Harare, Zimbabwe - President Robert Mugabe's sister, Sabina, drove to a white-owned farm in a luxury Mercedes and exhorted black squatters to grab chunks of the farm for themselves, the farm owner said on Tuesday.
The occupiers seized 380 hectares of prime land, leaving farmer John Wilde with 420 hectares of arable land on which to run his mielie farm.
"This is an absolute catastrophe," said Wilde.
Government officials have continued encouraging thousands of landless blacks to seize white farmland, despite a Supreme Court order demanding the government stop its programme to confiscate 3 000 white-owned farms and end ruling party militants' occupation of 1 700 white farms.
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| The farm had not been listed for confiscation |
The Commercial Farmers' Union, which represents the country's 4 000 white farmers, said their work continued to be disrupted on Monday by occupiers on farms across the country.
About 40 occupiers drove 200 cattle into the garden of a homestead northwest of the capital, Harare, blockading the house. Earlier, they had allegedly assaulted the owner after he refused to give them a farm vehicle.
Near the southern town of Masvingo, occupiers reportedly threatened to torch the homes of four farm owners if they refused to leave their land.
"The situation is very tense," said the union on Tuesday.
Sabina Mugabe, who is a ruling-party lawmaker, drove onto Wilde's farm in the Norton farming district, 40km southwest of Harare, at the weekend and egged on occupiers to seize land, Wilde said.
Wilde, a specialist producer of maize seed, said his crop would be cut in half after such a huge chunk of his land was seized.
About 90 000 hectares of corn, Zimbabwe's staple food, are cultivated annually from seed produced on Wilde's Parklands farm.
The farm had not been listed for confiscation under the government's plan to seize white farms without compensation, divide them up and give them to landless blacks.
The Supreme Court ruled the government's resettlement programme illegal on Friday because it did not meet the terms of land reform laws passed in April that call for orderly, planned resettlement.
It said the government had failed to give farm owners the required three months notice that their farms would be seized.
The laws also required police and district officials to prevent resettlement until after owners' appeals were concluded and owners had vacated their farms.
Despite the ruling, black families were escorted onto at least 50 farms across the country at the weekend by officials who said they had not been formally served with the ruling, according to the union.
The Supreme Court also ordered police to end ruling party militants' often violent occupation of white-owned farms. The occupations, described by Robert Mugabe as a justified protest against whites' disproportionate ownership of the best farmland, began in February. Police have ignored previous court orders to end the occupations.
The farmers' union said police in the Rusape district, 170km east of Harare, promised on Monday to force occupiers to leave farms not listed for confiscation. But there were no reports on Tuesday that any action had begun, the union said.
In most other areas, work stoppages, intimidation, theft, the slaughter of livestock, illegal tree cutting and unauthorized tilling and planting on private land was being ignored by authorities, the union said. - Sapa-AP
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