Robert Mugabe turns the screw on Zimbabwe’s dwindling white farmers
President Robert http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=929 as he seeks a sixth term in office.
A few hundred landowners managed to http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=725, which began in 2000 and destroyed commercial agriculture, the backbone of the economy. But the president’s re-election campaign ahead of next weekend’s election is driven by the notion that the country’s independence is under threat.
He has long presented the farm confiscations as part of Zimbabwe’s http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3453 for freedom.
Deon Theron, a vice-president of the http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=771, is on trial in Harare magistrates’ court. He faces a two year prison sentence if he is convicted of trespassing on the farm he bought 24 years ago.His farm in Beatrice, about 40 miles south of Harare, used to produce about two per cent of all the milk consumed in the capital, but an eviction order was issued against the Therons a year ago.
Their property has been targeted by Elias Musakwe, an executive of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. He has planted maize, which will never germinate, on the cattle pasture, and is intimidating the family by parking a tractor against the Therons’ daughter’s bedroom window.
A court ruled this week that Mr Theron could not fight prosecution claims that a state document allowing them to stay on the farm was a forgery. “It is not fair, it’s not fair,” said Mrs Theron.
Scores of white farmers who have survived daily torment from Mr Mugabe’s travelling “war veterans” are now appearing in shabby courtrooms around the country, accused of defying eviction orders.
Zimbabwean-born George Fick and his wife Jill, who are also dairy farmers in Beatrice, went on trial in Harare this week and were told by the state that their desire to remain in their home was “frivolous and vexatious”.
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