Zim couple forced off farm

2002-10-03 17:22

Port Elizabeth - Janet Nienaber of Jeffrey's Bay in the Eastern Cape was on Thursday afternoon still in the dark about her elderly parents' fate after they had been forcibly removed from their farm in Zimbabwe on Wednesday.

Nienaber told Radio Algoa News on Thursday that her parents, both 76, were arrested on Wednesday on their farm Lugo Ranch between Bulawayo and Victoria Falls.

She said the Zimbabwean police planned to jail her parents but allowed them, after prolonged arguments, to stay in a local hotel.

By Thursday afternoon Nienaber still did not know where her parents were and if they were safe.

"The last I heard was from a cousin who was on her way to Bulawayo to pick up my mother," Nienaber told Sapa.

She said her parents were served with an eviction order in December last year, but the order was reversed recently. Her parents' farm borders on a nature reserve and is part of a conservancy.

"They have hunting rights and bring in a lot of forex.

"But that didn't help in the end."

The police arrived on the farm on Wednesday to arrest the couple.

Nienaber's mother, Ruth Chatam, was dragged from the house and shackled to a police vehicle. She broke a hand in the process.

"She is 76 years old. Why did they have to shackle her?"

The police then returned to the house for Nienaber's father, Jim Chatam.

"My dad has a heart condition and my mom fought desperately to keep them from harming him."

She said her mother begged with the police not to put them in jail, because her father regularly has to take medication after meals.

"They don't get food in jail. My brother was in jail a while ago and he didn't get a scrap, unless there was food left over from the police canteen."

The police told Mrs Chatam that she could buy her own food in prison.

"She asked them what she would use - washers? He told her she could use her watch to get money."

Nienaber said police eventually relented and escorted her parents to a nearby hotel.

She said it was not only her parents she was worried about. Farmworkers were suffering as a result of the farm evictions.

"I find it disgusting that so many farmworkers become homeless and unemployed due to the evictions.

"The human rights violations are absolutely gross.

"The worst is that very few of the farms go to the war-veterans," Nienaber said.

"They go to Mugabe, his family and cronies. The people who deserve the land don't get it." She said chances were slim that her parents would come to South Africa.

"They're old, they need their medical aid, they want to stay in Zimbabwe."

She said they should be safe in a town.

"But for how long we don't know. At the moment it is the white farmers, when will they turn on the white businessmen? We just don't know."

Nienaber said her biggest fear was that a similar situation would develop in South Africa.

- SAPA