Related Articles
Top Stories
May 27 2012 11:21
There's a price war raging between South Africa's cellphone networks after Cell C lowered the rates of its prepaid calls by more than 34%.
May 27 2012 13:09
The oversupply of golf estates has claimed another victim.
May 28 2012 07:53
The City of Cape Town has spent R175m running the Myciti bus service since the Soccer World Cup compared to an income of R35m, a report says.
Cape Town - One hundred and fifty-two of the
estimated 400 white farmers remaining in Zimbabwe are currently facing
prosecution, according to a media statement by the Commercial Farmers' Union
circulated here on Thursday.
Last week five were found guilty of remaining on their farms and ordered
to vacate their properties. They were also given fines of around US$300.
"A total of 12 farmers and 34 workers have been convicted to date,
heightening insecurity in the agricultural sector countrywide," the
statement said. "Farmers who continue to occupy and use their farms face
prosecution and imprisonment."
According to the statement there has been a dramatic scaling up of
violence against the few remaining Zimbabwean commercial farmers and their
workers, and it is cause for great concern, both for food security in
Zimbabwe and for the region.
Farmers are being driven from their farms by beneficiaries who have been
fraudulently allocated the farms on the basis of a previous listing of their
farm(s) in a Government Gazette, the existence of an offer letter issued at
the sole discretion of a minister or land officer in favour of the listed
farm(s) in question, fraudulently generated offer letters, or taking the law
into their own hands.
"The beneficiaries are from all walks of life including government
ministers or related families, force officers [army, police and the Central
Intelligence Organisation (CIO)] and senior businessmen," the Union said.
"The prevailing unjust legal position is such that, if a matter can be
classified as 'political', as is the case with all matters relating to land,
then the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) refuse to carry out their
constitutional duties, leaving commercial farmers and farmworkers
unprotected by the law."
Deon Theron, the president of the union, said: "Owing to the ongoing
violations of commercial farmers and their workers, the prosecution threats
and lack of security of tenure, the majority of commercial farmers will not
be able to plant crops this season.
"The estimated tonnage of maize, the staple food crop, for the 2009/2010
season is just 500 000 tonnes from 2 043 000 tonnes in 2000."
- I-Net Bridge