A BULAWAYO resident, who got an offer letter to occupy part of Oak Land Farm owned by a white cattle rancher, Bruce Moffat, yesterday brought the white farmer to the Small Claims Court seeking an order compelling him to vacate the land.
SILAS NKALA STAFF REPORTER
Sibongile Shava of Luveve filed the summons against Moffat seeking his eviction.
“I have tried to talk to him, but he refused to talk to me. Even if I call him on the mobile phone he tells me that his lawyer said he must not talk to me, not even for one day,” Shava submitted.
The two warring parties yesterday appeared before Bulawayo Small Claims Court magistrate Singandu Jele.
Shava said she was offered 216 hectares of Oak Land Farm by the government under the land reform programme sometime in 2013.
“I received the offer letter sometime in January 2013 and showed Moffat the offer letter, but he questioned why I was trying to do jambanja and did not bother vacating the farm. I waited for him to vacate, but he did not,” she submitted.
Shava said after realising that Moffat was not going to leave, she wrote to him, but he has refused, prompting her to file court summons seeking his eviction from the farm.
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“I was offered this land by the government and even the offer letter is signed by the ministry of Lands showing that I am not illegally occupying that piece of land. If he (Moffat) has a problem it is not directed to me because I was offered that land and by right I must be occupying it, but he is still sitting on it. He must be challenging the Lands ministry or government who gave me the land not me.”
She also said parts of the farm appeared to have been allocated to many other black famers and Moffat was only left with a portion of the farm that has his homestead where he and his family lives.
But Moffat insisted that part of the farm where he remained is the piece of land which he was left with by the government when the farm was allocated to a number of settlers.
The development comes at a time President Robert Mugabe has called for the invasion all remaining white-owned farms, particularly wildlife sanctuaries and safaris in the Matabeleland region.
Moffat is one of the victims of the land reform programme which has rendered many white farmers landless and their employees jobless.
He was specialising in cattle farming, which is the most viable farming business for Matabeleland farmers.
The court is yet to rule on the issue.
