Zimbabwe tense as court rules on fate of farmers

Original Post Date: 2001-08-21  Posted By: Jan

From the News Archives of: WWW.AfricanCrisis.Org
Date & Time Posted: 8/21/2001 9:49:26 PM
Zimbabwe tense as court rules on fate of farmers

Hello everyone

This must be the craziest kind of ‘tense’ I’ve seen in a long time. One
cannot but agree that this kind of justice, currently being meted out to
the White farmers of Zimbabwe is ludicrous to the extreme.

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Zimbabwe tense as court rules on fate of farmers

By Basildon Peta in Harare Independent UK: 17 August 2001
The freeing of 21 white farmers, in jail for almost two weeks after
clashing with black squatters, could set off a new round of bloodletting
on farms, Zimbabwe state prosecutors told the High Court yesterday.

The farmers from the tense Chinhoyi area, who are charged with assaulting
invaders on one of the white-owned farms, will learn today whether they
may be released on bail.

Sporadic violence and looting of the white-owned farms around Chinhoyi
continued yesterday, and the Commercial Farmers’ Union appealed to the
government to provide safety assurances for the farmers to continue
operations “in the face of the ongoing organised wave of property
destruction and theft by criminals”.

In a further ominous sign, four journalists of the independent Daily News
who were detained on Wednesday were picked up again by police yesterday.
The new charge is publishing a subversive statement. Their lawyer,
Lawrence Chibwe, said: “I have been promised that they will not be
incarcerated or detained. An attempt to charge the Daily News editor,
Geoff Nyarota, and three of his journalists, with publishing false news
was rejected by a judge on Wednesday, and the four were released.

The farmers in jail, who include two British nationals, yesterday appealed
a ruling by a lower court in Chinhoyi which denied them bail on 10
August. But Judge Rita Makarau said she needed time to study the
arguments. She asked the farmers’ lawyer, Firoz Girach, whether freeing
the farmers on bail would endanger their safety and that of the entire
community in Chinhoyi in view of revenge attacks against farmers by
President Robert Mugabe’s militant supporters.

Mr Girach said individual liberty was sacrosanct and no one should be
denied their freedom because of arguments about security. “To say you
must be incarcerated for your own safety is ridiculous,” he told the
court. “It’s like saying, ‘Let’s convict you even if you are innocent
because if we acquit you the community will be upset’.”

The state’s lawyer, Ben Chidenga, said the farmers’ release on bail would
upset the militants who could launch revenge attacks. He also said the
farmers could interfere with police investigations or even abscond if
released.

But Mr Girach dismissed the state’s arguments, pointing out that a Briton,
Anthony Barkley, and his son had lived on their farm in Zimbabwe for 15
years and were permanent residents. Their chances of absconding with the
remainder of the farmers, who were all Zimbabwean citizens, were nil.

Mr Girach said the Chinhoyi magistrate who denied the bail had not
considered that six of the men had been arrested “to placate the hostile
crowd” at a police station where they had gone to check on their
colleagues’ welfare. He said the jailed farmers were denied access to
their clothes, food and washing facilities.

Jane Williams, speaking for the Commercial Farmers Union, said (194)Â(163)£12.5m had
been lost to looting and revenge attacks on 46 commercial farms by self-
styled war veterans over the past week. One hundred white families have
now abandoned their properties in Chinhoyi for safety elsewhere.

The Zimbabwe government has accused the white farmers of inciting the
violence. Its daily publication, The Herald, yesterday said the British
Government and white commercial farmers had instigated the looting after
the farmers’ arrest. The newspaper said the plot between the white
farmers and the British High Commission in Harare to have the farms looted
was meant to tarnish Zimbabwe’s image abroad and to justify external
intervention in this southern African country’s internal affairs. A
spokesman at the British High Commission, Richard Lindsay, said the claims
were “baseless and nonsensical”.

Zimbabwe has been in crisis since February last year when militant
government supporters started invading white farms with the approval of
President Mugabe, who has been in power since independence from Britain in
1980. Yesterday he vowed to remain in power until he had overseen the
redistribution of white farms to black peasants. He also ruled out an
opposition victory in presidential elections next year.

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