Posted on 08/05/2002 3:53:51 AM PDT by Clive
JUSTICE for Agriculture (JAG), the militant splinter group of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), is headed for a showdown with the government after its members vowed to stay on their farms in defiance of a directive to vacate the properties on Friday this week.
Although they risk jail over the Heroes’ holiday, the farmers vowed to stay on their properties.
About 60 commercial farmers, among them Renson Gasela the MDC shadow minister for agriculture and Roy Bennet, the MP for Chimanimani, met in Harare on Thursday night.
They resolved to take the government head-on, saying they would not strike deals with it as the CFU had done to the detriment of its members.
“There will be no deals cut,” Jenni Williams, JAG’s spokesperson, said. “If there is change, it will be from the ground.
“Appeasement is like feeding the crocodile hoping it will eat you last.”
She said trying to strike deals with the government had so far failed.
Attempts by the commercial farmers, and efforts under the Nigeria-brokered Abuja Agreement and the local Zimbabwe Joint Resettlement Initiative, to get the government to conduct land reform in an orderly manner have all failed.
More than 95 percent of the land has already been listed for acquisition with some foreign-owned farms previously de-listed being relisted, Williams said.
Dave Connolly, JAG’s chairman, advised the farmers against destroying their title deeds, saying they should keep copies of the deeds and lodge the originals outside the country as they would come in handy later.
The farmers said the ongoing campaign to evict them from their farms was a planned genocide against commercial farmers similar to what happened during the notorious Gukurahundi massacres of the 1980s when 30 farmers were killed after the North Korean-trained 5 Brigade was deployed in Matabeleland and the Midlands to quell dissident insurgency.
Williams said: “We must go back to President Mugabe and remind him of the promise that he made in the 1980s that there would be no reverse racism. You must join us in making our leaders accountable.”
This in a country that has no law.
There were 30 farmers killed in the Gukurahundi. There were also 20,000 Ndebele killed.
After the Gukurahundi, no one ought to have any illusions about Mugabe and his promises.
Terribly well said. Mugabe is a marxist, which is another way of saying a thug interested only in power, and with a propensity for mass-murdering any dissenters. Either kill Mugabe or get out. You can no more argue with him than you could Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot. Mugabe has already said that judicial rulings in Zimbabwe can be disregarded if he disagrees with them.
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