Zimbabwe serves eviction notices on last few white farmers

Zimbabwe serves eviction notices on last few white farmers

WHITE commercial farmers were driven out of their farms in a violent land grab

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By Lebo Nkatazo

ZIMBABWE has given the country’s last few remaining whites commercial farmers notices to leave their farms by September 30, it emerged Thursday.

The eviction notices, signed by the Didymus Mutasa, the Minister of Lands, Land Reform and Resettlement, say the farmers should have left the properties by February 4, but the government extended the period to enable them to wound up operations.

In an interview Thursday, one of the lawyers representing the farmers, David Drury of Harare law firm Gollop and Blank said: “We don’t know anyone who has been left out of the equation, apart from Dr (Timothy) Stamps.”

Stamps, a former Health Minister, is President Robert Mugabe’s advisor on health policy.

The eviction notices say those who fail to leave their farmers would be jailed in terms of the Gazetted Land (Consequential Provisions) Act.

“Your attention is drawn to the provisions of the Gazetted Land (Consequential Provisions) Act whose effective date is 20 December 2006,” reads part of the notice.

It said the said Act gave the farmers 45 days from the date it became effective to vacate their properties. That day was February 4.

“In view of the above you should have vacated on the 4th of February 2007 following an assessment of operations on the farm by the district technical committee and in line with guidelines drawn by my ministry authority is hereby granted to you to wind up your business and harvest your crop or dispose your livestock strictly up to the dates shown hereunder 30 September 2007,” the notice added.

The Gazetted Land (Consequential Provisions) Act, which repealed the Rural Land Occupiers (Protection from Eviction) Act makes it an offence to occupy or to continue to occupy land without lawful authority after it has been gazetted in accordance with section 16B(2)(a) of the Constitution.

Part of the Act reads: “If a former owner or occupier of Gazetted land who is not lawfully authorised to occupy, hold or use that land does not cease to occupy, hold or use that land after the expiry of the appropriate period referred to in subsection (2)(a) or (b), or, in the case of a former owner or occupier referred to in section 2(b), does not cease to occupy his or her living quarters in contravention of proviso (ii) to section 2(b), he or she shall be guilty of an offence and liable to a fine not exceeding level seven or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding two years or to both such fine and such imprisonment.”

Zimbabwe began a violent seizure of white commercial farms in 2000 after accusing former colonial power Britain of refusing to honour its Lancaster House commitment to compensate the farmers. At least 12 farmers were killed in violence.

A few hundred farmers still remain on commercial farms but they too will not escape the latest push by Mugabe's government.
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