STAFF WRITER
CONTROVERSIAL business mogul Philip Chiyangwa is embroiled in a bruising farm ownership wrangle with 30 Citrus Farm occupants in Chinhoyi.
The first Applicant Abigail Dzepasi and 29 other applicants approached the High Court seeking an urgent chamber application to prevent Chiyangwa from violently evicting them.
Philip Chiyangwa, Officer Commanding Police Mashonaland West Province, Land, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Resettlement Minister and Officer-In-Charge Law and Order Chinhoyi are cited as Respondents.
Abigail Dzapasi and co-Applicants said the police officers in Chinhoyi visited Citrus Farm on the 24th of September around 0800 hours and started rounding up people indiscriminately and shoved them into their truck without the production of a court order.
“On the 24th of September 2021 around 0800hrs, Chiyangwa’s manager one Tafadzwa Kwaramba in the company of police officers Constable Mazviwanza, Sargent Asani and others that could not be identified visited our homesteads and started taking people into their truck indiscriminately. They would move door to door opening people’s houses, confiscate things like cash and other valuables.”
The Applicants further said people were perplexed by police conduct and started scurrying for cover in the nearby mountains and those who were apprehended were brought before Chinhoyi Criminal Magistrates’ court on the 25th September 2021.
They were released on $2000 bail each for allegations of contravening section 3 of the Gazetted Land Act.
The Respondents also wrote that police visited the area again on the 27th of September 2021 without court order justifying their eviction and they claimed their constitutional right to stay at farm in the papers at the High Court.
“We have a constitutional right to administrative justice and not to be arbitrary eviction. We stand to suffer irreparable harm if the wrongful and unlawful conduct of the Respondents (Chiyangwa and police) is not stopped,” said Dzapasi.
Dzapasi and other Applicants told the court that they have been doing Farming at the Citrus farm and earning a living through selling their produce to the Grain Marketing Board and intimated that the Applicant has no power to evict them without a court order.
“We have been doing farming there and selling our produce to the Grain Marketing Board. Applicant has no right to evict us worse without a court order, using violence. The police are also acting as private security guards in that they assist in the unlawful process of evicting us openly declaring that that the farm belongs to Dr Chiyangwa,” reads the court application.
The respondents said court interdict is the panacea to unfair treatment meted out by the police at the instigation of Chiyangwa.
“We have no other alternative remedy available to us which can safeguard us from the assaults, harassment, intimidation and arrests on trumped up charges except an interdict.”
