Zimbabwe Gives White Farmers One Week Eviction Notice

by Lewis Machipisa

The Land Acquisition Act will reduce the time to vacate the farms and increase fines for defying eviction orders.

Under the new law, farmers must now vacate their property within a week of being served eviction notice, rather than the 90-day deadline previously granted. Some farmers had used the 90-day period to appeal against their eviction orders, many of which were subsequently annulled by the High Court.

The leader of the House, Patrick Chinamasa, who is also the country's justice minister, suspended normal parliamentary procedures Wednesday night to fast track the amendments.

After three and a half hours of intense debate, during which insults were traded, the ruling party, using its majority vote in the House, managed to fast track the amendments to correct a glaring oversight in the laid down rules of evicting farmers.

The government had erred in not serving preliminary notices of eviction to financial institutions, which are owed money by white farmers. But Chinamasa stressed that the oversight should not delay the land reform exercise.

"If it is necessary, I will come back to Parliament 100 times until the land reform is completed," he said.

"There is no greater power on earth than an idea whose time has come. The might of the British and the United States (cannot) stop the land reform program," said Chinamasa, referring to growing opposition from London and Washington against Mugabe's land reform program.

"As leaders, we are powerless to stop the forces that have been unleashed to achieve economic emancipation for our people," said Chinamasa.

The opposition heckled Chinamasa during his address. One legislator shouted that Chinamasa should be fired for "failure to administer the land reform lawfully".

Welshman Ncube, secretary general of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), said government's action was to "essentially legalize illegality... Chinamasa must be ashamed."

Gibson Sibanda, vice president of the MDC, said: "This is a travesty of justice. We totally oppose the amendments."

But Chinamasa said failure to pass the amendments would be catastrophic to financial institutions which, he claimed, "are exposed to the tune of $600 million in bonds by the affected white commercial farmers".

Chinamasa added that hundreds of thousands of black farmers owed $272,000 to the same financial institutions, a disparity which, he said, should be corrected.

Once President Mugabe signs the bill into law, the banks will have 30 days to lodge their claims. This means that the government will assume the debts, but it is not clear whether it will pay them.

Under the new law, farmers who have taken the government to court -- in a bid to stop their eviction -- will now have seven days to vacate their farms once the bill becomes law. The penalty for those defying the law has been increased from $363 to $1,800.

More than 90 percent of the country's 4,300 white commercial farmers have been served with eviction notices whose terms have since expired. Under the new law, any eviction order cancelled can be reissued. Most of the farmers ordered to vacate have defied the orders, and many have had charges laid against them by the police.

MDC has described the amendments as unconstitutional, saying they effectively deny farmers the protection of the courts. A group of white farmers, calling themselves Justice for Agriculture, has urged its members to resist eviction orders peacefully.

More than six million people, or half the country's 12.5 million population, face starvation in Zimbabwe. The World Food Program (WFP) has blamed the food shortage on poor weather and on the government's land reform program.

But the government says it is correcting a colonial land ownership imbalance in which less than 4,500 white commercial farmers owned more than 70 percent of the country's prime farmland.

White people make up less than one percent of Zimbabwe's population.