[This does not surprise me. While interviewing people for my book, Government by Deception, I had a long chat with an Afrikaans professor who lectured in Revolutionary Warfare. He told me that it was common to mask political murders as crimes. Jan]

A white farmer was beaten and strangled by intruders before being burnt in a pile of petrol-soaked matresses. Don Stewart™s murder bore “all the hallmarks of a political attack” to force his few remaining colleagues off their land, Justice for Agriculture, a Zimbabwean pressure group, said. The intruders took only a .303 rifle when they left the home of 68-year-old Mr Stewart, the group added. After Mr Stewart came under severe pressure from squatters, his British-born wife, Margaret, 67, left Zimbabwe for Britain. The squatters™ invasions of Mr Stewart™s farm, in Ingwerati, west of Harare, had forced him to reduce his dairy herd from more than 200 to about 60, and to reduce the amount of land he cultivated. An estimated 18 white farmers have been murdered since 2000, when President Mugabe began his campaign of lawless, violent farm invasions to drive whites from their land. Mr Worsley-Worswick, of Justice for Agriculture, recalled a statement last month by Didymus Mutasa, the Minister of National Security and Land Reform, denouncing farmers as “trash”. Mr Worsley-Worswick said: “The politics on the ground is heightened by the elections. It™s always been the case that violence on the farms escalates around elections.” On Saturday Mr Mugabe held elections for a new Senate, which he had abolished in 1987 on the ground that it was “a colonial relic”. Mr Worsley-Warwick said that Mr Stewart™s farm had been heavily protected. He added: “An old man living alone out there is very exposed and a soft target. If it were ordinary thieves, they would have cleaned the place out, but they didn™t . . . it has all the hallmarks of a political hit.” Mr Stewart was one of a handful of white farmers left in a district that in 2000 was an important district for producing cattle, tobacco and food. Of about 4,000 white farmers at that time, only about 300 are believed to be still on their land. Vast areas of land once farmed here by white owners are returning to natural bush, and the few white-owned farms along the badly rutted road stand out as oases of intensive production.

From IRIN (UN), 28 November
From The Times (UK), 29 November

By Jan Raath in Norton

Source: WWW.ZwNews.Com