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'Fearful' Zimbabwean MP Bennett joins queue
Cape Times (SA)
By Boyd Webb and Sapa-AFP
April 25, 2006

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=84&art_id=vn20060425002904933C515625

The department of home affairs has confirmed a request for asylum from Zimbabwean opposition party MP Roy Bennett who fears the Mugabe regime wants to kill him.

But department spokesperson Nkosana Sibuyi said Bennett was at the back of a long queue and was not sure when his request would be attended to.

"I can confirm we have received his request but there is a backlog of 103 000 applications for asylum and he is not going to jump the queue simply because of his status," Sibuyi said.

A home affairs initiative designed to expedite the backlog in immigration and asylum seeking requests was implemented early this year, but Sibuyi refused to estimate when Bennet's application was expected to be reached.

"We are making headway," he said.

Bennett, a senior member of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was released from prison in June last year after serving eight months for shoving the justice minister during a heated parliamentary debate.

He fled Zimbabwe last month after police said they wanted to question him following the security services' discovery of an arms cache in eastern Zimbabwe that they claimed was to be used to overthrown President Robert Mugabe's government.

"It's true he is looking for political asylum in South Africa," said MDC spokesperson Nelson Chamisa. "The regime is after his head. We cannot afford to have a dead hero," Chamisa said Bennett was last month elected treasurer of one faction of the split MDC led by Morgan Tsvangirai.

"He (Bennett) will continue to serve as the treasurer of the party" from South Africa, Chamisa said.

"Location is not a factor, but the critical thing is the contribution to the struggle."

In October 2004, Bennett was jailed after he pushed Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa to the floor during a rowdy exchange over land reform in parliament.

Bennett lost his large coffee plantation in eastern Zimbabwe during Mugabe's land reform programme launched in 2000, which saw nearly 4 000 of the 4 500 white Zimbabwean large-scale commercial farmers evicted from their land, which was then given to landless blacks.

The lawmaker was in trouble again last month after the discovery of a huge arms cache. Former soldier Mike Peter Hitschmann was identified as the kingpin of an alleged assassination plot, and fled the country to avoid arrest.

State authorities said Hitschmann, whom they described as a member of a shadowy organisation called the Zimbabwe Freedom Movement (ZFM), was involved in stashing arms at various locations in the country.

Media reports said an AK-47 assault rifle, seven Uzi machine guns, four FN rifles, 11 shotguns, six CZ pistols, four revolvers, 15 teargas canisters and several thousand rounds of ammunition were found at Hitschmann's home.

The MDC has denied any links to Hitschmann and claims he is a member of the police reserves.

Zimbabwean Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi said there were no grounds for South Africa to grant Bennett political asylum.

"We have never persecuted anybody in Zimbabwe," Mohadi said, adding it was "peculiar" that Bennett was seeking asylum abroad "yet his boss Tsvangirai is in the country making all the useless noise".

*This article was originally published on page 6 of Cape Times on April 25, 2006

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