Carse Farm

50 families are facing eviction from Carse farm, 20 km from Bindura town. Ruston Ngandu who took over Carse farm wants the 50 families off the farm as he deems that their presence is disturbing his farming activities.

Magistrate Chakanyuka heard the case at the Bindura magistrate courts on the 28th of September and deferred ruling to the 9th of October.
The 50 families, whose lives are hanging by the line and face the likelihood of becoming destitute if evicted, are being represented by Human Rights Defenders Lawyers Bonongwe and Partners.

Douglas Ruwihi spoke with ROHR Zimbabwe and believes that their eviction case is politically motivated as Ruston Ngandu is punishing them for being supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change. Mr.Ruwihi told ROHR Zimbabwe that since 2002 when the farm was taken from a Robert Kascoe, they have been going through hell. Their homes were burnt during the infamous Operation Murambatsvina in 2002 and they have been experiencing a series of intimidation and attacks aimed at frustrating them to leave the place that they have known as home their entire lives. ‘Our lives will be destroyed if the court rules in favor of Ngandu. We have lived here all our lives and we have nowhere to go.
Our fathers came from Malawi and Mozambique’ said Douglas Ruwihi.

Margaret Mukunga from the same group said they have resorted to sleeping at the grave yard at night as a way of escaping victimization by their new farm occupier. Their roofless houses are no longer safe for human inhabiting as they are exposed to colds and mosquitoes at night. She expressed fears of contracting malaria from mosquito bites.
Margaret Mukunga told ROHR Zimbabwe that over 200 children at the farm are not going to school as the parents are finding it hard to source income; the only little money they are getting is going towards the payment of legal fees. So far they have paid a total of US 1900 legal fees through selling maize, brewing and selling beer.

Foothills Farm

Magistrate Chakanyuka is expected to deliver a ruling today in a case in which former mayor of Bindura Webster Bepura is seeking the ouster of 26 families from Foothills farm, 15 km from Bindura along Matepatepa road. The 26 families are being represented by Bonongwe and partners under the Human Rights Defenders program which is aimed at providing legal assistance for the vulnerable citizens who find themselves unable to defend their constitutional and fundamental human rights.

Speaking on behalf of the 26 families, Luckmore Langton says hell broke loose when they participated in the 2008 harmonized elections as voting agents for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).Since then they have been targeted in a crack down on supporters of the MDC.
Langton has lived at Foothills farm since 1986 and he accuses the former mayor of Bindura, Webster Bepura of destroying their homes, property, livelihoods and barring them from carrying out small scale gardens on the farm which are their sole source of income. He bemoans the life that they are now living compared to how they lived before the farm was taken away from David Baiely in 2002.

He says they used to afford school fees and transport to send their children to school 11km away but now they can only struggle to send the children as far as grade seven from their US $10 monthly earning.
There is no water and electricity at the nearby school and clinic which leaves high fears of a cholera outbreak looming.

Mean while, a war veteran, Jacob Chiripanyanga is also evicting Lazarus Marunga, Lainos Zakeo, Gift Mhembere and Fanuel Musona. This follows an incident this month in which the four were assaulted and had their homes destroyed when they were attached by a group of ZANU PF youth in the company of Jacob Chiripanyanga.

ROHR Zimbabwe’s Position on the eviction of farm workers

We note with grave concern that the plight of farm workers in the hands of the new farm settlers has gone unnoticed by the law enforcement authorities. Farm workers throughout the country have suffered immense human rights violations ranging from denial to the right to a decent shelter, food, state protection, clean water, right to education and right to decent standards of living under the continued farm evasions.

It is deplorable that the new farm settlers have resorted to illegal systematic violent intimidation campaigns that are aimed at frustrating farm workers and force them away from their homes. For the eviction battles to end up in the courts, the farm workers would have shown resistance to the illegal eviction often characterized by inhuman and degrading frustrating tendencies.

The acts of impunity against farm workers have mainly been instigated on political grounds by ZANU PF supporters and youth militia as punishment to those deemed to be affiliated to the MDC in the form of organized violence, destruction of property and livelihoods.

AS ROHR Zimbabwe it is our principled position that farm workers like any other citizens of Zimbabwe, have alienable fundamental human rights that are inherent to the human family upon birth as guaranteed under the Zimbabwean Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Bill of Rights and the African Charter on People’s Rights and Freedoms.

The ministry of Home Affairs should therefore launch an investigation in the welfare surrounding the handling of farm workers in all the farms where there has been transition from one owner to the other. The core ministers of the home affairs ministry Kembo Mohadi and Giles Mutsekwa should discourage the police from assuming partisan roles and stick to ethical and professional duties when handling cases that are politically motivated involving the eviction of vulnerable farm workers.

Understanding what the national healing seeks to achieve, it is our view that the ongoing victimization of farm workers is an anathema to finding lasting peace among communities from the March-June 2008 painful legacy. The three political parties under the coalition government should therefore take heed of the agreements they made under the Global Political Agreement to guarantee the rule of law, respect for human rights and providing prerequisite friendly conditions for a democratic society for people to freely express, associate and engage in political activities without fear of persecution.

The coalition government should also make frantic efforts to destabilize the infrastructure of organized violence which is still prevalent in the rural areas across the country’s ten provinces. It is our humble view that people will not open up to independent and developmental contributions to the constitution making process and to the national healing exercise in the presence of the infrastructure of violence which manifested during last year’s bloody election violence in which more than 200 people were killed.

For Peace, Justice and Freedom