It was only days after Zimbabwe's leaders signed the power-sharing deal intended to restore the rule of law when Kevin Cooke was called to the gate of the electrified security fence around his farmstead.

Waiting for him were a menacing group of government officials and a policeman. Holding up an eviction notice — which referred to the wrong owner, the wrong farm and carried no official stamp — they told him that he was illegally occupying his 765 hectare (1,890 acre) tobacco farm 38 miles (60km) south of Harare and that it now belonged to a Mr Kundeya.

The man claiming to be Mr Kundeya said that he was a clerk in the British Embassy in Harare. Mr Cooke forced him to admit eventually that he was the local district administrator. Mr Cooke then told them to go away.

The group was back two days later, with another document with the errors corrected. Mr Cooke spotted that the signatory was a middleranking official in the Agriculture Ministry with no authority to sign such letters. They ignored him and told that him that he was being charged with “illegally occupying” his farm.

Mr Cooke's Goeie Hoop (good hope in Afrikaans) farm is just one of those caught up in a new wave of land grabs by President Mugabe's henchmen. The confiscations have been caused by fears that the creation of a power-sharing Government could mark an end to an eight-year campaign of seizures against the country's white-owned farms.

Some white farmers, whose property was occupied by squatters in earlier land invasions, now find themselves the victims of fresh invasions by new bands of squatters belonging to Mr Mugabe's Zanu (PF) party.

Since 2000 the number of white families has shrunk from about 4,500 to about 400 as Mr Mugabe's militias have murdered, maimed, looted and laid waste to farms in the name of a “revolutionary land reform programme” that was launched to rescue the octogenarian leader from losing an election.

Now the few farms left are being targeted anew. Up to 60 farmers have been subjected to often violent attempts to drive them from their farms since Mr Mugabe signed the power-sharing deal with Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara, leaders of the Movement for Democratic Change, last month.

The agreement commits the incoming Government to carry out a “comprehensive, transparent and non-partisan land audit ... for the purpose of establishing accountability”.

“There has been a mad rush for free pickings; we are getting reports on a daily basis,” said David Drury, a lawyer who has fought several cases for dispossessed white farmers. “The agreement may well mean that there will be a moratorium on the process of land seizures. If the process is followed through, they are going to lose out. So now they want to get a toe-hold on the farms and assert their possessory rights.”

Land grabbers - army officers, magistrates, agricultural officials, local government officials - are walking into homesteads and settling in, commandeering farmers' vehicles, furniture and the food in their fridges.

Didymus Mutasa, the Lands Minister, has signed blank “offer letters” supposedly conferring right of occupancy, which are then filled in by the would-be occupiers and waved in the faces of farmers.

A farmer in Banket, 100km north of Harare, whose farm is one of the handful that have never been listed for resettlement, found himself fighting a man brandishing an AK47 to persuade him to leave.

A Danish farmer, whose property is covered by an investment protection agreement between the Danish and Zimbabwe governments, has become a victim since an army brigadier moved his cattle on to the property.

When Mr Cooke, 38, and his wife, Anne, took over Goeie Hoop in 2000, there were 70 tobacco growers in the district. Now there are seven. There is almost no farming on any of the properties seized, except when Mr Cooke ploughs their land and provides seed and fertiliser.

Despite the threat of imminent eviction, Mr Cooke continues to plant his tobacco crop. “We are very anxious,” he said. “I watch every twin cab (pick-up truck) — a favourite of Mr Mugabe's thugs that passes the farm and I think, ‘this is it'.

“But we have to put on a brave face. When I told the labour, they were very angry. They said they would never let them on the farm. They were brandishing pick handles. They said, 'We have watched the farms here get taken, and on every one people are living on wild fruits'. I told them no one and nothing is leaving this farm. If my labour stay on my side, we can fight anything that comes our way.”

Rural inheritance

1979 Lancaster House Agreement aimed to redistribute land more equitably between blacks and white farming class by providing restrictions on land purchases by white farmers

1992 Land Acquisition Act gave Government additional land resettlement tools, enabling it to buy land compulsorily

1992-1997 About 2.47 million acres were acquired with fewer than 20,000 families settling on the land. Mr Mugabe accused of giving much of the land to cronies

1997 Under pressure from landless blacks living in a dwindling economy, Mr Mugabe announced that he would seize 1,500 white-owned farms. He said that Britain should pay compensation as Rhodesian settlers stole the land from black farmers

1999 4,500 commercial farmers held 27.18 million acres of the most fertile land. Between June 2000 and February 2001 the Government listed 2,706 farms, covering more than 14.83 million acres, for compulsory acquisition

October 2003 Government had seized about 21.3 million hectares of land (about 4,300 farms) and 1,323 white farmers remained. About 127,000 blacks resettled

Source: PBS News

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