By Nqobizitha Khumalo 

BULAWAYO - Zimbabwe police have defied a High Court order to vacate a white-owned farm they seized two months ago and instead have over the past week deployed more men at the lucrative game farm in Matabeleland North province. 

High Court Judge Francis Bere last week ordered the police to stop interfering with operations at Portwe farm and that they should return guns and farmhouse keys they had unlawfully confiscated from the owners. 

But a week after Bere’s order, the police are still camped at the farm and in one of the most vivid illustrations of lawlessness on farms and in the country in general, the police have over the past week actually moved more men onto Portwe farm. 

“The situation is still the same, they have brought in more men into the farm and they even ordered me to create more room in my cottage as they said they were expecting more personnel to come in next week,” said Margaret Jourbet, the wife of Dave Jourbet one of the farm directors. 

Joubert said their lawyers were preparing to file a contempt of court suit against the police, who over the past few years and with tacit approval from President Robert Mugabe himself have defied several court orders they deemed not to their liking. 

The police first invaded Portwe farm last March arriving in a convoy of 20 marked police cars and declared the farm now belonged to the law enforcement agency. They chased away foreign tourists who were at the safari lodge on the farm and seized keys to all the buildings at the farm. 

The farm invasion is the first time that the police organisation has seized a white-owned farm. 

The Zimbabwe government has expelled more than 90 percent of the country’s about 4 500 white commercial farmers, plunging the country into acute food shortages because the Harare administration failed to give inputs and skills training to black peasants resettled on former white farms to maintain production. - ZimOnline