Despite a court ruling in their favour, white farmers in Zimbabwe are still being forced from their land, and the new political coalition appears deaf to their appeals
THE THERON family home on Friedenthal farm outside of Beatrice, a rural village 70km north of Harare, resembles a military enclosure as much as it does a farmhouse at the heart of a sprawling cattle ranch.
Even though the brutal bush war between black rebel groups and the white Rhodesian government, which led to Zimbabwe’s formation in 1980, is long past, the property built by Deon Theron’s parents gives the impression that this is a family still under siege.
Inside the almost five-metre-high fence that surrounds the property, the front of the farmhouse is encased by a heavy steel mesh that wraps around the veranda. Just to the left of the building, the roof of an old underground bunker can be seen protruding half a metre above ground level.
As we enter the home where he and his six siblings grew up, Theron explains that the security measures were introduced by his parents in the early 1970s to frustrate rebel groups bent on attacking white-owned farms.
Despite the formation of Zimbabwe’s unity government just over four months ago, in a powersharing pact between the country’s rival parties that was supposed to mark the start of a new beginning, Theron believes that the need for protection remains.
“The bunker was built to protect us from the mortar attacks they carried out, and the mesh was put up to stop hand grenades . . . The bush war was a bad time for farmers; you were on your own and exposed out here. We thought those days were passed, but given the attacks that have occurred over the past few months, some of these safety measures are still needed,” Theron says.
Under President Robert Mugabe’s controversial 2000 land-reform programme, which was hailed as a way to redistribute land to the previously disadvantaged black population, thousands of white farmers have been dispossessed of their property.
Despite the 85-year-old’s claim that he has been righting the wrongs inflicted by British colonialism, some people who follow Zimbabwe’s fortunes see the programme as something else entirely. They claim Mugabe has used the initiative to reward his cronies with land, while simultaneously punishing white farmers, the majority of whom support the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which was formed in 1999.
While primarily affecting whites, the impact of the programme has also been negative for most black Zimbabweans, as those who get the land rarely farm it, which has left hundreds of thousands of farm workers unemployed and the population reliant on food aid.
Theron, who has had to go into hiding for a six-week stretch from the police, has lost his three commercial farms in Beatrice through a combination of violence, intimidation and rulings from a biased judiciary.
Initially, his properties were invaded by so-called war veterans and youth militias loyal to Mugabe, but more recently the process has entered the courts, following moves by farmers around the country to seek a legal remedy outside of Zimbabwe.
Landless by 2005, Theron moved his livestock to his parents’ Friedenthal farm. However, his 79-year-old widowed mother recently received a letter from the land ministry ordering her to vacate her property as the government was giving it to someone else. The pair will face eviction in court later this month.
Over the past nine years about 4,000 white commercial farmers have suffered the same fate as Deon Theron, with the scale of violent invasions and evictions rising and falling in unison with the violence Mugabe’s political opponents have faced in the run-up to general elections. Of those removed from their properties, only 197 have received compensation of between 3 to 8 per cent from the government, according to the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU). However, the formation of Zimbabwe’s unity government last February between the MDC parties and Mugabe’s Zanu-PF was supposed to bring an end to the violence that has left the country economically crippled.
But according to Theron, a senior member of the CFU, little has changed for the estimated 500 remaining white farmers who have managed to hang on to their farms. Only last week Theron found the seven dogs on his mother’s farm poisoned, and “settlers” who have been continuously stealing from his dwindling cattle remain camped at the edge of the property, waiting to move in once the eviction has occurred.
CFU CHIEF executive Hendrik Olivier told The Irish Times that since April 17th, when Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara was dispatched to investigate claims that farm invasions and intimidation were alive and well, the organisation has received hundreds of reports of violent incidents. “What is clear is that some of these attacks and intimidations are being carried out by high-level individuals [in Zanu-PF] and despite us reporting them to the necessary authorities no action has been taken. We have been in consultation with both sides of the unity government informing them of the incidents on a weekly basis but little has been done to stop them. In many cases we are told the police are at the forefront of efforts to intimidate our members,” he says.
What has been particularly upsetting for the farmers has been the reaction of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, who despite being shown evidence of the attacks said recently that the incidents were isolated and represented no threat to the unity government’s stability. The fight by the farmers to hang on to their land through the courts has been a complicated and arduous process, given that much of the judiciary at magistrate level has been forced or bribed to rule in favour of the state.
Each time a farmer finds a loophole in the law covering land acquisition that supports their case, the government has introduced a constitutional amendment to close the door. According to Olivier, the CFU’s lawyers were so effective the government decided to introduce constitutional Amendment 17, which “stops us from being able to argue any matter concerning land in the courts”.
This prompted farmer Mike Campbell and 77 others to take their illegal eviction case to a newly established Southern African Development Community (SADC) tribunal in May 2008, and on November 28th it ruled in their favour.
The tribunal found that Mugabe’s land-reform programme was a racist policy and ordered the Zimbabwean government to allow the farmers to live in their homes undisturbed and allow them continue farming. Rather than complying, the justice department is now trying to speed up the state-initiated eviction process and has circulated documentation to magistrates effectively ordering them to pre-judge land cases involving white farmers.
The documents, titled “Handling Land Cases”, have been seen by The Irish Times, and are signed by the country’s then chief magistrate, Herbert Mandeya (who is now president of the labour court). They are dated January 30th, 2009, and instruct magistrates to ignore the SADC ruling. The guidelines for the judges say that in cases where farm beneficiaries have official-letter offers from the land-reform department, white farmers should be evicted from their farms as a matter of urgency.
Last month, on June 5th, the SADC tribunal found the Zimbabwean government to be in contempt of its previous ruling and again ordered it to comply. However, the Mugabe-loyal justice department has stated the government will not recognise the body’s ruling.
WHY MUGABE’S regime is playing out its land-reform programme through the courts, rather than simply forcibly removing every white farmer from the land, is not an easy question to answer, but MDC secretary for welfare Kerry Kay believes it is a tactical move.
“He could have taken every farmer off the land between 2000 and 2004, but by doing it this way he can keep the land issue alive and use it as a political weapon as and when he needs to,” she says.
Another fundamental question is why Zimbabwe’s remaining white farmers have stubbornly remained when opportunities to farm in other African countries have arisen. Theron says in many cases it is a matter of principle.
“No matter where you go in life there are problems, so what do you do? Move to greener pastures? People should not have pity on us – we have chosen to stay. This is about standing up for what you believe in. We live in a country that is not violent outside of the political sphere. The people, black and white, are the best I have encountered. The problem is with good governance,” he concludes.
Theron’s view is not an isolated one. Hendrik says even after all that has occurred, large numbers of dispossessed farmers want to return to Zimbabwe and work the land if the conditions are right.
“We have constantly said we are not against land reform, but it needs to be done in a fair way, and compensation for those who have lost is needed. Most of the farmers who lost their land bought it after independence with the blessing of the government. “Let’s call a moratorium on all prosecutions and evictions and conduct a land audit. We should give all farmers access to the land who want to farm,” he says.
Bill Corcoran continues his reports from inside Zimbabwe from Monday
