New report highlights the crisis caused by farm seizures

By Tererai Karimakwenda
June 19, 2007

The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum has released a preliminary report on the human rights violations that occurred on commercial farms from the year 2000 to 2005, due to the illegal eviction of white farmers. Titled “Injury in addition to insult,” the report is the result of a survey conducted over six months between 2006 and 2007, which looked at what happened to the displaced farm owners, as well as farm workers and their families and property. The survey found that the gross human rights violations and property destruction that took place were much greater than had been previously assumed.

The results show that in addition to human rights abuses, farm owners and farm workers suffered immense financial losses. Farm workers also lost accommodation, health services and access to clean water and sanitation. All this led to a high death rate among the displaced farm workers and created the growing economic and humanitarian crisis that has crippled the country.

Tendai Chabvuta from the NGO Forum said that contrary to the Zimbabwe government’s claims that most of the evicted white farmers were foreigners, at least 75% of the 187 respondents identified themselves as Zimbabwean citizens, not British. The government had also claimed that most black farm workers came from neighbouring countries and simply went home when they were displaced. But Chabvuta dismissed this, saying many were now homeless and roaming around the rural areas. Some of the women who wound up in urban areas were forced to engage in prostitution to feed their families, and children remained out of school.

According to the survey, 1% of the displaced farm workers and their family members have died since losing their jobs. Applying this figure to the entire population of 1 million farm workers and their families, it means 10,000 people could have died after displacement from the farms. The actual figures are believed to be much higher.

Chabvuta described this survey as the “first real accounting” of the damage caused by the government’s chaotic land reform programme. Explaining why this was done so many years after the first evictions in 2000 he said: “When these things were happening no-one paid much attention because there was chaos. And people tend to look at the most basic needs first.”

Some of the information included in the survey was already known, including the fact that police did not protect farmers and farm workers, the perpetrators were mostly government officials using war veterans and youth militia. The report says that a “plausible case can be made for crimes against humanity being committed during these displacements” and “there is a compelling need for these to be investigated and the perpetrators to be charged and tried.”

The Human Rights NGO Forum said they encourage every commercial farmer or farm worker who suffered losses or damages to participate in the project as a matter of urgency. The full 40-page report is available here. http://www.swradioafrica.com/Documents/farm_seizures180607.pdf