At Nancy Carmel farm near the town of Chegutu, a farm labourer was
severely burnt after a mob of farm invaders assaulted him and threw him
into a fire, a farmer, Ben Freath, told ZimOnline.
The invaders
have also been stealing mangoes at the farm, according to Freath, who
is part of a group of white farmers who successfully challenged the
legality of the government’s land reform programme at the regional SADC
Tribunal.
"About US$50 000 worth of mango has been affected and
150 workers are not allowed to work. One of them was thrown into the
fire .. they beat him up and he suffered a broken scull," Freath said.
At
Stokedale farm, also near Chegutu, invaders forced operations to a halt
and oranges worth US$2 million could go to waste as a result, according
to Justice for Agriculture (JAG), a pressure group for white farmers.
A
group of invaders stormed Wolghamton farm in Chipinge in the east of
the country over the holidays and attempted to stop owner Trevor
Gifford from harvesting timber at the farm.
Gifford, who is also
president of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) that is the main
representative body for the country’s white farmers, said invaders
showed him a "fraudulent court order" that he should stop harvesting
the timber.
"They had a fraudulent court document in which the
beneficiary wanted to get the police to stop me from harvesting saying
he had obtained a court order to do so," said Gifford.
Freath
said farmers had written to Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai who formed
a power-sharing government with President Robert Mugabe last February
and has called for the arrest and prosecution of farm invaders.
"We
have made reports but the Joint Operations Command (JOC) is controlling
the situation. We have written to the Prime Minister (Morgan
Tsvangirai) regarding what is happening but at this stage it is being
allowed to continue and it is difficult for the PM or anyone else to
stop it," said Freath.
The JOC, a committee of top securocrats
and powerful politicians, is said to be behind the mobs of Mugabe’s
ZANU PF supporters, war veterans and state security agents that began
invading farms almost immediately after formation of an inclusive
government in February between Tsvangirai, President Robert Mugabe and
Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara.
The JOC that includes
the commanders of the police and army – and should have been defunct by
now in terms of the power-sharing agreement between Zimbabwe’s
political parties — is said to be opposed to the new government and is
seen as blocking calls by Tsvangirai last month on the police to arrest
farm invaders.
Commercial farmers’ organisations say invaders
have since February raided at least 100 of the about 300 remaining
white-owned commercial farms, a development that has intensified doubts
over whether the unity government will withstand attempts by ZANU PF
hardliners to sabotage it.
The International Monetary Fund and
Western countries have – on top of other conditions – made it clear
that hey would not consider giving aid to the Harare government while
farm invasion continue.
Zimbabwe, also grappling with its worst
ever economic crisis, has since 2000 when land reforms began, relied on
food imports and handouts from international food agencies mainly due
to failure by resettled black peasants to maintain production on former
white farms.
Poor performance in the mainstay agricultural
sector has also had far reaching consequences as hundreds of thousands
of people have lost jobs while the manufacturing sector, starved of
inputs from the sector, is operating below 30 percent of capacity.
The
SADC Tribunal has ruled that Mugabe’s controversial programme to seize
white-owned land from whites for redistribution to landless blacks was
racist, discriminatory and illegal under the SADC Treaty to which
Zimbabwe is signatory.
Mugabe, who has in the past rejected the
few rulings by Zimbabwean courts against his land reforms, rejected the
regional Tribunal ruling and vowed to press on with farm seizures. –
ZimOnline