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The legal monitor - Issue 11
Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR)
September 07, 2009

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Lies, looting and arson . . . Militia make mockery of GPA as Shamuyarira's manager named in arson attack

The owners of Mount Carmel farm, where two farm houses were burnt to the ground last week, have implicated militia allegedly deployed to the farm by ZANU PF spokesman, Nathan Shamuyarira, who is fighting to take over the property.

Mike (78) and Angela (67) Campbell, owners of Mount Carmel, suspect the fire was an arson attack to cover up looting by Shamuyarira's militia as well as harass the farm owners off the property.

The Campbells, together with their sonin law, Ben Freeth and 72 other white commercial farmers, successfully took their right to stay on the farms to the SADC tribunal in November last year. Now, both the Campbells and Freeths have lost their homes and most of their property.

Despite Zimbabwe being bound by the tribunal's rulings, Minister of Justice and Legal Affairs, Patrick Chinamasa, has repeatedly refused to abide by the SADC judgment arguing that the government will not be bound by a tribunal which is "not yet operational". (see page 3).

Shamuyarira claims he was offered the farm by the government under the chaotic land reform programme and militias aligned to him have kept a constant, often violent, presence at the farm.

Laura Freeth, Ben's wife, whose adjacent farmhouse was burnt down three days before the Campbells, has been running the farm after the elderly Campbells left in April.

Mrs Freeth named Lovemore "Landmine" Madangonda, a representative of Shamuyarira as a prime suspect in the arson attack in her police report RRB No. 0611384 on Wednesday. Madangonda, who claims to be Shamuyarira's farm manager, has been forcibly residing on the farm and pressuring the Campbells and Freeths to leave.

"I am requesting a thorough investigation into the cause of the fire at my parents' house on Mount Carmel farm due to the possibility of arson," Mrs Freeth wrote to Senior Assistant Commissioner Mushaurwa, the police Officer Commanding, Mashonaland West Province.

"They (Shamuyarira's deployees) are covering up their looting. They had asked us to remove my parents' furniture from the house so that they could live in it. We suspect that they had been looting and torched the place to cover up their looting," said Mrs Freeth.

The Campbells, together with the other farmers won a long court battle against the government when the SADC tribunal condemned Zimbabwe's land reform programme as discriminatory on the basis of race.

Since taking the government to the SADC tribunal, the Campbells and the Freeths have lived under constant harassment. At the height of election violence in June last year, war veterans and soldiers abducted and tortured the two families for nine hours to force them to drop SADC Tribunal litigation.

Chinamasa last week unilaterally announced Zimbabwe's withdrawal from the SADC Tribunal, saying the country would no longer be bound by past and future rulings of the tribunal.

It has emerged that despite Chinamasa's statement, Zimbabwe has seconded a High Court Judge - Justice Antonia Guvava - to sit as a Member (Judge) of the SADC Tribunal as well as fulfilling other requirements that bind Zimbabwe to the tribunal.

Both Attorney General Johannes Tomana and his Deputy Prince Machaya formally accepted the Tribunal's jurisdiction during the hearing of the case.

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