Where is Je$$e Jackwad when we need him??? He should be over there defending these white folks.
Oh, sorry, I forgot that the race card only works one way.
Stay safe; stay armed.
Posted on 08/15/2002 5:58:26 AM PDT by Clive
MAYHEM and violence has characterised the ongoing forced evictions of thousands of commercial farmers, with one farmer sustaining serious facial burns following an arson attack on his farmhouse on Saturday night.
The injured Rusape farmer, Dup Muller, and his wife Hennelie, narrowly escaped from the raging fire that engulfed their entire house just after midnight and reduced it to ashes.
The attack was carried out by a group of unidentified people. Nothing was recovered from the house in which the Mullers have lived for 40 years.
The arson attack came a few minutes after the expiry of the deadline to leave the farm in line with the government’s eviction orders, which most commercial farmers have vowed to defy.
Muller, 59, said the blaze could not have been caused by an electrical fault because all the lights in the farmhouse were in perfect working order when he switched them on, as he tried to establish the cause of the fire.
He said he noticed some inflammable substance on one of the window panes, indicating the fire could only have been the work of arsonists.
Muller said a report was made to the police in Rusape but they said they had no transport and could not, therefore, travel to the scene of the attack.
“The assailants came in the middle of the night and poured diesel around the house before setting it on fire,” Muller said. “My wife heard strange noises outside the house and we tried to go out and investigate. It was then that we found out that the house was in flames. Everything was burnt,” Muller said.
A visibly shaken Muller said he and his wife were lucky to have survived the attack and they had since sought refuge at an adjacent farm. He dismissed as “rubbish” claims by Rusape’s assistant district administrator, who identified himself only as Chiringa, that the evidence his office had gathered showed that the fire was caused by an electrical fault.
Justice for Agriculture, a newly-formed union of combative commercial farmers, yesterday said the Mullers of Rusape had an 80-hectare tobacco crop valued at $19.2 million.
In a related development, Precious Shumba, a reporter with The Daily News, and Peta Thornycroft, a correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph, were yesterday held hostage for about five hours together with farmer Christopher Hinde and his family at Condwelani Farm, about 26km along the Bindura-Mount Darwin road.
A group of about 120 suspected Zanu PF supporters, who demanded that Hinde should leave the farm, assaulted Daily News driver Trust Maswela and warned him never to venture into Mashonaland Central province because Zanu PF had declared it a no-go area.
Maswela said: “I was badly assaulted by a group of about 20 Zanu PF youths. They only stopped the assaults after being restrained by their superiors.”They alleged that Shumba was supposed to have approached their superiors for permission to interview the besieged farmer.
The group demanded that Shumba be released to them so they could hand him over to their “central committee” in order for it to deal with him. Shumba was released when the Daily News driver eventually came to the farmhouse with three war veterans who negotiated his release.
The news crew was warned against returning to the farm. Although the police were alerted of their detention, they did not react despite promising that they were on their way.
Thornycroft lost her camera valued at US$1 000 (Z$55 000 at the official rate), while Susan Hinde was robbed of Z$3 000 in cash.The violent mob smashed about five window panes and broke locks to the main bedroom as they threatened to set the whole house on fire if Shumba was not handed over to them. Shumba had gone into the house to interview Hinde. The Hinde family is being evicted from their Condwelani Farm which has been designated for compulsory acquisition.
Justice for Agriculture, (JAG), a newly-formed union of combative commercial farmers, yesterday said the Mullers of Rusape had an 80-hectare tobacco crop valued at $19,2 million.
The assailants are demanding that the farmer move off the property in compliance with the controversial Section 8 of the Land Acquisition Amendment Act, which has resulted in renewed confrontation between the government and the commercial farmers.
On Heroes Day, President Mugabe said all white commercial farmers on designated land should evacuate their properties by the end of this month.
Mugabe and the Race Biz honchos seem bent on creating the first nation to entirely starve itself to death.
Where is Je$$e Jackwad when we need him??? He should be over there defending these white folks.
Oh, sorry, I forgot that the race card only works one way.
Stay safe; stay armed.
The government, meanwhile, denied it was allowing militants and black settlers to enforce evictions, the state Herald newspaper reported Thursday. Agriculture Minister Joseph Made suggested farmers themselves arranged sieges of their land to gain international sympathy. "The reports are total lies. They are the usual fabrications by the international media and white farmers. The so-called militants are groups of people being hired by desperate farmers to cause confusion. We will never allow ourselves to be drawn into such a thing," Made said. The government has targeted 95 percent of properties owned by 4,000 white farmers for confiscation under its land reform program. It says the land seizures are a final effort to correct colonial era imbalances in land ownership by taking white-owned farms and giving them to blacks.
Critics say it is part of the increasingly authoritarian government's effort to maintain power amid more than two years of economic chaos and political violence mainly blamed on the ruling party. The farm disruptions came as half Zimbabwe's 12.5 million people face a severe hunger crisis, according to the U.N. World Food Program. The WFP blames the crisis on drought combined with the agricultural chaos caused by the seizures.
In another incident, Dup Muller, a farmer in the Rusape district, 200 kilometers (125 miles) east of Harare, said settlers torched his home Saturday. Local government officials, however, said the fire was caused by an electrical problem. Muller maintains that gasoline was poured into a window of his home and then lit on fire.
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