Union leader back in hiding after police raid

By Alex Bell
25 February 2010

The Secretary General of the General Agriculture and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe (GAPWUZ) is back in hiding this week after police raided the union’s offices on Wednesday.

Gertrude Hambira fled to safety after five men and one woman, who identified themselves as officers from the Criminal Investigation Department, raided the union’s office in Harare apparently looking for her. Hambira, who wasn’t in the office at the time, is now in hiding fearing for her safety. According to the human rights group Amnesty International, staff at the GAPWUZ head office have since received several phone calls asking for details of Hambira’s whereabouts.

Amnesty International has now called on the government to end the harassment and intimidation of GAPWUZ staff, which has been ongoing since last year’s release of two shock reports on the plight of Zimbabwean farm workers. Last year, Hambira spent a week in hiding after a failed attempt was made to abduct her days before the reports were released. Armed men forced their way into her home last November and demanded to know where she was. She wasn’t home at the time but her family was left in shock.

“The Zimbabwean police must immediately stop the harassment of human rights defenders including Gertrude Hambira,” said Veronique Aubert Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Africa programme.

Last week Friday Hambira was called to a meeting at Police Headquarters in Harare with a panel of seventeen high ranking security officials from the Zimbabwe Republic Police, the army, the air force and the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO). Hambira attended the meeting with two colleagues and a lawyer and was subjected to an interrogation about a recent documentary and report published by GAPWUZ.

According to Amnesty International, the panel of security officials stated that the report and documentary contained very serious allegations for which Hambira should be ‘behind bars.’ Hambira and her colleagues were eventually dismissed but the security officials warned that they would call on her again.

“These actions are the latest in a series of persistent human rights violations that have continued despite formation of the Government of National Unity in February 2009,” Amnesty International’s Aubert said.

The damning GAPWUZ report and documentary released last year expose the devastating effects of the so called land ‘reform’ programme on the livelihood of farm workers. The documentary entitled ‘House of Justice’ contains 26 minutes of footage laying bare the evidence of human rights violations targeting farm workers over the ten years of Robert Mugabe’s land grab campaign. It also details top government officials’ involvement in the torture, harassment and eviction of farm workers in the chaotic land seizures.

In the documentary, Hambira appeals to the leaders of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) to pressure the Zimbabwe government to end the ongoing violence on farms across the country. SADC has come under fire for, among other issues, not acting on Zimbabwe’s ‘pull out’ from the SADC Tribunal, a human rights court set up by the nine member body to deal with judicial disputes in the region. Last year in a landmark ruling meant to protect more than 70 commercial farmers and their rights to their land, the SADC Tribunal ruled that the government should stop land attacks.

But Zimbabwe has refused to abide by this ruling and has this year dismissed it opening the door for an escalation of attacks on commercial land. GAPWUZ has already said that more than 60 000 farm workers have been left without jobs as a result of the land attacks over the past year alone, with hundreds of workers being beaten and arrested. ‘House of Justice’ questions what the ultimate point of SADC is, if member states will not stand up for justice and the official SADC court.

Another report, ‘If Something is wrong,’ which is accompanying the documentary also highlights the impact of the land reform exercise on the farm workers during the past ten years. This is the first report on the so called ‘land reform’ to deal solely with the experiences of farm workers and makes for sobering reading. The report balances statistical evidence from farm workers with shocking narrative examples of the types of violations they have experienced. It also provides damning evidence that the violence perpetrated on the farms has been largely targeted on farm workers.