Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s controversial “land reform program” took a new twist on Wednesday when a court ordered the eviction of a white farmer who was not a farmer.
Ian Campbell-Morrison, 46, lives in the Vumba Mountains in eastern Zimbabwe, next to a tourist hotel where he is the green keeper for its golf course. He and his wife live in a cottage on a plot not much bigger than a suburban garden, where she tends flowers.
The Campbell-Morrisons used to farm tobacco and coffee there, but the government seized their land and the farmhouse and gave it to a government official, leaving the couple their cottage and the garden around it, said Hendrik Olivier, director of the Commercial Farmers’ Union, made up mostly of Zimbabwe’s remaining 350 white farmers.
A magistrate in the nearby city of Mutare has sentenced Campbell-Morrison to a fine of US$800 for “illegally occupying state land” and ordered the couple to be off the property by tomorrow.
The Campbell-Morrisons are one of 140 white farming families facing eviction from their land in the latest tactic regime in Mugabe’s violent, lawless campaign to force white landowners — numbering about 5,000 when it started in 2000 — off their farms.
The action is in the name of a redistribution of white land to blacks, but which has instead made a million former farm workers homeless and set off the collapse of the country’s economy into famine and ruin.
Mugabe has declared all white-owned land to be state property and banned farmers from taking the government to court.
The evictions and violence have continued despite the establishment in February of a power-sharing government between Mugabe and former pro-democracy opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, with an agreement to restore the rule of law and to “ensure security of tenure to all land holders.”
Tsvangirai, now prime minister, began by promising to end the lawlessness, promising that “no crime [by invaders on white farms] will go unpunished,” but police — under the control of staunchly pro-Mugabe security chiefs — continued to refuse to act against the mostly well-heeled Mugabe loyalists grabbing productive farms and selling their crops.
But there was shock this week when Tsvangirai, referred in an interview to “isolated incidents of so-called farm invasions” that had “been blown out of proportion.”
Said a Western diplomat: “He’s talking like Mugabe now.”
Last weekend, an 80-year-old woman was assaulted by police removing her son from his farm. Last Friday, another farmer was beaten up by a Mugabe supporter trying to force him to leave.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS