The farmers, who were meant to be protected by a bilateral investment protection agreement with Zimbabwe, were evicted from their farms at the height of the land grab between 2000 and 2002.
The group of farmers took their case to the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), which ruled their favour in 2009 and ordered Zimbabwe to pay them 8.8 million euros compensation, with an additional 10% interest for every year since the farms were seized. Under this court decision they are now entitled to more than 23 million euros.
The Netherlands has since been pressuring Zimbabwe to make a payment plan and earlier this year, Finance Minister Tendai Biti promised to submit a proposal. But he has failed to do so.
“We wanted to take action earlier, but decided to wait for Biti’s proposal,” the group’s chairman Lion Benjamins told a Dutch daily newspaper, adding: “But now we’re sick of waiting, so have decided to take steps to show Zimbabwe we’re serious.”
The group has launched the website Justice Zimbabwe and is lobbying European parliamentarians to ensure that the EU refuses to lift its targeted sanctions on Zimbabwe until the compensation is paid.
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