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More farmers get eviction notices
Augustine Mukaro, The Independent (Zimbabwe)
February 24, 2006

http://www.theindependent.co.zw/news/2006/February/Friday24/4262.html

GOVERNMENT appears determined to seize all land still in the hands of white farmers including those who survived the onslaught of the controversial fast-track land reform.

Sources in the Lands, Land Reform and Resettlement ministry said government last week dispatched a team to Mashonaland West province to establish the exact number of white farmers still on farms and serve them with eviction notices.

Last Thursday, a team led by permanent secretary in the Lands ministry Simon Pazvakavabwa served eviction notices on farmers in the Selous area, sources said.

Farmers in Selous confirmed having received fresh 90-day notices to wind-up their operations, a move they said buttressed Minister Didymus Mutasa's threat that: "We are still hungry and we want all our land back and all our land to be used by our own people."

President Robert Mugabe and Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono on the other hand have called for a halt to farm invasions. The contradictions in government's position undermine investor confidence and prospects of boosting agricultural production to ensure food security.

An estimated 400 white farmers are still on the land six years after the launch of government's chaotic and often violent land reform programme.

Farmers who were given up to May to vacate their farms include fugitive Zimbabwean tycoon and a perceived ally of President Mugabe's government, Billy Rautenbach, who owned Marshlands Farm operated by his brother Peter in the Karoi area.

"It has been resolved that you move out of the farm on 14 May 2006 as the land reform is being finalised,'' reads the eviction order to Rautenbach and other white farmers that was shown to the Zimbabwe Independent at the weekend.

Rautenbach, who is now spending most of his time in Harare after fleeing South Africa's Scorpions anti-crime unit, is viewed as closely connected to former Speaker of Parliament Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Mnangagwa is locked in a vicious struggle with retired army general Solomon Mujuru for the control of Zanu PF after Mugabe steps down in 2008.

Eleven other farmers in the area have also been given eviction notices.

Former Commercial Farmers Union president Nick Swanapoel is understood to have received a notice to vacate Avalon farm, also in Mashonaland West.

More than half of the 18 farmers who remain in the Selous area are understood to have been visited by the government delegation, which delivered eviction notices.

The majority of the farmers who had remained on farms had strong links to Zanu PF either due to their past involvement with the CFU or their support for the ruling party through donations.

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