By Freddy Mrewa, www.herald.co.zw

WHITE commercial farmers now being hauled before the courts for refusing to vacate designated farms are breaking the law they claim to uphold.

They have been campaigning hard both at home and abroad claiming that there is no rule of law in Zimbabwe. They allege that the country’s laws are not being adhered to or simply ignored by the Government.

The land reform programme is lawful and the evictions they are now defying are according to the laws of the land.

The white community cannot accept the land reality of Zimbabwe. Land has been returned to the majority of Zimbabweans and days when a minority race owned all the prime land are now confined to our history.

When white people came to this country, they used violence and intimidation to drive away black people. The hullabaloo that is being created by them now was non-existent.

The international community just watched and even encouraged the whites to violently remove blacks from the land. No one cared.

But when a white man who stole land is being asked to share the vast land, the West cries foul and imposes sanctions on a Government that is just correcting a historical wrong.

White farmers even have the temerity to go to court challenging what they themselves see as a necessary programme.

They refuse to accept that land is for the majority and has to be shared, not owned by a few. They choose to be greedy and hang onto their many farms.

The problem for them is that there is no chance in hell that they will keep what they call their farms. Going to court is any Zimbabwean’s democratic right.

Also by taking them to court, the Government is once again showing that it sticks to the laws of the land. It could have thrown them out and closed the farm gates.

But the law-enforcement agents are doing their job, arresting and taking the defiant farmers to court. The arrests and court appearances are giving the Western Press ammunition to again demonise the Government.

They see the application of the law as persecution of farmers who are trying to feed the nation. What they refuse to see is that nobody is being persecuted but somebody is being stubborn and headstrong.

They were lawfully served with eviction notices and should leave for new farmers to come in and continue food production.

The mistaken notion that only whites can farm has long been dismissed and there is no reason for whites to hold this nation to ransom anymore.

But white farmers have always been devious on the land issue.

The disregard for the rule of law, the behind-the-scenes meetings and creation of new associations to fight Government are plans hatched to make the whites look like saints in the eyes of the international community.

This is all a ploy to put Zimbabwe under the spotlight, create an aura of destabilisation under the guise of fight for freedom and rights.

In the end, what has emerged from all this is a clear refusal by whites to accept their wrongs of the past and instead wage a war against a legitimately elected government.

What the farmers hope to achieve may sound utopian, but their fight is a fight for the international community to take notice that Zimbabwe must not fulfil its land policy.

When American congressmen sit down to debate the land issue in Zimbabwe and not castigate their kith and kin in Australia for depriving Aborigines of their land, then this is the height of hypocrisy.

But what can one expect when the Red Indians were driven into reservations by the Draconian American laws?

Government made it categorically clear that all farmers whose farms were designated for resettlement were supposed to cease operations and vacate the farms to allow new farmers to take up their plots.

The unrepentant white commercial farmers have regrouped under the banner of the CFU offshoot calling itself Justice for Agriculture.

This unholy alliance of commercial farmers has decided to fight the Government directives in court and have vowed to stay on the farms.

These commercial farmers still believe that their actions could stop the land reform that is nearing its completion.

Everyone thought that the white commercial farmers had finally decided to live peacefully and had accepted the reality of land reform.

This group of unrepentant Rhodesians believes that the white race is superior to the black majority of the country.

They cannot handle a situation where a black man has equal opportunities as the white man.

In the past, some of the commercial farmers were happy to see the black majority as labourers on the farms and not proud owners of their own prime land.

Their move is meant to frustrate the democratic atmosphere of reconciliation that the Government has worked hard to establish since independence.

The behaviour of the commercial farmers is meant to create anarchy and confusion in the country.

Some of the commercial farmers have in the past been dramatising problems on the farms in a bid to discredit the resettlement exercise.

What is surprising is that they are now illegally clinging onto the farms, which at one stage they ironically alleged were terror camps due to marauding youths from Zanu-PF. What has now changed for them to declare that they cannot move?

The members of the so-called Justice for Agriculture has also been at the forefront of lying to their Western masters and media about the political environment in the country.

Some of them have in the past forced their workers to loot their own property on the farms in a bid to make the world believe that the Zanu-PF Government was out to destroy their freedom and well-being.

If the situation in the country is as bad as they want it to be, any sane person could be surprised why they are not so eager to leave the country and go to the so-called de-mocratic heavens that they always turn to for sympathy.

Just like what they have done in the past, they are trying to gain Western attention by creating a facade that they are being persecuted, as they are aware that the Government will surely move in to quell this tide of lawlessness.

This legion of commercial farmers still cannot accept the reality of a nation that rests on the premise of equitable distribution of resources.

Since independence, before the current land redistribution programme, less than 40 000 white commercial farmers occupied over 70 percent of the country’s prime land while the majority of blacks were living in abject poverty in marginal lands.

Some commercial farmers have complied with the eviction orders. Those fighting the orders are wasting their time.

Reproduced from:
http://www.herald.co.zw/index.php?
id=13272&pubdate=2002-08-20