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Zim cops chase away tourists
14/05/2007 22:17 - (SA)
Tangai Chipangura, Beeld
Harare - Zimbabwean police have chased away 12 tourists and their children, who were staying at a white-owned guest house near Victoria Falls.
The guest house on Portwe Estates in northern Matebeleland, close to Victoria Falls, is owned by David Joubert, one of the few remaining white farmers in Zimbabwe.
Joubert said the police, in riot gear, raided his farm last week and chased off not only the tourists but his 30 employees as well. The farmworkers were thrown off the farm by force.
Their action follows a statement by Trade and Industry Minister Obert Mpofu that no white farmer would be allowed in future to farm in his constituency, in which Joubert's farm falls.
Joubert said in a phone interview that he had received an interdict from the high court in Zimbabwe to keep the police off his farm.
End-of-July deadline
"This apparently was an attempt to scare us off the farm in spite of the interdict," he said.
The Jouberts are among a handful of farmers who have stayed on in the area, and the guest house, according to his wife, Margaret, is nearly always fully booked.
The evictions come at a time when Zimbabwe is struggling to save its tourism industry from disaster.
Tourism provides one of the few sources of foreign revenue, in a country which badly needs it.
The Jouberts may well have to leave by the end of July, like the rest of the remaining white farmers in Zimbabwe.
The government said in February that it would give farmers until the end of their harvesting season and then they would have to leave their farms for good.
- Beeld
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