Zanu PF MP ordered attack on Nyamandlovu farm, displacing 60 families

By Tererai Karimakwenda
29 April, 2008

We have received confirmation that the group of over 200 ZANU-PF thugs that descended on a farm compound in the Nyamandhlovu area outside Bulawayo had been ordered to do so by their MP, Obert Mpofu. The farm belongs to Wayne Munroe and was invaded Wednesday afternoon by a gang that assaulted the farm workers. About 60 families were forced to leave and were given no time to pack any belonging. They were told to return to their original homelands but most have no other home to go to. Dozens of families were seen by the main road, where they slept Wednesday night. Many have young children with them and no money for food.

A general worker who escaped and managed to hide has revealed that Mpofu visited the gang Wednesday night to check on their progress. This means the MP ordered the evictions of the farm workers and their families and may have provided the gang with the weapons, which they fired into the air to intimidate the farm workers. As we reported Wednesday shots were also fired at farm owner Wayne Munroe, as he fled from his office. Fortunately all the shots missed their target.

Our contact said the attackers are not war veterans as media reports tend to suggest. The majority are settlers who were given plots by Mpofu and he uses them to do his dirty work. This group included school children as young as 13 and women. They came in local government vehicles and had knobkerries and axes. A few of them had guns.

Most of the attackers live on plots surrounding the MP’s own farm. There is nothing growing on their plots and they often came looking for work and food from the Munroes. The general worker said these people would not attack people who had helped them, without orders to do so. He said they are forced by top government officials like Mpofu, because they were given plots of land.

A group of 20 farm workers’ families are still barricaded in the farmhouse, along with Wayne Munroe’s wife Ursula and their two children aged 2 and 4. Wayne is barricaded in his mother’s house. The invading gang is reported to have spent Thursday walking around the property, helping themselves to maize from the fields and cooking outside the front door of the farmhouse. They are expected to resume their toy-toying tonight.

Top government and military officials have been illegally grabbing the last few commercial farms left in the country, leaving more farm workers displaced and without a job. The police continue to refuse to get involved.