Messages From Zimbabwe

Multinational Swiss food giant Nestle on Tuesday sought to allay fears that it had resumed purchasing “blood milk” from a farm owned by the wife of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, insisting that it was maintaining its stance of sourcing milk “exclusively from contracted farmers.”

The Swiss-based company, which courted controversy last year after it emerged that it was the main buyer of milk from a dairy farm owned by Grace Mugabe, denied reports that it had apparently agreed to a deal that could see it once again indirectly buying milk from Gushungo Dairy Estate.

A Nestle spokesperson said that it no longer had any direct or indirect ties with Gushungo farm.

“Nestle reiterates its commitment to source milk exclusively from its contracted farmers,” the spokesperson said.

Nestle Zimbabwe shut down its Harare factory in December following weeks of pressure from pro-Mugabe militias and empowerment groups to resume purchases of milk from a dairy farm owned by the president’s wife.

It only resumed operations last week after an assurance by Industry Minister Welshman Ncube that milk from Gushungo Dairy Estate would now be absorbed by local processors and not the Swiss-based firm.

Nestle stopped buying from the dairy farm in October but not before an international protest by human rights groups which triggered calls for a worldwide boycott of its products.

The Zimbabwean First Lady reportedly gained control of the dairy as a beneficiary of her husband’s controversial and internationally criticised land-reform programme.

The decision to stop milk purchases from Mugabe’s Gushungo Dairy Estate did not go down well with local indigenous pressure groups led by the pro-Mugabe Affirmative Action Group (AAG) which said the move was tantamount to the company imposing sanctions on the country.

Agriculture Minister Joseph Made, Indigenisation and Empowerment Minister Saviour Kasukuwere and the AAG last month led a group of protesters that allegedly threatened Nestle with closure unless it resumed the milk purchases.

(Source)

The South African government has an obligation to protect the rights of the South African farmer evicted from land in Zimbabwe last week, civil rights initiative AfriForum said on Monday.

It said it had asked Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies to intervene urgently to safeguard the lives and property of Ray Finaughty and his family.

Finaughty, who farmed cattle, chickens and tobacco at Rusape, was reportedly given three hours by invaders to abandon his farm on Christmas eve.

AfriForum spokesman Willie Spies said that in terms of a North Gauteng High Court order, Finaughty was entitled to protection in term of an investment agreement signed last month by both South Africa and Zimbabwe.

“Unless assurances are received from the minister soon that steps have been taken to protect Mr Finaughty and his family’s lives and property, AfriForum will go ahead with urgent legal action to ensure this,” Spies said.

“It is a tragedy that innocent South African citizens are subjected to this kind of harassment just before Christmas.”

According to website www.zimbabwesituation.com, Finaughty and his family are safe and in Harare.

It said though he had handed over part of his farm for President Robert Mugabe’s government land reform programme, in 2007 a senior Reserve Bank employee had tried to seize the rest.

Finaughty had since then been in court on numerous occasions to try to retain his land.

Finaughty was one of 79 commercial farmers who last year won a ruling from the Southern African Development Community Tribunal in Namibia that Mugabe’s land grabs were unlawful.

(Source)

President Robert Mugabe’s former chief media policeman Tafataona Mahoso has invaded a commercial farm near Mutare, giving the white owner only 48 hours to vacate the property that had been his home for years.

Top military commanders, officials and supporters of Mugabe’s ZANU PF party have stepped farm seizures despite formation of a unity government nine months ago and a ruling by the SADC Tribunal outlawing land grabs.

A devastated Charles Bezuidenhout told of how Mahoso – who ordered the closure of independent newspapers including the Daily News during his time as chairman of the now defunct Media and Information Commission – last month stormed his Welverdien Farm accompanied by an army of AREX officers and announced he was taking over the property.

Bezuidenhout initially resisted Mahoso’s attempts to evict him apparently because the former journalism lecturer did not produce an offer letter from the government showing that he had been allocated the farm.

Mahoso went away only to return this month with an offer letter for the 200-hectare farm and told Bezuidenhout to leave immediately.

When Bezuidenhout attempted to seek help from local police he was simply told that if Mahoso – earmarked by Mugabe’s ZANU PF party to head the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe – wanted the property then the farmer had to make way.

“Its the law of the jungle really. Mahoso and Agritex people produced an offer letter and just took the farm just like that,” said Bezuidenhout.

Earlier Bezuidenhout had accepted a government offer to subdivide his farm between himself and state-appointed “settlers”, an arrangement government officials assured the farmer would allow him to continue farming. But that was until Mahoso turned up demanding the piece that Bezuidenhout had kept after subdivision of his farm.

Mahoso did not answer his phone when The Zimbabwean on Sunday tried to contact him last Friday for comment on the matter.

(Source)

Whenever I look at the charred ruin of what a few weeks ago was our home, and see on my bed when I close my eyes the flames that engulfed everything we owned, I can not help thinking of the flames that, to the nationalists of Germany, were the final solution to the Jewish question sixty years ago.

My wife’s grandfather, Landale Train, used to tell us of when, as a South African prisoner of war next to Dachau concentration camp, he used to smell the sweet sickly smoke of the burning Jews from the crematorium incinerators.  The very word, “holocaust,” comes, I understand, from the Hebrew word “olah” which when translated to the Greek is holokausten.  It means “a burnt offering to the Lord.”

Gradually, terribly, the German National Socialists had been working towards the final solution of the Jewish question for over two decades.  It culminated in the grand titled, “Kristallnacht,” where thousands of Jewish homes and synagogues and businesses were burnt down in November 1938.  The SS wrote at the time: “we no longer hear the world screaming…we shall take the Jewish question to its final solution.  It is total elimination…” All police stations were told beforehand in a directive from the Gestapo chief that: “actions against Jews and especially their synagogues will take place in all Germany.  These are not to be interfered with.”  The burning began and the victims of destruction were arrested.  In the next few days 30,000 people were sent to Dachau and other camps.  The concentration camps had begun.  Landale smelt the smoke of their final annihilation a few years later from Stalag 4.

Living in Zimbabwe, I can not help feeling that a NAZI nationalist type agenda lives on in the hearts of some of the African leaders today.  Just as racism was the central and pervasive theme of NAZI ideology, so it is under Mugabe in our time.  Propaganda has to portray a simple message to a mass audience.  Just as  the nationalist agenda in Germany taught people to hate other people that are not the same, so the nationalist agenda in Zimbabwe mirrors this aim. The message being spun to the party adherents is that all Zimbabwe’s problems are related to the white man.  Mugabe calls the white men “criminals” just as Hitler called the Jews “criminals.”  The NAZI party talked of their rise to power and the sorting out of the Jewish question as the beginning of a German “renaissance.”  Echoes of the German “renaissance” live on in the “African renaissance” where white men can not be called “Africans” by the black nationalist leaders because of their pigmentation.  They can not belong.

The white population, which at its height numbered  270,000 in Zimbabwe, has been in a state of exodus ever since the black nationalist racist policies began here.  It has now been whittled down to perhaps 20,000.  The relentless purge of white farmers in Zimbabwe which continues, has seen ninety percent of farmers being forcibly and illegally evicted over the last 7 years.  We have left our homes and livelihoods without compensation, through a persecution process that has left some of my friends dead and others severely debilitated or traumatised.  Most of our homes and other property has been ruined or burnt.  Further, the invasions have resulted in over a million farm workers losing their homes and livelihoods too.

We live in a country where a desert stares out through the furtive eyes of so many of our soul scorched compatriots.  Anne Frank wrote in her diary a little before she was captured in her attic and taken away and burnt at the age of 15: “that’s the difficulty in these times: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to meet the horrible truth and be shattered…”

After they burnt our house my nine year old son Joshua, who saw the only home he had ever known consumed before his eyes asked me: “is water stronger than fire; or is fire stronger than water?”

I thought a bit and I said to him: “fire is very strong and consumes everything if water isn’t available to quench it – but if there is water, fires are extinguished and fire is weaker.”  Unfortunately, at out home, we did not have water because the thugs that have been persecuting us, had stolen our tractors and water carts and other fire fighting equipment; and so they laughed while our home burnt because they knew that the fire would burn everything we had.

There is a metaphor there.  The nationalist fire that burns Zimbabwe with racial hatred burns on so strongly because nobody has cared enough or been brave enough to pour enough water on it and to put it out.  So it was in Germany.  Indifference served the NAZI cause. The small acts of complicity allowed the arrogance and cruelty of power to consume the Jews and ultimately destroy Germany.  All of us have memories of times we should have done something and didn’t.  In Germany not one of the 1.4 million workers on the railways that transported people to their deaths is known to have protested or resigned.  At the Wannasee conference where the “final solution” was agreed in January 1942 there was no voice of opposition despite the fact that half the delegates were intelligent and educated people with doctorates from German universities.

Have the Western “civilised” nations learned anything from the holocaust?  If such racist practices were to take place against minority groups in Western nations today in a climate of  fear, would there be an outcry? Or would it be easier to allow it all to take place again?  In Africa, despite  an African International Court – the SADC Tribunal – ruling that the confiscation process of our home and farm is racist and illegal, nobody in the western nations halls of power appears to be willing to lift a finger to stop the rule of law and human rights breakdown.  The money rather goes to treat the symptoms.  Zimbabwe is now the most food aid dependant country on earth.  We also have the lowest life expectancy on earth; and the madness is just allowed to go on by the rest of the world.  More than that, yesterday I heard that our local police officer in charge, Chief Inspector Manika, who has allowed the brutalisation of our workers and destruction and burning of our property, has been sent on a peace keeping mission with the United Nations to Liberia!

When my parents-in-laws house was burnt on the farm, two days after our own,  the fire consumed a battered wallet that had been from Landale.  In it there was a treasured photograph of my mother-in-law as a little child with “Stalag 4” stamped on the back.  It survived that holocaust of the 1940s and was carried with  Landale till the day he died.  It came to Angela recently.  Last month, in Zimbabwe’s version of the holocaust, it went up as the smoke of black nationalist incense – an offering to their “Lord.”  The solution to the black nationalists white problem was in hand.

The German writer, Von Weizacker wrote for his people after the holocaust: “whoever closes his eyes to the past becomes blind to the present.  Whoever does not wish to remember inhumanity becomes susceptible to the dangers of new infestation.”  It is sad that the most of the Western leaders of today have such short memories.

(Source)

Background:  The Beattie family were some of the most productive farmers in Zimbabwe.  When the rule of law prevailed they used to grow 1300 hectares of crops under irrigation and 1700 hectares of crops dry land.

They also had a substantial livestock production enterprise.  In 2009 the 300 hectares of citrus trees are now all but completely ruined.  The approximately 3000 tons of commercial maize off 400 hectares and 600 tons of seed maize off 100 hectares is not able to be planted this planting season.  The 800 hectares of soya beans that they grew each year producing approximately 2000 tons of soya is not able to be planted in 2009 either.  The 800 hectares wheat crop which produced 5000 tons of wheat each year was also nonexistent this winter.  This year the invaders stopped all wheat from being grown on the farm and did not grow any themselves.  With the Zimbabwean national crop in 2009 the lowest ever at approximately 20,000 tons, the Beattie family alone could have increased the national crop by 20 percent if law and order were allowed to prevail in Zimbabwe.  The Beattie family used to employ between 1200 and 1400 workers in peak season.  This year the majority of these workers are unemployed.  63 double houses as well as 5 managers’ houses and 7 cottages on their estate have been taken over with the occupants being removed without eviction orders from any court.

Below are just some of the events that the Chegutu police have allowed to take place over the last few months that have led to such a dramatic break down in this once very productive farming operation:

14 August 2009:  Invader Hanyani and people from the Ministry of lands came to demand use of cottage in garden of main homestead.

15 August 2009: The front gate was smashed and the locks removed.  5 vehicles drove into the garden and the invaders spent the whole night drinking and dancing.  Fires were lit on the lawn. A police report was made RRB no. 0611011 but Chegutu police did nothing to arrest the perpetrators.

16 August 2009:  A goat was slaughtered and cooked on the lawn by the invaders while invaders carried on getting drunk.  Invader Hanyani and Nicholas led the break in to the main house area.  The cottage was then occupied and the furniture removed.  Sue Beattie was assaulted and threatened with a large iron bar to her neck.  Mr. Thomas Beattie finally got a police team out which included Assistant Inspector Bepura; Inspector Sasa and Inspector Zengeni.  Mrs. Beattie laid a charge against those who had assaulted her. Police put pressure on Mr. Beattie to allow invader Hanyani and his wife to move into the cottage that they had broken into.

17 August 2009 and beyond: Sue Beattie had a doctors report regarding her bruised neck from the assault.  Given previous severe medical problems with her trachea the assault was potentially life threatening.  This report was taken to police Inspector Sasa in Chegutu police.  As at 24 November 2009 no follow up or arrests have been made.  Invaders Hanyani, Nicholas and others moved into the cottage.  Sue Beattie was then away until 10 October 2009 attending to her sick son, Hamish, who died at the age of 39 on the 5 October.  In the meantime the pressure and harassment from the invaders continued with them parking their vehicles in the garden by the main homestead, drinking, playing loud music at all hours of day and night and letting the Beattie’s dogs out.

9 October 2009: The invaders stole pipes and 95 liters of milk.  This was reported to Chegutu police but no arrests were made [RRB no. 0694062].

23 October 2009: The lock was broken to the stable office by the invaders. This was reported to Chegutu police but no arrests were made [RRB no. 0699144]. Thomas Beattie was threatened by the invaders. This was reported to Chegutu police but no arrest were made [RRB no. 0699145].

28 October 2009:  Nicholas demanded of Sue Beattie, with threats and abuse, that the garden equipment be removed from the shed next to the back door of the homestead.  Sue Beattie made a report to police on 29 October and when police did nothing made a second report with Thomas Beattie on the 30 October.  When nothing happened to restore law and order they also submitted a letter to the Officer in charge Chegutu police but still nothing happened to stop the invaders.

1 November 2009:  Police told Thomas Beattie that he must remove his guards.  Invader Hanyani threatened Thomas Beattie with violence.

2 November 2009:  The stable block of out buildings near to the homestead was taken over by invader Hanyani.  Invader Hanyani vandalized the stables by knocking down the interior walls and blocking up the doors.  A lock was removed from the access gate.  Buckets and a watering can and a badza were stolen by the invaders from the garden.

5 November 2009: Sue Beattie wrote a letter to invader Hanyani which was copied to the police asking invader Hanyani not to continue to harass her and disturb the peace and to return her stolen garden implements.

15 November 2009: Thomas Beattie was threatened by Nicholas and another new invader called Seti who said he was there to make sure that he evicted the Beattie’s.  Thomas Beattie left to get his guards and make a report to the police.  The police came out and invader Nicolas made a false report that Thomas Beattie had made racist comments.  The police threatened to arrest both parties.

22 November 2009:  Invader Hanyani put his own lock on the main gate.

23 November 2009:  Invaders locked the Beatties out of their home.  They chased Thomas Beattie with sjamboks and sticks.  The Beatties workers in the citrus orchards were also chased away.  A report was made to the Chegutu police but no arrests were made [RRB no. 0699145] and the Beatties were blocked from getting to their home that night.

24 November 2009:  Another report is made to the Chegutu police.  Invader Hanyani said that he would give the Beattie’s a key to the gate where he had also put an armed guard.  He did not do so.  Invader Seti threatened violence with a sjambok but eventually allowed Sue Beattie to her house on foot.  The oil from the generator was stolen as well as the diesel from the tractor in the invaded stable yard.  A report to Police was made but no one was arrested [ report RRB no. 0699159 ].

25 November 2009:  Sue Beattie took video footage of invader Nicolas coming at her in a very threatening manner.  He proceeded to swear abuse at her and threaten her.

26 November 2009:  Lands officer Kunonga along with invader Hanyani and other thugs arrived early at the Beattie’s home early in the morning to demand that the Beattie’s vacate their home.  A report was made to police.  At time of writing the situation is very threatening and Chegutu police still refuse to stop the harassment.  Strategic fires have been lit around the thatched double storey homestead and the threat of being burnt out is very real.  The member in charge Chegutu Police Station, Inspector Zengeni, the stood down lands officer Kunonga and Edna Madzongwe are all involved in this lawless attack.

(Source: via email)

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has defended land reforms blamed for plunging his people into starvation and lashed out at the West for imposing “inhuman sanctions.”

Addressing a UN food summit Tuesday, Mugabe said the policy under which thousands of white-owned commercial farms were seized in 2000 was a quest for “equity and justice.”

He blamed the subsequent meltdown of Zimbabwe‘s economy on “hostile interventions” by “neo-colonialist enemies” that have imposed “illegal and inhuman sanctions.”

Western countries have slapped travel bans and asset freezes on Mugabe and his top aides. The ban does not apply to United Nations summits.

(Source)

A former leading coffee farm in Zimbabwe, owned by Roy Bennett in Chimanimani, is now ground for illegal activities including, sell of opaque beer and gold panning.

Radio VOP has established that one of the cottages at the former farmhouse of Deputy Agriculture Minister designate and Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) treasurer general, Bennett, currently facing terrorism charges, is now being used to sell traditional brewed beer by Solomon  Mashingaidze, a war veteran, who invaded the property during the height of the land invasions in 2002.

Mashingaidze, sells traditional beer (seven days ) to fellow invaders who have abandoned farming and have resorted to gold panning in the farm.

The place popularly known as “kwaPachedu” has become popular with workers from surrounding farms and timber Estates and gold panners who frequent it especially during month ends and weekends.

Ironically Pachedu is Bennett’s nickname which he got from the local community for his friendly and harmonious working relationships with them.

“We are trying to keep our workers here motivated by selling them traditional beer at very cheap prices. Before we started brewing the beer workers were shunning us and preferring to work at nearby timber estates. I was given the permission to sell beer in this building by our local party leadership,” said Mashingaidze in an interview with Radio VOP.

Mashingaidze is also accused of exploiting farm workers by giving them traditional beer in exchange of labour at his plot.

Both the cottage and the farm house, which according to government policy is supposed to be communally used either as a school or clinic, is now in a dilapidated state. The farm house has been vandalised and stripped off things like water taps, bathing tubs and window panes.

All the coffee bushes at the farm have been destroyed and replaced by pockets of maize and rapoko fields.

Bennett, who is due in Court on November 09, is still fighting to get back his farm.

(Source)

The Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) has condemned Robert Mugabe’s remarks at the just ended Zanu PF youth conference in the capital in which the veteran leader attacked remaining white commercial farmers.

“The speech to the ZANU (PF) youth may provide fuel for further politically motivated violence and disturbances on commercial farms at a time when peace and stability are required to ensure confidence and increased agricultural production in the current summer cropping season,” CFU President Deon Theron said in a statement.

CFU said the statements by Mugabe are  ”contrary” to the spirit of the Global Political Agreement signed by Mugabe his one-time rival Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

Mugabe at the conference attacked western powers saying these ‘bloody whites’ who want to poke their nose in our business ‘should leave us alone.’

Mugabe warned farmers who resist to move from farms that have been allocated to new farmers saying ‘I will just send the police to drive them away.’

However, the CFU says they have been complying with the government led land reform programme but their members are being discriminated in getting land to farm.

“The CFU would like to place on record that farmers have complied with the criteria set out by the Ministry of Lands, Land Reform and resettlement in that applications have been made to continue farming and occupation of their farms. To date,regrettably, Government has not responded to the numerous applications which were made,” Theron said.

Although, Mugabe reiterated that white farmers who were booted out of their properties as a result of the controversial land reform programme which started in 2000 to date were to be compensated CFU said the majority of their members are yet to be paid.

“We request that those of our members and former members, who may so desire, be adequately and fairly compensated for their improvements, equipment and materials without delay and without prejudice to any other claims they may have against the state,” the CFU said.

“It is regrettable that the vast majority of our members and former members,  the majority of whom were driven off their farms over the past 10 years, have not received any form of compensation.”

Zimbabwe land reform has been condemned by western countries as several white farmers were killed by Mugabe’s militants and replaced by inexperienced farmers.

Zimbabwe has been reduced to a basket case due to the failure by the new farmers to produce enough food to feed the nation and export.

(Source)

Two large explosions were heard on Mount Carmel farm in the Chegutu district of Zimbabwe on Tuesday, less than a week after Mike Campbell’s homestead was burnt to the ground.

Farm workers who heard the explosions saw dust billowing into the air above the trees shrouding the ruined house and observed army personnel in the vicinity.

Earlier in the week, a reporter was told by a group of the thugs who had previously forced Mike Campbell (74) and his wife Angela (67) from their home that an arms cache had been discovered and that Campbell would be arrested.

“The situation is absurd,” said Ben Freeth, Campbell’s son-in-law, who also farms on Mount Carmel.

“The injuries Mike sustained following our abduction in June last year were so severe that he has become quite frail.  His only objective is to return to the farm and help restore the country to food security.”

Claims by Zanu PF that arms caches have been discovered are not new.  In 2006 for example, three Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) officials were arrested after police said they had found an arms cache in the eastern city of Mutare.

Zanu PF’s modus operandi has been to arrange for caches to be planted on targeted properties and then to arrest those they wish to silence, claiming they are planning to overthrow the government.

Two police guards are currently stationed at the remains of Mike Campbell’s house, precluding access to the area.

Freeth’s own home, a few hundred metres away, was destroyed in a raging inferno on Sunday September 6.

Since the tractors and fire-fighting equipment had been commandeered by the invaders, there was no way of stopping the blaze.

Three workers’ cottages and Laura Freeth’s linen factory, which employed 60 women from the farm, were also destroyed.

“It’s impossible for us to get anywhere close to Mike’s house to establish the current situation,” said Freeth.  “When there were similar circumstances on the Etheredges’ farm and they tried to investigate, they were shot at by the police.”

Freeth said the Chegutu police continued to thwart investigations of arson and the theft of property from Campbell’s home.

“Lorry loads of fertilizer were also stolen from our sheds but there has been no move by the police to follow up with these reports,” he said.

Suggestions by the invaders that the Campbell homestead fire was caused by an electrical fault as opposed to arson are premature.

“We went to ZESA (the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority) to report the fire but to date there has been no investigation into its cause,” said Freeth.

“However, Chief Inspector Manika from Chegutu Police Station has also claimed prematurely that it was an electrical fault.”

Police at Chegutu have also failed to follow up a litany of previous reports submitted by Freeth and other beleaguered farmers in the district.

These include reports of farm workers being beaten up, resulting in such serious injuries as fractured skulls, house breaking, looting and the theft of tractors and equipment as well as all of Mount Carmel’s crops for the 2009 season.

Current rumours in the district suggest that Nathan Shamuyarira, Zanu PF’ elderly secretary for information, who claims to have been allocated the previously prosperous farm, has offered one of the stolen tractors to his lawyer for outstanding legal fees.

Shamuyarira, who is well into his eighties, has no previous farming experience.  Most of the commercial farms taken over by senior Zanu PF officials and cronies have been asset stripped and their crops stolen.

In Campbell’s case, the Chegutu police have consistently failed to assist the deputy sheriff to evict the invaders who have reaped or destroyed his mango, orange, sunflower and maize crops.

In October 2007, following attempts by the Mugabe regime to acquire Mount Carmel farm, Campbell took the unprecedented step of challenging the government in the Southern African Development Community (SADC)’s human rights court.
Seventy-seven other commercial farmers joined the case.

On June 29, 2008, the day Robert Mugabe was sworn in as president following the fraudulent, violence-ridden elections, Mike and Angela Campbell and Ben Freeth were abducted.

They were viciously beaten for hours and then forced at gunpoint to sign a piece of paper stating they would withdraw their case from the SADC Tribunal.

In a landmark judgement on November 28, the Tribunal ruled that the farmers had a legal right to remain on their land.

The Government of Zimbabwe was ordered to protect the farmers against future invasions and to allow them to continue farming operations.

However, despite the SADC ruling, Campbell, Freeth and their 500 workers have suffered continuous victimisation and violence.

Campbell also has two Zimbabwean High Court orders against the invaders.  On April 20, 2009 the High Court gave a provisional order evicting the invaders.  This was served on them the next day but the situation became very hostile as most were armed with guns.

A week later, a second provisional order was gained in the High Court, reinforcing the first, but still nothing was done by the police.

During May, “Landmine”, the leader of the invaders, arrived at the Freeths’ house and threatened “blood shed” while waving a gun at the back door.

On June 5, the SADC Tribunal ruled that the Government of Zimbabwe was in contempt of court and referred the government to the SADC Summit (September 2-8) for appropriate action.

This latest outrage on Mount Carmel farm comes just two days after the SADC Summit in Kinshasa, which failed to address the ongoing Zimbabwean crisis.

“In this situation, where the rule of law has totally broken down, we cannot understand the wall of silence from SADC, who set up the region’s internationally respected Tribunal,” concluded Freeth.

(Source)

The violations on Karori Farm continue unabated as police refuse to act.

Armed soldiers of the ZNA have still prevented the delivery of any crops from the farm.  There is 150 tons of tobacco and 500 tons of maize waiting to be delivered but Mujaji insists that nothing will leave unless Lock agrees to giving him the farm.  He has also shut down all operations for the umpteenth time to try and force us to comply.  He has already stolen our irrigation pipes and pumps which we cannot access or use and has used the soldiers to prevent any equipment from leaving the farm.

The tobacco season is nearly over and still tobacco has not been delivered for sale nor the maize in a country where maize is desperately short.  The Unity Govt seems powerless to act on this lawlessness as the army through sheer force are doing what they want for self enrichment.

What was once a highly productive farm seems will now become another worthless dust bowl.

(Source: by email)