Simple question. Simple answer. NO!

Today there was an article in the press which reported that the country’s high court might issue a warrant of arrest for security chiefs - army commander Lieutenant-General Philip Sibanda and the police Commissioner-General Augustine Chihuri - for defying another court order directing them to discipline an army officer who was grabbing land…

Two questions come to mind immediately. Firstly, will the courts issue a warrant, and secondly, if the warrant is issued, will the arrests be executed?

Whilst I am unsure of the first question, I can answer the second question with some ease. NO!

“Zimbabwean courts are expected to order the arrest of the country’s defence and police chiefs this week in a key test of the judiciary’s ability to rein in marauding security forces.

He was the only white person to have been officially allocated his farm under Zimbabwe’s land laws without paying heavy dues to the ruling party.”

There are numerous inconsistencies in this story and many more in other cases - but Mugabe will not allow a small thing such as the facts to prejudice his all-out want for the land in his ‘returning the land to the landless blacks’.

Many of the farms that have been seized by war veterans and senior ZANU PF apologists, were purchased since independence from the Mugabe regime. So they have been paid for it. How then can Mugabe claim that the land has been ’stolen’ by the white commercial farmers?

And by seizing the land, he is in effect stealing what has been bought legitimately by the farmer - be he black, white or indifferent.

Mugabe then complicates the issue by handing the land to his senior loyalists - not to the landless blacks - who then evict the workers and their families that live on the seized farms.
The nett result is that the country now has more ‘landless blacks’ than when the land grab began.

And the new ‘farmers’ - those who hold vaunted offices within ZANU PF and the security forces - then proceed to do nothing with the land. It lies fallow, unworked and unproductive. Simply because those who have been handed the land know nothing about farming - and those that do have been chased away!

Before the land grab, Zimbabwe not only fed itself, but it exported the surplus. Now, it relies on hand-outs to feed the masses - and many of them are perishing from hunger.

But when an army officer defies a court order to allow farmer access to his crop, and actually shoots a worker, nothing is done.

Within ZANU PF, it is acceptable to break the law and there is no consequence - but should an MDC member even THINK of doing the same, they will find themselves in court and prison quicker than we can believe.

ZANU PF are not about the arrest their own. Any court order will be defied - as usual.

Robb WJ Ellis
The Bearded Man