Zanu PF Senator Muduvuri Attemps to Take Fifth Farm
Zimbabwe-Chigutu. Reports are being received of an attempt by Senator Jamaya Muduvuri of Zanu-PF to seize another farm to add to his other Four (4) farms. The farm (Twyford Farm) is currently owned by a French Citizen and is protected by a Bi-lateral agreement between the Zimbabwe and the French Governments.
Muduvuri, who already owns Shiloh Farm near Kadoma, Mandalay Farm near Chegutu, Hoffmarie Farm in Kadoma and Brunswick Farm in Chegutu in contemptuous breach of President Mugabe’s stated one-man-one-farm policy, is attempting to evict French farmer Catherine Jouineau-Meredith from yet another property, Twyford Farm.
It is also one of the farms visited by deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara on April 17 when he went on a tour to verify widespread reports of renewed farm invasions. The deputy Prime Minister’s delegation, which included the two Home Affairs ministers Giles Mutsekwa and Kembo Mohadi; Herbert Murerwa, the minister of Lands and Land Resettlement, sternly warned Muduvuri to stop forthwith harassing Jouineau-Meredith or attempting to take over her farm.
The delegation, which also included the French deputy ambassador Stephane Toulet, also advised Muduvuri to stop interfering with her farming activities, stop entering the farm or her house, using her farming equipment or selling her farm produce.
Muduvuri assured the deputy Prime Minister that he would stop interfering with Meredith’s farming activities.
Jouineau-Meredith however told The Zimbabwe Times that hardly three hours after the delegation departed, Muduvuri had already changed the locks and locked the gate to the farm, forbidding even her tenant from getting back into her house.
Since then, says Meredith, 2-ton trucks full to the brim with oranges, potatoes and maize were being moved from her farm by Muduvuri daily.
“It is clear that Senator Jamaya Muduvuri is totally ignoring the moratorium put in place by all the ministers present, and that he is determined to carry out his illegal activities on the farm by primarily helping himself to what is legally not his,” said Jouineau-Meredith.
She says she has kept a diary since the visit by the ministerial delegation and the diary makes sad and heart-wrenching reading. It lists instances when Muduvuri took over the kiosk at the farm and started selling farm produce, oranges and potatoes produced by Jouineau-Meredith. Muduvuri’s men were said to be picking oranges for trucking to the city day and night. It lists instances of all-night worker harassment by the Senator.
Muduvuri and his men have allegedly waved shotguns at the workers in a bid to intimidate them.
“Some of my workers have fled the farm for fear of their threats,” Jouineau-Meredith said. “My workers have been severely beaten and when the matter was reported to Chegutu Police to Sergeant Bepura and Inspector Manyika, the Member-In-Charge, said that Twyford farm belonged to Muduvuri and that he could do what ever he wanted there. The police refused to intervene or come to the farm to make a statement.”
Jouineau-Meredith says during one of the beating sessions, workers on the farm were assaulted from 6am to 10 am with bars and sticks on their buttocks and under the sole of their feet.
She said: “The majority of my sweet potato crop as well as my oranges are now ready to be harvested and I am losing thousands of dollars in income each passing day while Mr Muduvuri is selling them for his own interest.”
Meredith said she had paid her workers for the third consecutive month last month-end even though her workers have been forbidden from working by Muduvuri. Meredith says she has a contract with Agriseeds to grow 15 hectares of seed maize and 50ha of seed sorghum but Muduvuri is stopping her from reaping this crop, which has caused apprehension at Agriseeds.
Meredith said Muduvuri was brandishing a fake offer letter dated January 29, 2009 which was not approved by the district lands committee and which has no approval from the provincial lands committee. She says the letter is not stamped.
While efforts to obtain comment from Muduvuri were futile, he told workers at Twyford farm: “I am a Zanu-PF Senator and MDC will not tell me what to do on this farm. It is my farm I will not allow this French woman, this Catherine Meredith, to come back here and reap her crops. If she has to be paid damages, the Prime Minister must pay her.”
There has been shocking asset-stripping at Shiloh Farm, one of the properties owned by Muduvuri. Irrigation pumps have been removed while the electric game fence has been ripped off. A 3 horse-power submersible borehole pump and driers at the grain silos have also been removed.
Muduvuri seized Shiloh farm from commercial farmer Peter Rouke.
He wrestled his other farm Mandalay from a commercial farmer only identified as F Pistorious. He seized Hoffmarie Farm in Kadoma from one Mr Hoffman. He has arranged for the ex-Mayor of Kadoma, Fanwell Phiri, to live in the main house at the farm. Muduvuri also took over Brunswick Farm near Chegutu from one P Sparks. And all these are A2 farms, which have been dramatically run to the ground, with little or no production now taking place.
Posted by Raymond Mhaka
on June 15, 2009. Filed under Local News.
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