By Tatenda Dewa | Harare Bureau |
Prolonged protests by Zimbabwean exiles have forced the closure of a Nottingham medical centre run by a UK-based doctor accused of violent seizure of a farm back home.
This was revealed in a Monday statement by the Zimbabwe Vigil, a pressure group of exiled Zimbabweans based in London.
“A medical centre in Nottingham run by a black Zimbabwean doctor has been closed. Zimbabwean exiles have staged repeated demonstrations outside the clinic in protest at the doctor’s violent seizure of a white-owned farm in Zimbabwe,” noted the vigil.
The facility, Willows Medical Centre, is run by Dr Sylvester Nyatsuro and his wife, Veronica, who the vigil said have been resident in the UK for 15 years and live in a £750,000 mansion.
He is believed to be close to President Robert Mugabe’s family, after photographs of him and Grace were revealed.
The Vigil took the matter of Nyatsuro’s centre to the National Health Service which has responsibility over the clinic and inspectors from the Care Quality Commission decided to close it until further notice.
“The UK government says the question of Dr Nyatsuro’s citizenship is being looked at by the Home Office. The Vigil argues that they are clearly Mugabe supporters and citizenship could have been obtained by means of fraud or false representation. The Nyatsuros have no known farming experience,” said Zimbabwe Vigil.
Nyatsuro has been at the centre of a storm for allegedly forcing a white couple off a tobacco farm in Zimbabwe with the aid of armed policemen at the beginning of the year.
Some 20 gun-totting cops were reported to have descended on the 2,000 acre farm owned by Phillip Rankin and his wife in the company of militias, ordering them into a police truck and driving them away in handcuffs.
The elderly couple is reported to have joined relatives in Harare and was living a near-destitute life after losing their investment in Nyatsuro’s alleged swoop on their farm.
The Rankins had lived on the farm valued at more than US$1 million for more than 30 years and Nyatsuro allegedly took over the tobacco crop and farm property.
Veronica said at the time of the farm seizure: “We don’t know where we will live or what we will do. I am born and bred on a farm. I don’t know town life. And I only know Zimbabwe.”
‘It was our business – but more important than that, it was our home. We have never owned anything other than the farm and that’s gone in one weekend.’ My parents have been working on the farm for 35 years. I grew up there.
“Those years have not all been hunky dory, we have had our ups and downs like any family, but we thought the farm would always be there,’ added Phillip.
The medical doctor, however, insists that he benefited fairly from President Robert Mugabe’s controversial land reform programme that started in 2000 and forced off 6,000 commercial white farmers.
He went to the farm, Kingston Deverill, in September last year with a government document that indicated that he was the new owner of the plantation that was purportedly compulsorily acquired 10 years ago. Nehanda Radio