Harare - President Robert Mugabe's government listed another 23 white-owned farms for seizure on Friday, as government officials continued to defy supreme court orders to stop the latest wave of lawless land-grabbing.
A week after the country's highest court declared that Mugabe's "fast-track resettlement programme" violated farmers' rights, Sabina Mugabe - Mugabe's elder sister - demanded that a white farmer leave his house so she could move in, the Commercial Farmers' Union said.
It said in its latest bulletin on the anarchy in rural Zimbabwe that Sabina Mugabe, the local ruling Zanu-PF party MP, had told a farmer, Terry Ford, she intended to take over the farmstead on his Gowrie farm in the Norton district west of Harare.
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Ford could not be contacted for comment. Sabina Mugabe has been reported to be driving round commercial farming areas in her black Mercedes limousine, leading illegal occupations on to white farms in the district.
| 'The new harassment will lead to severe food shortages' |
Earlier this week she forced one of the country's major producers of highly specialised seed crops to stop farming on half of his land in Norton so that self-styled guerrilla war veterans could plant their maize on land, which was already ploughed and fertilised by the farmer.
Friday's "notice of compulsory acquisition" published in the state-owned Herald newspaper brought to 2 318 the number of farms listed for Mugabe's bid to grab 3 000 white-owned farms.
The "fast-track" has been under way for a month, with government officials - usually accompanied by armed soldiers and police - trucking hundreds of would-be settlers on to white farms and declaring them to be "state land" in violation of the government's own laws on land acquisition.
The bulletin said more and more farmers were being told told to halt their farming operations as the arrival of summer rains marks the height of crop planting for the new season.
Economists warn that the new harassment will lead to severe food shortages next year.
On Friday last week the Supreme court ordered the government to stop "fast track" occupations, and instructed police to remove squatters from all white-owned farms.
CFU spokesperson Malcolm Vowles said lawyers were expected to confirm late on Friday whether all the officials cited by the court had been served with the order, which takes effect 48 hours after being served on officials.
But up to Friday, the court order "has had minimal tangible effect," said the CFU bulletin. "There are no indications that instructions have been communicated down the police ranks and local government structures."
It quoted a senior administrator who was "fast-tracking" squatters on to a farm in the Kadoma area about 150 west of Harare as saying that he would continue moving people onto land, in spite of the order.
He said he had been "instructed by our minister" of local government, Ignatius Chombo, who is also head of Mugabe's national land resettlement committee.
- Sapa-DPA
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