Zimbabwe: Farm occupations and the breakdown in the Rule of Law

FROM EISA Zimababwe Election Update 2000, 2, 24 June, 5-6.

Zimbabwe has witnessed a breakdown in the country's rule of law since the beginning of farm invasions led by former liberation war freedom fighters and supported by the President and his government.

Opposition parties say this is full-scale national calamity because it is a front for intimidating their supporters. They claim that what began as an act of vengeance by the ruling party, ZANU-PF after suffering a humiliating defeat on the draft constitution in the referendum in February has turned into something quite sinister.

More than 1200 white-owned commercial farms have been occupied and about 30 people are reported to have been killed. The motive appeared to be punishment for white farmers who were alleged by the ruling party to have coerced their more than 1 million workers to vote against the draft constitution. Most of Zimbabwe's 12 million hectares of fertile agricultural land is in the hands of about 4000 white Zimbabweans.

President Robert Mugabe made a public statement in March that seemed to confirm this: "They (the war veterans) are demonstrating their greatest disappointment that there was this 'No' vote which negated the clause in the constitution that was going to give government power to acquire land without hindrance."

Didymus Mutasa, the ZANU-PF secretary for administration, also made public statements in support of this move saying the white farmers had "asked for the farm invasions", having "shot themselves in the foot" by rejecting the draft constitution. "They are now reaping the fruits of their actions," he said.

With these obvious blessings, the war veterans have left a trail of violence and destruction in the areas they have occupied with the police looking the other way. There have been claims that the president has made the police force an extension of his ruling party, but home affairs minister, Dumiso Dabengwa, rejects the charges saying the land issue is too sensitive to be handled purely as a policing matter.

Unable to report to the police for protection against the occupations, the white farmers, most of them members of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), petitioned the High Court on March 17, to have the war veterans removed from their properties. The police appealed against the order, citing limited resources, lack of staff and equipment and inadequate political clout to handle the issue.

Police Commissioner, Augustine Chihuri while conceding that the countrywide invasions were unlawful, justifies his force's inaction by saying the invasions involved so much emotion that to enforce the law would do more harm than good. The CFU made a second petition to the police on April 3, to act against the invaders.

In response, the Attorney-General, Patrick Chinamasa said farm occupations by liberation war veterans and ZANU-PF supporters was an extension of Zimbabwe's 1970s liberation war. Further, Chinamasa asked the High Court to free the police from the obligation to evict hordes of occupiers from the farms.

"Negotiations in the last 20 years achieved nothing. This failure can justify people going back into another armed struggle. The occupiers are likely to resist forced evictions. There are armed elements involved, with automatic weapons," Chinamasa said.

Chinamasa argued that the Police Commissioner was not in contempt of the court's order because soon after the order was passed, Chihuri had made a fresh assessment and realized that the order was defective. The defect lay in that it excluded the executive which has the mandate to assist the police, particularly with additional resources to contain the situation. However, on April 13, the High Court ruled that the police had sufficient resources to evict the occupiers and instructed government to meet any additional needs of the force to restore order on the commercial farms.

Co-Deputy President, Joseph Msika released a statement declaring the invasions illegal and ordered the war veterans and ZANU-PF supporters off the farms. The order made while President Mugabe was attending the G77 Summit in Havana, was ignored. The war veterans refused to move from the farms and on his return, the President noted that it was their right to invade the farms and claim their heritage.

"To us as a government, what the war veterans has done is a clear demonstration that the government has delayed in redistributing land. This is a clear peaceful demonstration and there is no problem with that," he said.

However, the demonstrations have clearly not been as peaceful as the President claims or wants them to be. To date about 30 lives have been lost in the violence initiated by these invasions including members of a new popular opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), farmer workers, white farmers and a policeman.

At a peace march organized by the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), a body of civic organizations and churches, the war veterans intercepted the crowd armed with iron bars, sticks and knives. Many people were wounded. The marchers complained that the police had stood by and watched as the war veterans beat people.

"The police did nothing, absolutely nothing," said Isaac Maphosa, coordinator for NCA. The march had been organized to denounce and make a stand against violence that has gripped the nation.

Meanwhile, the war veterans have not only disrupted operations on commercial farms, but they have made threats of war if the President Mugabe and his ruling party are defeated in the forthcoming parliamentary elections.

The War Veteran's Association spokesperson, Andrew Ndlovu told a news conference half way through the month of March that if the opposition won the elections a military government would be installed for five years "to set things straight".

Ndlovu made unsubstantiated claims that Britain and white Zimbabweans are funding the MDC, which poses ZANU-PF's greatest challenge since independence. "We will never allow people who oppressed us to come to power. It means we will go back to the bush. We will declare a military government," he said.

Attempts at peace have been made. A peace deal worked out at the end of April between white commercial farmers and war veterans allows the latter to remain on the farms until a programme for orderly resettlement resolved. However, despite the deal, violence has persisted and has in fact spread to rural areas and some urban areas.