White farmer ejected after claim by UK doc

According to the Telegraph newspaper, cops caught Phillip Rankin unawares as they dug their way under the perimeter fence to his farm to bang on his door in the early hours of last Friday.

In September last year, Dr Sylvester Nyatsuro made Rankin aware that his tobacco farm had been awarded to him by the government. But it wasn’t until last Friday that police removed his property from the house and loaded it into a truck and drove to a police station.

Rankin’s lawyer Nyarodzoh Maposa told the Telegraph that the police who handcuffed his client did not have a warrant of arrest.  “All of this is lawless. It’s disgraceful, there’s no charge against him,” she said.

According to the report, an arrest warrant which was issued earlier was later suspended.

Rankin, who was later released, is reportedly staying with relatives on a nearby farm from where he told the British paper that he was “terribly shocked”.

Barry Rankin, one of Rankin’s children, said: “I think we have finally accepted that we are not going back to the farm. I have also cleared out our house on the farm to avoid our things being broken up as happened when the police took my parents furniture and their piano.”

“We have now consulted with our pastor and we know it is over,” he said. “I don’t know what will happen to the tobacco crop as we are not allowed to be here and work.”

Despairingly, he added: “We are all finished.”

Nyatsuro is a GP running a slimming clinic in Nottingham in the UK and is reportedly connected to the first family through his wife. The couple first arrived at the Kingston Deverill farm in September with a letter from the government allocating the land to them.

The report said a lawyer acting for the Nyatsuroas issued a statement to say they were awarded the farm “in full accordance with the requirements of the Government’s Minister of Land and Rural Settlement”.

The statement denied that Nyatsuro was among those who went to take possession of the farm. Lawyers also claim that Nyatsuro is a mere third party in the dispute which is between Rankin and the state.

Last year, Zimbabweans based in the UK demonstrated in Nottingham against the takeover of the farm.

Rankin joins a list of many white farmers who have been hounded off their farms since 2000. About 20 of them were killed during the same period.