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City-dwellers
'forced to join raids on white-owned farms'
Gethin
Chamberlain, The Daily Telegraph (UK)
April 13, 2008
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/13/wzim213.xml
Singing and dancing,
the group of women and young people clambered down from the back
of the open Bedford truck that had pulled up among the lush green
maize fields of a white-owned farm outside the central Zimbabwean
town of Centenary. "Mr Mugabe is ruling Zimbabwe, yeah he is
ruling now, and in firm control," they sang, jogging towards
the farm buildings. "We are here to repossess our mother land,"
a man shouted, waving an axe. They had been driven the 40 miles
from Harare to take part in the latest wave of evictions of white
farmers from their land. But this was not the unified show of force
it seemed. Many were there, they admitted, because Robert Mugabe's
Zanu PF party had forced them to be. "At this age, you think
I would be happy to be involved in these racial struggles?"
said Matiridha Maparo, 46. Almost in tears, she said would rather
be at home in Harare taking care of her five children and the five
orphans she looks after, but had been coerced into taking part in
the attacks on white farms.
"I have 10 children
to feed back in Harare and they have the luxury of forcing me to
come to farms to support people who preach democracy yet who do
not want to practise it. It is sad. I survive on selling firewood,
and when I go back there will be nothing to eat - that is, if we
go back. Now the schools open in three weeks. It will be cold and
children need warm clothes: how will I buy them when I am spending
my time in the bushes, fighting other people's wars?" Another
woman, Christine, 25, said she had been forced to abandon her vegetable
stall and join the invasions. "We do not have even a tin to
fetch water. And still they want us to take over farms," she
said. A fresh wave of evictions has hit Zimbabwe's white-run commercial
farms. By Friday, 71 properties had been taken over by supposed
veterans of the Seventies independence war. The opposition insists
the new wave of attacks is in retaliation for Mr Mugabe's loss of
the election two weeks ago. The Commercial Farmers' Union said the
attacks were orchestrated from the highest office in the land. "People
are being paid to basically carry out the wishes of the highest
office. This is purely racial, it is apartheid," said union
president Trevor Gifford.
The farm invasions have
stirred memories of the violence that followed Mr Mugabe's last
electoral reverse, in 2000, when he lost a referendum on a new constitution
that critics said was aimed at broadening his powers and facilitating
land seizures. Those driven off their land have been given just
a few hours' warning to clear out. One white farmer who was last
week forced off his 2,000-acre farm in Zimbabwe's rich Masvingo
Province, 182 miles south of Harare, said he was confronted by more
than 200 axe-wielding "war veterans" and militia demanding
that he, his wife and their three daughters, aged between two and
10, clear out. He said: "They told me, 'We have come to take
not only your farm but all the best farms, the honeymoon is over
for imperialists, we will not go for the bad farms. You know the
new rule - get out of this property within 10 hours, or we will
come for your stinking head. Do not take anything, you have made
enough profit in 100 years. We are being generous.'"
As the farmer retreated, the mob forced its way into his yard, looting
and ordering the family's 150-strong workforce to leave.
With their source of
income gone, the farm workers said the future looked bleak. Memory
Ngwerume, 32, a mother of three young children, said they were being
persecuted because the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) had defeated Mr Mugabe in the presidential elections. "You
see all these people," she said, gesturing at her fellow workers
as tears welled in her eyes. "They are poor and suffering.
They have no food to eat, no water or shelter over their heads because
one man has refused to let go of power." The MDC says security
agents and Zanu PF militia have been deployed in rural areas to
coerce villagers into voting for the president in a run-off poll.
"In Mutoko East constituency, Zanu PF members were moving around
villages waving guns . . . and telling the people that the re-run
was the last chance for them to vote for Zanu PF," an MDC report
said. "If the villagers do not vote for Mugabe then they would
use the guns." According to the report, Zanu PF militia had
threatened to kidnap suspected MDC voters.
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