Subject: POLICE HARASSMENT AND WRONGFUL ARREST
I WOULD JUST LIKE TO INFORM YOU OF AN
INCIDENT THAT HAS HAPPENED IN THE HARARE SOUTH FARMING AREA. MY HUSBAND WAS
ARRESTED LAST NIGHT BECAUSE SOMEONE WHO LIVES IN OUR COMPUND WENT TO THE
BEATRICE POLICE ALLEGING THAT WE HAD TRIED TO RUN HER OVER IN OUR PICK-UP. THIS
STORY IS A COMPLETE LIE. WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED WAS THAT WE SAW HER SITTING ON
THE SIDE OF THE ROAD WITH HER 2 DAUGHTERS AND MY HUSBAND PULLED OVER ON THE SIDE
OF THE ROAD AND TOLD HER TO STOP THREATENING OUR LABOUR. SHE HAS SUBSEQUENTLY
TOLD THE POLICE WE THREATENED TO GET RID OF HER FAMILY BECAUSE THEY ARE ZANU PF
SUPPORTERS! HER HUSBAND AND HER FAMILY HAVE BEEN CAUSING TROUBLE FOR A WHILE
NOW AND WE HAVE CONFISCATED KACHASU FROM THEM AFTER CLOSING ALL THE BARS DOWN ON
OUR FARM. THEIR FAMILY CONTINUOUSLY THREATENS OUR LABOUR AND HE HIMSELF HAS
CLAIMED THAT HE IS THE OWNER OF THIS FARM AND THAT ALL THE WORKERS WILL BE
WORKING FROM HIM. WE HAVE RECEIVED A SECTION 5 BUT NOT A SECTION
8.
DONALD WAS ARRESTED LAST NIGHT AT APPROXIMATELY 5PM. THE BEATRICE
POLICE ARRIVED TO TAKE HIM AWAY. OUR LAWYER ARRIVED AT THE POLICE STATION AT
APPROXIMATELY 8PM BUT THERE WAS NOBODY AVAILABLE TO DISCUSS THE MATTER WITH HIM,
SO DONALD WAS DETAINED LAST NIGHT. OUR LAWYER WENT TO THE POLICE STATION THIS
MORNING AND STATEMENTS ETC. WERE MADE. OUR LAWYER PUT IN AN APPLICATION TO HAVE
HIM RELEASED UNTIL THE REMAND HEARING TOMORROW, BUT THE OFFICER IN CHARGE WOULD
NOT EVEN SEE HIM TO DISCUSS IT, SO DONALD REMAINS IN JAIL TONIGHT.
NO
MEDICAL REPORT HAS EVEN BEEN PRESENTED TO THE INSPECTING OFFICER AND HE INFORMED
ME THAT THE POLICE ARE ALLEGING THAT DONALD RESISTED ARREST AND RAN AWAY FROM
THE POLICE, WHICH IS A TOTAL FABRICATION. HE HAS CO-OPERATED FULLY. AS THE
LAWYER POINTS OUT, IT IS ILLEGAL FOR THEM TO ARREST MY HUSBAND AT THIS STAGE.
ANY ASSISTANCE OR ADVICE YOU COULD GIVE US WOULD BE APPRECIATED. WE WOULD LIKE
AS MANY PEOPLE TO FIND OUT ABOUT THIS AS POSSIBLE. TELEPHONE NUMBERS ARE
(email me ).
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE.
CAROL
HOBBS
NHUKU FARM
HARARE SOUTH
New Zealand Herald
Zimbabwean farmer finds resistance
futile
27.06.2002
By BASILDON PETA
Colin Taylor was yesterday
chased off his farm by members of President
Robert Mugabe's most feared youth
militia. Now he is gathering his household
possessions and moving to
Zambia.
In the early morning, just hours after the expiry of the deadline
for white
landowners to cease farming and surrender their properties, a group
of
youths armed with traditional weapons and sticks arrived at the farm
outside
Bindura, about 110km northeast of the capital, Harare.
It is
now a crime for Taylor and 2900 other farmers to feed their animals,
work
their land or produce food at a time when six million Zimbabweans
face
starvation.
Any farmer defying the order faces a two-year jail
sentence and a fine.
Most farmers fulfilled their threat to defy Mugabe
and remained on their
land pending a hearing in the High Court.
In
London, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw accused Mugabe of engineering
a
"man-made tragedy" with his "extraordinary and reprehensible"
order.
In Taylor's case the enforcers were members of a youth militia
known as the
Green Bombers for the jackets they sported during the
presidential election
campaign in March.
They told his farm labourers:
"If you report for duty ever again and if we
see your boss on the farm we
will kill him."
The farm now belonged to the state, they
said.
Taylor avoided a confrontation with the youths but last night he
could not
conceal his despondency.
"By chasing away my workers and
looting my property, they have finally put
me out of business."
He is
abandoning 40ha of citrus, 3ha of flowers, 1000ha of wheat and all his
farm
equipment to start again in Zambia.
"I can't get on to the farm because
they will kill me. My workers cannot get
on to the farm either. So what's the
point of staying?" Taylor said. "This
is not resettlement, it's total
theft."
Lindsay Campbell, who farms in Marondera, 59km east of the
capital, has
abandoned her tobacco crop after being confronted by illegal
settlers who
said they now owned the property.
"They were very hostile
... they wouldn't let me drive my children to
school. So I have just decided
to comply and stop farming and let them do
whatever they want on the
farm."
Jean Simon, 42, a divorced woman who farms in Banket, north of
Harare, said
she had no choice but to keep feeding her animals despite the
ban.
In the past she has been kidnapped by Mugabe's thugs, and was beaten
in jail
after being arrested on trumped-up charges.
She said she had
nowhere else to go - her family had been in Africa for 200
years.
Zimbabwe faces famine, UN says
HARARE|Published: Saturday June 29, 9:11 AM
Zimbabwe's food crisis is "very serious", a senior UN official said today,
warning that millions of people will face famine in the coming months unless
quick and decisive action is taken.
Zimbabwe "is facing a food crisis even in harvest time", Kenzo Oshima, UN
under secretary-general for humanitarian affairs told a press conference after a
three-day visit to the southern African country which used to be considered the
breadbasket of the region.
"There will be a more grave situation in the coming months affecting millions
of people in this country ... unless it is addressed promptly and boldly," he
said.
In its latest humanitarian report, received today, the UN said 5.5 million
Zimbabweans face hunger during the next year, and warned that the country will
need to import more than 1.8 million tonnes of cereal to survive until the 2003
harvest.
Government plans to import about 312,000 tonnes of food, while donors and
several agencies have begun working to import grains, according to the
report.
Oshima is leading a UN-team on a tour of four southern African nations
threatened by famine. After Zimbabwe, they are due to visit Malawi, Zambia and
Angola.
He met with Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe yesterday, as well as with
finance minister Simba Makoni, social welfare minister July Moyo and agriculture
minister Joseph Made, as well as with foreign ambassadors and non-government
organisations based here.
Oshima described his meetings with government officials as a "very frank and
interesting exchange of views".
Zimbabwe's food shortages have been blamed in part on a drought, and in part
on Mugabe's tumultuous land reforms, in which more than 90 per cent of
white-owned commercial farms have been targetted for resettlement by blacks.
Under a new law, about 2,900 white-owned farms were supposed to stop working
on Monday, but many farmers ignored the deadline, according to the Commercial
Farmers Union which represents them.
U.N. pledges more food aid to desperate Zimbabwe
HARARE, June 28 — The United Nations called on Friday for a massive food relief effort for Zimbabwe, where severe shortages caused by drought and government land seizures threaten millions of people with starvation.
U.N. Under-Secretary General Kenzo Oshima, the world body's top emergency
relief coordinator, said President Robert Mugabe's government had agreed to work
out a plan under which the world body would mobilise more food assistance for
the country.
Aid agencies say four to six million of Zimbabwe's
nearly 14 million people need food aid to offset shortages caused by drought and
aggravated by Mugabe's plan to seize white-owned commercial farms for black
resettlement.
''The situation is very serious...and unless there is
massive effort to get in aid, it (the food shortages) will have a very
devastating effect,'' Oshima told reporters after a three-day visit to assess
the country's food needs.
He did not give details of his talks with
the government.
Almost 13 million people in six southern African
states -- Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, Lesotho and Swaziland -- are at
risk of famine unless they receive food aid.
Two successive years of
poor harvests caused by drought, floods and frost, coupled with economic and
political crises, have slashed food availability and caused prices of the staple
food maize to skyrocket.
The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) has said
it needs some $400 million from donor governments to tackle the crisis in
southern Africa.
FOOD AID, NOT POLITICS
Asked whether he agreed with the
view of some aid groups and regional analysts that Zimbabwe's food crisis was
largely man-made, Oshima said he was not there to discuss politics.
''It is not for me to argue whether there are problems, natural or man-made. My
duty is to coordinate humanitarian relief...and the magnitude of the problem
affecting Zimbabwe is very serious,'' he said.
''...Our
responsibility is not to engage in political talks but to make sure that the
people in need are assisted. We let others deal with the political problems,''
Oshima added.
Oshima said the country's needs were about 40 percent
of the total food aid requirements for the southern African region.
Analysts say drought and Mugabe's land policies were responsible for a 60
percent fall in the production of Zimbabwe's staple maize food this year.
Mugabe vowed to press ahead with the land programme on Wednesday in his
first public comments since the expiry this week of a government deadline
ordering nearly 3,000 farmers to stop working their land.
A 45-day
countdown for the white farmers to leave their land began on Tuesday, but many
vowed to stay put rather than watch vital crops rot in a nation short of food.
Two white farmers have filed suit seeking to block the government
order in a test case closely watched by thousands of others also facing
eviction.
Zim Independent
Govt approves GM maize imports
Vincent Kahiya
THE
government has approved the importation of genetically-modified maize as
part
of efforts to feed starving Zimbabweans, the Zimbabwe Independent
established
this week.
World Food Programme (WFP) public affairs officer in Zimbabwe,
Makena
Walker, this week confirmed government had agreed to allow GM maize
into the
country.
"The government of Zimbabwe has agreed to take
GM maize so long as it is
milled immediately upon arrival in the country,"
Walker said.
The Independent understands the Bio-Safety Board in the
Office of the
President and Cabinet recently wrote to the WFP, which is
co-ordinating
relief efforts in the country, stating government policy
regarding the
importation of GM maize.
Walker confirmed receipt of
the letter but could not provide further
details.
Earlier this
month the government was reported to have turned down GM maize
from the
United States because it threatened beef exports and local maize
seed
varieties. In a televised programme, Talking Farming, Lands and
Agriculture
minister Joseph Made said GM maize was "unacceptable
in
Zimbabwe".
Maize initially destined for Zimbabwe was eventually
shipped to Malawi and
Zambia who are also facing severe food
shortages.
Walker said the WFP placed no restrictions on GM foods
which had passed the
safety standards of a donating country and were accepted
by the recipient
country.
"There are no restrictions placed on GM
foods under the Codex Alimentarius,
which is the joint World Health
Organisation and Food and Agricutlure
Organisation body dealing with safety
and other standards for trade in
foods.
"WFP neither tests nor
labels for GM content since that is not called for by
the Codex and there are
no internationally-accepted standards for such
tests," said
Walker.
A recent United Nations report said GMO products (maize meal)
had been
allowed into the country, but only by special waiver on a
case-by-case
basis. The waivers are granted after consultations with the
Bio-Safety
Board, the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture and Rural Resettlement,
and the
Ministry of Public Service, Labour and Social
Welfare.
"The administrative complexity of obtaining the waiver could
impede actual
food aid delivery by delaying logistical timeline necessities,"
the report
said.
"The UN system and donors are negotiating with
government to establish a
more streamlined means of bringing GMO products
into the country in order to
ease the current food crisis," said the
UN.
Last week we incorrectly reported that the WFP had imported 117
000 tonnes
of food under the aid programme to Zimbabwe. The WFP this week
said pledges
of up to 66 600 tonnes had been made to date.
Zim Independent
50 farmers move to Mozambique
By Loughty Dube
AT
least 50 beleaguered Zimbabwean commercial farmers have applied for
land
leases to the Mozambican government after they were ordered to
cease
operations or face imprisonment in Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Independent
has
established.
Reports from Mozambique say 50 farmers have submitted
requests for land
leases since President Robert Mugabe's controversial land
reforms took a
turn for the worst with a May 10 amendment to the Land
Acquisition Act. The
amendment stipulates that a farmer should stop farming
45 days after being
served with a notice of acquisition and subsequently
vacate the property at
the end of another 45 days.
Zimbabwean
farmers are also relocating to Zambia, Uganda and Namibia. There
is also
demand for them in Australia and New Zealand.
The Mozambican
Agricultural ministry said in a statement 13 Zimbabwean
farmers had been
allocated farming leases. Mozambique prohibits the sale of
land to
individuals or companies.
"The 13 farmers will be settled in the
fertile central province of Manica
and each will be given 1 000 hectares of
land in line with Mozambican law
that allows land to be leased for up to 50
years," the statement said.
Commercial Farmers Union (CFU)
spokesperson Jenni Williams said they were
aware some farmers were moving to
Mozambique. "The CFU is aware that a
number of farmers from our membership
are already farming in Mozambique and
a lot more are planning to move there
and other countries in the region with
conducive farming conditions," said
Williams.
The Mozambican government said the farmers were given land
in the districts
of Barue, Mavonde and Vanduze in Manica province, which
borders Zimbabwe.
Mozambique, also facing a crippling drought, is set to take
advantage of
Mugabe's controversial land reforms to attract the experienced
farmers
viewed as the best in the region.
Over 2 900 Zimbabwean
white commercial farmers issued with Section 8 orders
were ordered to stop
all farming activities on Monday.
Zim Independent
Mugabe's shadow towers over Nepad at G8
summit
Dumisani Muleya
AFRICAN leaders promoing theNew Partnership for
Africa'sDevelopment (Nepad)
yesterdaystarted bargaining for the endorsement
of their recovery plan at
the G8 summit in Canada from a position of weakness
after they failed to
resolve the crisis in Zimbabwe.
Presidents Thabo
Mbeki of South Africa, Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria,
Abdoulaye Wade of
Senegal and Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria, the key
movers of Nepad, for the
first time ever sat on the high table with leaders
of the world's richest and
most powerful nations to sell their case.
The meeting, which ends
today at Kananaskis, Alberta, is a do-or-die for the
African leaders.
However, the Zimbabwean crisis - widely seen as a test case
for Nepad - cast
a huge shadow over their deliberations although the project
will almost
certainly be approved. De-spite committingthemselves to a "peer
review"
me-chanism to monitor each other's rule, the continent's
heavyweights have
been unable to halt President Robert Mugabe's
incremental
autocracy.
Mbeki and Obasanjo have been trying since
2000 to resolve Zimbabwe's
political and economic situation with-out success.
Western leaders, who have
imposed targeted sanctions on Mugabe and his ruling
clique in a bid to stop
violence and repression, have criticised African
leaders' failure to
restrain Mugabe.
G8 foreign ministers recently
discussed Zimbabwe and resolved to urge their
leaders to ratchet up pressure
at the summit for Mbeki and others to tackle
the Zimbabwean
ruler.
"The matter was discussed at the G8 foreign ministers' meeting
two weeks
ago, and there was overwhelming opposition to what has been
happening in
Zimbabwe," British Foreign secretary, Jack Straw, said this
week.
Although Mbeki and his counterparts have been defending Mugabe,
Harare has
been trying hard to discredit their programme through populist
rhetoric.
Information minister Jonathan Moyo last week claimed Nepad was a
"modern
type of imperialism" despite its African origins. He expressed anger
at the
"peer review" mechanism expected to provide ways of holding African
leaders
accountable for misrule, human rights abuses and
repression.
"You cannot ask African countries to punish Zimbabwe,"
said Moyo. "What has
Zimbabwe done? It is pure British
madness."
The government-controlled Sunday News, which carried Moyo's
claims, attacked
African leaders for their efforts to win US$64 billion from
developed
countries in annual investments and trade benefits through the
Nepad.
"They will go down in history as a gullible bunch of
politicians who
hastened the recolonisation of Africa," the paper said. "How
can we expect
imperial plunderers, powerful capitalists and racist Western
powers to bring
us prosperity?"
British High Commissioner
toZimbabwe Brian Donnelly said inthis month's
Britain-Zimbabwe magazine
Harare would remain stuck in crisis if it spurned
the continental recovery
agenda. "Africa is moving on, but Zimbabwe is not,"
he
said.
Labour minister July Moyo and government supporters rejected
Ne-pad during a
recent ILO conference in Geneva, Switzerland. "All African
labour ministers
refused to endorse poverty strategies and Nepad," he was
quoted as saying in
the press. "We refused to endorse anything we have not
seen."
Zim Independent
Government bars ILO mission
Mthulisi Mathuthu
THE
government has turned down an International Labour Organisation
(ILO)
proposal to send a mission to Zimbabwe to assist in the formulation
of
amendments to labour legislation to conform to international norms, it
has
been learnt. The ILO mission also wanted to work at restoring trade
unions'
freedom of association.
Sources who attended the just-ended
90th session of the ILO in Geneva told
the Zimbabwe Independent that trade
unionists from across the globe had
expressed displeasure with the
government's shilly-shallying in the
application of the ILO Convention No 98
which deals with the right to
organise strikes and engage in collective
bargaining, hence the proposal to
send a mission.
Government
representative and Minister of Labour and Social Welfare July
Moyo denied at
the meeting that government was undermining the trade unions
but promised
that the concerns raised would be addressed in the Labour
Relations Act to be
amended later in the year.
The government has been criticised for
delaying the amendment of the Labour
Relations Act and for passing laws
hindering free labour activity despite
its ratification of the convention in
1993.
According to the minutes of the meeting, Moyo turned down the
proposal to
send a mission to Harare, arguing that the right procedure was to
have a
committee of experts monitor the application of the convention,
liaising
with the government in mapping the way forward.
Unionists
from Zimbabwe, Norway, Finland, the US and Malawi criticised the
Zimbabwean
government for its heavy reliance on restrictive legislation such
as the
Public Service Act 1996 and the Public Order and Security Act
(2002).
Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions president Lovemore Matombo
said government
was in direct violation of Articles 1 and 2 of the convention
which seek to
promote the workers and citizens' right to freedom of
association, and to
freedom in general.
Zim Independent
British MPs condemn farm evictions
Dumisani
Muleya
BRITISH MPs have described as "absurd" a decision by the government to
evict
thousands of white commercial farmers at a time Zimbabwe is facing
famine.
In a heated House of Commons debate on Zimbabwe this week, the
legislators
accused President Robert Mugabe of engineering mass starvation
through
violent land seizures and displacement of
farmers.
North-East Fife MP Menzies Campbell took foreign secretary
Jack Straw to
task over the eviction of farmers and orders for them to stop
all
production.
"In a country that was the granary of southern
Africa, farmers are now
forbidden by law to work their land when there is a
threat of massive food
shortages," Campbell said. "Is this not the theatre of
the absurd?"
Straw said throwing out farmers was
absurd.
"It would be absurd, for the fact that it is entirely
deliberate, and we
need to be aware of that," Straw said. "This is a natural
consequence of
deliberate policies embarked upon by Mugabe - rationally, but
amorally and
wrongly."
Government last month imposed a ban on
production in about 3 000 farms
through Section 8 orders served under the
Land Acquisition Act. The
ultimatums expired on Monday
night.
Straw had initially slammed the ejection of farmers through an
arbitrary
edict as "censurable" and "reprehensible".
"Let me begin
by condemning the extraordinary and reprehensible decision of
Zanu PF to
order farmers in Zimbabwe to stop farming and to drive them and
their workers
off the land, at a time when the people of Zimbabwe face a
level of
starvation unparalleled in their recent history, most of which is
due not to
drought but to deliberate decisions of the Mugabe regime,"
he
said.
"Zimbabwe's only way back from disaster is through the
restoration of the
rule of law, an end to political violence, an end to the
intimidation and
arrest of journalists and the free press, a return to
democratic legitimacy,
and the adoption of credible economic
policies."
Sir Patrick Cormack asked if it was true that Mugabe was
parcelling out
prime land to his cronies.
"The land has not even
been handed over to ordinary black farmers, but to
Mugabe's hench people,"
Straw replied. "It includes 300 000 acres of prime
land seized from
commercial farmers and handed out to his closest allies,
including 10 cabinet
ministers, seven MPs and Mugabe's brother-in-law, aptly
named Reward
Marufu."
Crisis in Zimbabwe - It is a VERY in depth & detailed report(over 100 pages) re- the Zim. situation over the past 2 & 1/2 years.
Please email me if you wish to get the document as an attachment via email. Alternatively you can view it at the ZWnews website : http://www.zwnews.com/Crisis.doc
