First black farmer among 60 farmers evicted in Zimbabwe: union

Apr 8, 2008, 14:23 GMT

Harare - Militia loyal to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe have evicted around 60 farmers, including one black farmer, from their land over the past three days, the country's Commercial Farmers' Union said.

'We had the first commercial black farmer evicted today,' Trevor Gifford, CFU president told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, estimating that by the weekend the number of families chased off their land would number 'in the hundreds.'

In the case of the black farmer, 'they said he had voted for the opposition,' Gifford said. The farm workers' houses had been burnt and the workers who remained on the farm had been intimidated and abused, he said.

It was not clear how many farms had been actually invaded by the youths. A farmer who spoke to dpa Monday on condition of anonymity said a group of around 100 war veterans had ordered him off his farm but had remained beyond the perimeter fence.

The farmer, who had taken his wife and four children to Harare, said he had called the police when the group arrived and started banging on his gate in the dead of the night but police did not react.

Around 300 white farmers were still on the land in Zimbabwe before the weekend, down from around 4,500 eight years ago, when the war veterans began seizing land with Mugabe's assent, kickstarting the country's disastrous land reform programme.

The evictions began with three farms in Masvingo province, south of Harare Saturday.

By Tuesday the campaign of intimidation had spread to Mashonaland West, Mashonaland East and Mashonaland Central provinces. Centenary village in Mashonaland Central had been completely emptied of white farmers, a farmer told dpa.

'It's orchestrated, it's coming from the top,' said Gifford, who has a farm in Chipinge, in the south-east of the country.

'There is so much land in Zimbabwe. There is enough for everyone,' he said in distress.

Analysts say Mugabe is scapegoating white farmers for his Zanu-PF party's defeat in March 29 parliamentary elections and his apparent second-place finish behind Tsvangirai in concomitant presidential elections.

The election was 'a way to reopen the invasion of Zimbabwe by the whites,' the head of the Mugabe-loyal War Veterans Association said last week, accusing white farmers of conspiring with the opposition to retake their farms from blacks.

Dozens of white farmers and black farm workers were killed in the 2000 land grabs, which decimated commercial farming, ultimately destroying the economy.

So far no-one has been injured in this campaign, according to the CFU.