Red Tape Foils Bid to Flee Zimbabwe

Original Post Date: 2002-07-19  Posted By: Jan

From the News Archives of: WWW.AfricanCrisis.Org
Date & Time Posted: 7/19/2002 1:41:16 PM
Red Tape Foils Bid to Flee Zimbabwe

A ZIMBABWE farmer and his family are entangled in a red tape nightmare
as they bid to flee the crisis-hit country for Scotland.

Last week marked the deadline for white farmers to stop working their
land and feeding their animals.

They are being forced to leave their property by August, with only a
suitcase of possessions.

English-born Tom – not his real name – and his wife, originally from
Lanarkshire, are bidding to bring their son, daughter-in-law and two
grandsons to Ayrshire.

Their 41 year-old daughter and her teenage son have already made a new
life there, setting up home in a council house with the help of local
friends.

But Tom (64) says the rest of the family cann’t leave Africa because
his grandsons aged 11 and 14. cann’t get passports or emergency
travel documents.

They donn’t qualify for British passports because they and their
parents were born in Zimbabwe. They could get Zimbabwe passports but
officials in Robert Mugabe’s regime claim it will take over a year
to process the applications.

Tom said, The British High Commission says there is nothing they
can do as the children were born in Zimbabwe. We are now trying for
emergency travel documents, but when we arrived at the offices they
told us to wait as they were having tea.

An hour later nobody had arrived, so we went to the desk and asked
if we could see someone. They just walked out of the room and left us
standing.

Another farmer came in and said we were wasting our time because
they’d been instructed to ignore farmers applications.

Where do we go from here?

Tom revealed fellow farmers are.also desperate to get out of
the-country. He said, It’s chaos. Nobody knows what’s going on
and people are booking flights out in droves. Anyone without fixed
assets is going to any country that will take them.

Massacre

The situation at the family’s farm, which is occupied by war
veterans, has continued to worsen. Tom explained, Of the ducks and
geese reared by us, 150 have been shot and eaten by war vets. These
are hand-reared birds – it was a massacre.

The vets have been digging out our potatoes and there is nothing we can do about it. We grow the crop and they sell it. The trees are being cut down and sold as firewood and all the grass has been cut and sold for thatching.

All our labour has stuck with us and we get tip-offs if anything is
going to happen but they are scared of being beaten up, or worse.

The country has run out of basic foodstuffs like salt, sugar, cooking
oil, flour and milk, but the president just ignores it all.

We are desperate to get to a sane country like Scotland and to start
trying to rebuild. It will be so strange to be able to go to bed at
night without having to sleep with a weapon.

Their daughter in Scotland has contacted local MP George Foulkes in a
bid to get round the bureaucratic muddle. She said, They must get out
as soon as possible. When they leave the farm they’ve nowhere to go
and I have no idea how easy it will be to get somewhere to live in
Harare

My son is here on a Zimbabwe passport and is now being given a
British one even though I’m Zimbabwe-born. If he can get one why
can’t the other boys? Both sets of grandparents are British.

George Foulkes said, I have great sympathy with the family’s
situation and I have written to the Foreign Office in the hope they
can show some discretion in this case. No-one was available for
comment at the British High Commission in Harare.

The Sunday Post (U.K. 30-6-02)
By Bob Smyth

xxxxx Sign Up