BULAWAYO Zanu (PF) chairman John Nkomo has filed an urgent High Court application seeking an order to stop his eviction from a lucrative safari farm, following a ruling by the same court more than a week ago authorising the deputy sheriff to expel him from the property.(Pictured: Zanu (PF) chairman John Nkomo)Justice Francis Bere sitting in the Bulawayo High Court ordered the deputy sheriff to evict Nkomo who is also a minister of state in the unity government from Jijima Lodge in the wildlife-rich Gwayi River Conservancy to pave way for businessman Langton Masunda, with whom he has wrangled over ownership of the safari business.
But Nkomo, through his lawyer, Christopher Dube-Banda, of Dube-Banda, Nzarayapenga and Partners, says last weeks ruling against him is suspect and, if carried out, would prejudice him since he had obtained hunting quotas for 2009.
If 1st respondent is allowed to execute the writ issued against me on 2 June 2009 I will suffer irreparable harm. The land allocated to me is in the Gwayi Conservancy area with its main activity being tourism.
I was given my hunting quota by the Department of Parks and Wildlife Authority for the 2009 hunting season. It is clear from the foregoing that 1st respondent is desperately in need of the occupation of the lodge to launch his illegal hunts, Nkomo wrote.
Masunda and the Deputy Sheriff are cited as the first and second respondents respectively. The matter has not been set down for a hearing.
Nkomo and Masunda have wrangled over Jijima located on a farm seized from a white farmer during the height of Mugabes chaotic land redistribution programme since five years ago when Nkomo, then land reform minister, allocated the property to Masunda only to try to grab it later allegedly after discovering that the farm had a successful safari lodge on it.
Nkomo who has lost numerous court challenges against Masunda, argues that the Lodge is his, saying it is within his Lugo Ranch which he allocated himself in 2003, a claim disputed by Masunda who insist the lodge belongs to him because it is within the boundary of his Volunteer farms 47, 48 and 49.
The dispute between Nkomo and Masunda over the lodge nearly turned fatal a month ago when the young brother to Masunda was shot five times by security officers employed by Nkomo.
The security officer, Eddie Sigoge, was charged with attempted murder and unlawful possession of a firearm and was granted bail when he appeared in court in Bulawayo last month.
The wrangle over Jijima Lodge only helps to highlight the chaos, violence and thuggery that have characterised Mugabes land reforms he started in 2000.
On paper, the land reforms were to benefit poor black peasant farmers deprived of arable land by former colonial governments but most of the best farms seized from whites ended up in the hands of Mugabes officials, their relatives and friends.
Land reform has led to hunger after Mugabes government failed to provide blacks resettled on former white farms with inputs and skills training to maintain production.
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 15 percent of capacity.