The Herald
Wednesday, 25 December 2002
Settlers injured on terror farm
Chronicle Reporter
More than 15 newly resettled farmers at Umguzaan Farm in Nyamandlovu,
Matabeleland North, were injured, some of them seriously, when a white
commercial farmer, who is resisting eviction allegedly ordered his workers to
attack them on Saturday.
Police confirmed the incident but were reluctant to shed more light on the
matter as investigations were still in progress.
Narrating their ordeal, the farmers who have been on the property since 2000
said they had gone to ask the farmer, why he had closed taps which supply the
(resettled) farmers with water. He suddenly became violent and threatened to
shoot them.
'We told him that we had not come to fight but to ask him why he had
closed the taps and that if he did not want to coexist, then he had to move
out,' said one of the farmers
The farmer allegedly got incensed and fired shots in the air and suddenly his
workers appeared and started attacking them with stones and knobkerries.
'More than 300 workers started attacking us and we were only less than 20
and were not armed. We however managed to run away though some us were seriously
injured,' said a resettled farmer.
The commercial farmers who has been served with Section 8 eviction order is
known to have boasted that he would never move out because he was a
'protected species'.
He could not be reached for comment yesterday.
The Government served commercial farmers with eviction notices, which compelled
them to move out of the farms and pave way for the new farmers.
Most farmers resisted the eviction after the expiry of the deadline but they
finally moved out when they realised that the Government was not going back on
the resettlement programme.
The Government embarked on the land redistribution exercise in 2000 to correct
the imbalances caused by colonialism.
Since the launch of the fast track resettlement programme more than 300 000
families have been resettled under model A1 while more than 54 000 have been
resettled under the A2 model.
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"Ivinicus factus sum veritabem diceus." ( I have become an enemy for speaking the truth ) St Paul!
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Mitayo Potosi
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