Racial Discrimination in Zimbabwe: A systematic program of abuse (Part 5)

By Ben Freeth

On August 3, 2000 the Financial Gazette reported: “Mugabe has dismissed advice from his new cabinet to order independence war veterans off occupied white‐owned farms and instead has personally assured the ex‐fighter, leader Chenjerai Hunzvi, of his support of the seizures.”

Amnesty for farm invasion crimes

On August 23, 2000 the Herald reported President Mugabe as saying: “The war veterans are merely trespassing….. the country is peaceful so we can’t say there is no rule of law.” Soon afterwards, an amnesty was declared by the President on all “political” crimes, including almost all officially reported crimes relating to the farm invasions.

Fear of white farmers to assert rights through courts

On September 26, 2000 the (state‐owned) Herald reported: “Vice President (Joseph) Msika yesterday warned white commercial farmers over their attempts to derail the fast track land reform programme through the courts.”

This and other similar statements and warnings about using the courts have led to many people being afraid to assert their rights in the courts. The vast majority of white farmers have not tried to assert their right to protection of the law in the courts. They saw the court judgement on March 17, 2000 being ignored and countless other court orders being similarly ignored. (We have access to many affidavits on the lack of the rule of law where court orders were ignored concerning lawlessness on white‐owned farms).

Illegality of farm invasions

On December 7, 2000 the Minister of Justice, Patrick Chinamasa, after the Supreme Court judgement by Judge (Anthony) Gubbay came out declaring the invasions illegal, was reported in the (State‐owned) Herald as saying regarding “white judges” that “it was foolish magnanimity on our part to have appointed these judges.”

Intimidation of white judges

Within a couple of months, all white judges had left the Supreme Court bench. The Daily Telegraph from the UK reported: “Justice McNally, the one remaining white in the Supreme Court said after his meeting with (Justice Minister Patrick) Chinamasa: ‘We were told very nicely and politely that we should go; take our leave and go, otherwise anything can happen. It was said very frankly that they didn’t want any of us to come to any harm.’”

Violence on white‐owned farms

At the same time, the murder of white farmers had continued. After the murder of Henry Elsworth on his farm in the Midlands, President Mugabe was reported as saying on December 14, 2000:

“The white man is not indigenous to Africa. Africa is for Africans. Zimbabwe is for Zimbabweans. Our party must continue to strike fear into the heart of the white man who is the real enemy.”

On December 31, 2000, the Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU) did a survey and found that among other things, 1,600 white‐owned farms had been invaded and that on them there had been 17 murders; 26 rapes; 459 abductions; 424 serious assaults; 3,890 minor assaults; and 3,853 death threats.

There had also been massive production losses which would begin to tell in the state of the economy and food security in the subsequent year and beyond.

Illegal allocation of white‐owned properties

Despite the Supreme Court order to stop invasions and the allocation of land by government Minister (Joseph) Made, (the Minister of Lands, Agricultural and Rural Resettlement), he was reported in the (State‐owned) Herald as saying:

“We have resolved to go ahead and allocate land on all gazette (white‐owned) properties even before court confirmation and we will attend to legal
issues later.”

During an Independence Day speech on April 18, 2002 President Mugabe was quoted as saying:

“These crooks (whites) we inherited as part of our population. We cannot expect them to have straightened up, to be honest people and an honest community. Yes, some of them are good people but they remain cheats, they remain dishonest.”

Acquisition orders on white‐owned farms

On May 8, 2002 Amendment 6 to the Land Acquisition Act went through Parliament. This was due to give all farmers with Section 8 acquisition orders31 (these were exclusively on white‐owned farms), 45 days to stop farming and a further 45 days to leave their homes. This affected approximately 60 percent of white commercial farmers in Zimbabwe.

On August 7, 2002 at the CFU annual congress, all farmers present were assured (again) by Vice President (Joseph Msika) that if they had only one farm, they would be OK….

Within three weeks of these assurances, the arrests started. White farmers – and exclusively white farmers – were arrested by police all over the country….

In Chegutu police cells, among many others, we had an 82‐year‐old man on crutches as well as a 72‐year old sick lady whose husband died two weeks later. Upwards of one hundred white farm owners were incarcerated. All of them were kept in very poor conditions – some of them appalling.

Farmers were told by heavily armed army and police details to pack up everything they ever owned on their farms in 24 hours.

Historical background of land ownership

Before going into (the historical background of land ownership), I wish first to deal with the historical land holdings in the area where I live, and the strides that we took in trying to resolve the racial imbalances in land ownership inherited from past generations.

Between 1980 (independence) and the beginning of the land invasions in 2000, many farms were bought and sold. The government had the option to purchase land if it so wished. From 1985, a farmer could only sell if he had got a certificate of “no present interest” from the Minister responsible for Lands.

From the deeds of transfer that have been listed in the government gazette, it is apparent that upwards of 70 percent of farms not already purchased could have been purchased by government if it had wished to do so.

… A large number of farms were purchased by the government for resettlement. I understand that from government figures that 3.6 million hectares was purchased on a willing seller willing buyer basis….

The 1992 Land Acquisition Act was enacted to speed up the land reform process by removing the “willing seller, willing buyer” clause, limiting the size of farms and introducing a land tax (although the tax was never implemented.)

The Act empowered the government to buy land compulsorily for redistribution, and a fair compensation was to be paid for land acquired. Landowners could challenge in court the price set by the acquiring authority.

The government first had to issue a preliminary notice of acquisition, known as a Section 5. This was published in the newspaper and had to be delivered to the farm as well. When that was done, the farmer had thirty days in which to object. Then the government could issue a Section 8, which was an acquisition order.

This had to be confirmed through the administrative court, in what was known as a Section 7. (Mike Campbell bought Mount Carmel farm in an open market deal with his own money and it was transferred to the company) in 1999 with full knowledge of the Zimbabwean government (and with a “Certificate of No Present Interest”)…

To then resettle former white‐owned farms exclusively with people with a black coloured skin is discriminatory. We have been told that Mount Carmel farm is going to one individual who is over 80 years old and has another home, occupation and income source already.

To displace us in favour of a man who is past retirement age and has no specialized knowledge of mango production or any experience in commercial agriculture, just because we have white coloured skins is surely discriminatory.

In Minister Mutasa’s answering affidavit in the Campbell case, (he said in paragraph 9): “As the law now stands, all agricultural land owners such as Applicants can apply for land and be considered without discrimination.”

To the best of our knowledge, not a single white farmer on the land today in Chegutu or Kadoma districts has ownership of his land any longer. It was all taken through Constitutional Amendment Number 17.

Despite almost all white farmers having made applications to lease their land back we do not know of a single lease having been issued. We would contend that there is discrimination in the process…. Ben Freeth, 9 May 2007

SADC Tribunal ruling violated

Despite the widely acclaimed SADC Tribunal ruling, all that Campbell had built up over many years of hard work and financial struggle continued to be systematically stolen.

The theft included his entire export crops – maize, sunflowers and export mangoes, his tractors, implements, the materials and contents of his internationally accredited pack shed, his mill, the silos with their grain, diesel, fertilizer, crop chemicals, workshop equipment and household effects.

In August 2009, the Campbell and Freeth homesteads were burnt to the ground, together with various worker homes and their linen factory, a women’s upliftment project. Severely incapacitated by his injuries and distraught by his personal losses and the destruction country‐wide, Campbell died in April 2011.

The signing of the GPA has not in any way lessened the systematic attack against the white farming community by the transitional government. None of the perpetrators of violence against the white farmers or their workers in the Chegutu district during the 2008 elections or thereafter have ever been convicted. These known criminals continue to roam the streets and the farms at will and continue to victimize and terrorise the vulnerable farm workers.

Of the other 13 “protected” farmers that, like Campbell, were all still farming at the time of the signing of the GPA, none are now able to farm their land in any way. All have been systematically stopped from farming and forced to abandon homes – not one of them with an eviction order from a court.

In the entire Chegutu and Kadoma districts, apart from a handful of white people remaining on small properties in the peri‐urban areas, there are now only 10 white farm owners still in their homes. Only three of the 10 are farming productively – so the numbers of operational white‐owned farms has dropped from 390 in 2001 to three today.

In a decade 380 white farmers and their families have been evicted in these two districts. This equates to 99 percent having been blocked from living in their homes and contributing to food security. There are a further five white farmers still in their homes who are farming on a small scale.

Two of the 10 are living in their houses in dire poverty, with nowhere else that they can go. There are a further three living in town and farming their farms remotely for security reasons. Two of the three are widows, one of whom suffered the loss of her husband when he was shot dead last year while in bed on the farm.

The Indigenisation Act and the pronouncements by President Mugabe and his Indigenisation Minister, Saviour Kasukuwere, supported by other senior ZANU PF officials, now threaten to do the same to the mines, businesses and private houses that also belong to “whites.”