Chegutu farmer laments government’s denial of land attacks

By Alex Bell
16 July 2009

A beleaguered Chegutu farmer, whose farm has been over run by land invaders working for a top ZANU PF official, has lashed out at the government for repeatedly denying that the current wave of land invasions are happening.

Ben Freeth from Mount Carmel Farm has relentlessly tried to hang on to the land that even the human rights court of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has ruled rightfully belongs to his family. Freeth’s father-in-law Mike Campbell, who he co-owns the land with, led the legal challenge in the SADC tribunal against the government last year. Campbell, and the more than 70 farmers who joined the case, walked away victorious with a ruling that declared the land ‘reform’ programme essentially discriminatory. The government was ordered to protect the farmer’s right to their land, and make compensation to those who had lost land.

But SADC has been openly defied, and the renewed offensive against the remaining commercial farming community got underway in earnest earlier this year. Since then, almost 100 farms have been forcibly taken over, more than 100 farmers are facing prosecution for being on their land, and thousands of farm workers have been left jobless. The farm attacks themselves have often been violent, and those farmers who have refused to leave their properties have faced continued harassment and intimidation. The farmers even returned to SADC seeking an implementation order against the government. The Tribunal ruled that the government was in contempt by defying the earlier ruling, but this ruling again has been ignored.

The Chegutu farming community has been the worst affected by the offensive to remove the remaining commercial farmers off their land. Earlier this year Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara and a delegation ordered by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, toured the affected farms in Chegutu to see for themselves the extent of the farm attacks. A shocked Mutambara ordered all the land attacks to cease and the land invaders off the farms, and Tsvangirai was seen to be doing the right thing by handing over the responsibility for investigating the attacks to the Joint Monitoring and Implementation Committee (JOMIC). But Mutambara’s order was completely ignored within hours of him leaving the area.

Tsvangirai went on to play down the land attacks, calling them ‘isolated incidents’ that had been blown out of proportion by the media. JOMIC has now reportedly followed in the footsteps of the government’s leaders by denying that the land invasions, witnessed by the Deputy Prime Minister, have taken place. In an unpublished preliminary report by JOMIC on the land attacks, JOMIC co-chairperson Welshman Ncube dismissed the incidents as mere ‘disturbances’ that were caused by uncooperative farmers refusing to hand over their land to holders of offer letters.

Freeth on Thursday expressed his anger, saying what is happening on his land is theft with impunity that is being supported by the police and the government. Invaders hired by ZANU PF top official Nathan Shamuyarira have completely taken over Mount Carmel, and have repeatedly used violence to threaten and harass Freeth, his family and his staff.

“If he (Ncube) were to come here right now he would see Minister Shamuyarira's men busily reaping thousands of US dollars worth of sunflowers in broad day light with complete impunity using our tractors on land that we have court orders and international judgements protecting,” Freeth explained.

The new invasion at Mount Carmel started in April and since then it has been an ongoing battle to get support from the police and the government. Freeth’s workers have been beaten, abducted and hospitalised; houses and sheds on the property have been broken into; people have been terrorised; water has been cut off by the invaders for weeks and they have plunged the workers into darkness by cutting off their electricity; tens of thousands of productive fruit trees have been left without irrigation, fertilisation or spraying.

“Police know all about it and refuse to arrest anyone or even stop them despite the two High Court orders saying the invaders must be evicted and the SADC Tribunal judgement saying that Mike Campbell and his family and workers should be allowed to farm without disturbance,” Freeth said.

Freeth questioned how the government can continue to “condone theft and thuggery with lies and with silence in a starving country with no job creation and no investment taking place?” He explained that a full investigation needs to get underway into the illegal activities taking place on all the invaded farms, but he expressed doubt this would ever take place.