SW Radio Africa news - The Independent Voice of Zimbabwe
A Mutare magistrate has referred to the Constitutional Court the case in which provincial Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) boss, Patrick Mukorera, is seeking the eviction of 51 families from Reuben Clare Farm. Mukorera approached the court after the families refused to leave property following its allocation to him in 2010. In his application the CIO boss claimed that the 51 respondents have been living illegally at the 200-hectare property since 2010. However the respondents, who have been working on the farm since 1982 with legal owner Van Resberg, argued that Mukorera was violating their rights by seeking to evict them without offering ‘alternative accommodation’. Through their lawyer Passmore Nyakureba, the farm dwellers said their eviction would be in breach of sections 28, 51 and 72 of the constitution which protect an individuals right to shelter, human dignity and agricultural land. They also argued that ‘it can never be said or imagined that the legislations and constitutional provisions on the ‘land reform programme’ intended to disempower former black farm labourers if at all it seeks to empower them through the indigenisation of land’. The respondents also sought the referral of the matter to the Constitutional Court. According to a Monday NewsDay report magistrate Yeukai Chigodora granted them their wish. Chigodora said the application for the referral of the case to the Constitutional Court was ‘not frivolous and vexatious’ as it was based on the respondents’‘fear that that their rights were being violated’. The CIO operatives are traditionally known to act with impunity in many instances and in most cases their actions are not prosecuted.