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Visagie of Wantage Farm guilty of farming: I pronounce a verdict of guilty
Ben Freeth, SADC Tribunal Rights Watch
August 16, 2012

I went down to Chegutu magistrate's court to hear the verdict of the long and troubling surreal - even Kafkaesque trial of Dirk and Heidi Visagie last week. The magistrate, Mr Ndokera, is the beneficiary of Violets Vale farm - ironically a farm that was formerly owned by Heidi's grandfather before the Bronkhorsts bought it. The Bronkhorsts were subsequently evicted so that the magistrate could take up occupation of the homestead and the farm.

Dirk and Heidi arrived in Chegutu in February 1999 - 12 months before the constitutional referendum where the people voted "no" to a constitution where the State would have been able to take the land without compensation. The land invasions started two weeks after that - and a time of terror had begun.

When a 42-hectare peri-urban plot called Wantage came up for sale however, the Visagies decided to buy it. It was very small and next to town - and being sold by a Government parastatal with the Minister of Lands having issued a "certificate of no interest", it would surely be safe. So the Visagies, with their young family, decided to invest everything they had, and stay.

The next month, on 23 November 2001, the Minister gave an offer letter to Timothy Mudavanhu for a property near-by. He was the chairman of the rural district council, and he arrived shortly afterwards on Dirk and Heidi's new property to claim it.

Their new property had not been gazetted for acquisition and would not be for some years. Heidi also pointed out to Mudavanhu that "this offer letter is not for this property." This did not matter for the land invaders. "This is the place I want," he said.

It was the start of Dirk and Heidi's share of the harassment and intimidation program in Zimbabwe that has been called "land reform". On one occasion Mudavanhu broke the locks into the Visagies home and moved his furniture into their house. On many occasions he moved his thugs into the garden to intimidate the Visagies into leaving.

The farming operation was continually disturbed and the workers intimidated too. Fires were set. It has been the story of agriculture in Zimbabwe for so long - and the reason why another 1.6 million desperate Zimbabweans need to be fed by the world again this year.

On resorting to the High Court, various court orders from different judges allowed the Visagies to stay, however. One judge ordered Mudavanhu to remove his furniture - which he did. Enlisting the support of the police to apply the law on each occasion was always a long a torturous ordeal.

Only once in a whole decade of intimidation, when the Visages had been locked out of their house for four days with no clean clothes or other belongings, was Mudavanhu apparently arrested, but he was immediately released without fine or sentence as it was "a technicality" according to the Officer commanding the district (DISPOL), Chief Superintendent Moyo.

In 2007, Dirk was criminally charged for illegally occupying his home. Charges were eventually withdrawn after he had pleaded not guilty. In the meantime he had joined the Campbell case and got a final and binding judgment from the SADC Tribunal which gave him and his family and his workers and their families the right to remain in their homes and carry on farming. The Zimbabwe Government was by the SADC Tribunal to protect them.

In January 2011, the Visagies were charged again for illegally occupying State Land without authority and so had to stop all cropping on the farm.

The 20-month case has been torturously long and convoluted. The key witness was the Chegutu town planner, Douglas Chimande. He was adamant in his testimony, despite hostile cross-examination from the State Prosecutor when asked if the urban demarcation of the property was not "simply wishful thinking?"

The Town Planner stated there was nothing "wishful" about it. The northern and western border of Wantage is already Chegutu municipality land and with the current mining boom the town is expanding rapidly. Anyone being resettled on such a property for agricultural purposes, Mr Chimande said, will simply have to be moved off again to make way for urban housing - which, he pointed out, has already happened on the property of Lions Vlei on the western border of Chegutu. As such this property of Wantage was and is earmarked for urban expansion long before it was wrongfully gazetted.

It was clearly shown in the trial by the Lands Officer Clever Kunonga, that no effort was made on the part of the State Lands Office to verify the validity of the property for agricultural resettlement despite firstly, its small size (42ha), secondly, its close proximity to the town centre and thirdly, the fact that it was previously State property sold to the accused company in 2001 after the Land Reform exercise had already commenced. All the above factors were made known to the State and to the South African Embassy, as Dirk is a South African citizen supposedly protected by a bilateral investment promotion and protection agreement (BIPPA).

The magistrate, in a chance meeting in Chegutu town, told Visagie that although the peri-urban argument was valid he had to "weigh up peri-urban versus (his) personal safety".

Judgment day came on Friday 10 August in the Chegutu Magistrate's Court. We sat silent in the court room and then got up as the magistrate came in. We bowed to the law - and wondered why we were doing it. Dirk went up into the dock as the accused yet gain, head bowed and face serious and worn. Three prisons officers sat blocking his exit.

The magistrate slowly read out his Judgment. He dismissed the key witnesses assertion that the property was part of the Chegutu master plan by saying that the key witness, when cross-examined, had admitted that it was "just a draft and not official" - a clearly disputed assertion!

In a judgment that has rung out again and again in the any land cases he and other magistrates have presided over in the past few months throughout the country, he closed with the hammer blow of "I pronounce a verdict of guilty".

I watched Dirk's face. It was implacable and resigned. We were silent. After the sentence was read out Dirk was ushered off by the prison officers into the holding cells while David Drury, his lawyer sorted out the fine. I was sitting next to Howard Mathews. "Did you see the stains of water running down the walls from the windows at the top?" he asked. "They look like tears."

Tears for all those years of persecution. Tears for the injustice of the system that allows a judge to pervert the testimony of a witness. Tears for this injustice being supported by the democrats in the new constitution. How the tears have flowed!

In a final ironic twist, Timothy Mudavanhu, although a delighted observer at the final judgment, has put in his application for permanent residence to Canada where his daughter and her family live. His other daughter lives in Botswana where he spends much of the year. It seems that Timothy Mudavanhu doesn't like to live in a country so devastated by lawlessness.

The Visagies are lodging an appeal in the High Court while they wait for the SADC Treaty to be adhered to and their final and binding judgment recognised.

Dirk Visagie and Andrew Ferreira, a former Zimbabwe Tobacco Association president , who were found guilty the same day - are the last of the 15 SADC Tribunal protected farms in the Chegutu District to be still able to access their homes. The other 13 have all had to abandon their homes following intense intimidation. It is a poor indictment on the rule of law under the Global Political Agreement (GPA) in Zimbabwe.

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