A letter from Africa: SITREP 25th September 2002

CHIMANIMANI

Yesterday afternoon a number of business owners and citizens were arrested. Six men were arrested, including Amos Makasa (Roy Bennett's farm foreman), Rocky Stone (a Farm manager), Steve Housden and Wally Johnson (Co-managers of Mwenji Lodge), and Doug Thunderuit and Shane Kidd (involved in the timber industry). A seventh man, Alan Radford, was not arrested, but was harassed and intimidated, and had his passport taken away from him. Radford is a British national.

The main agitator behind this process was Joseph Mwale, a CIO officer, backed by the Chimanimani ZRP. Mwale is said to have severely threatened all the arrested people, and claimed that he was not concerned with any court order, regardless of what it said. The arrested men were taken to the police station, where they were held without any charge being proffered. They were released this morning after intervention on the part of both the South African and the British High Commissions.

The majority of the farming population of Chimanimani has left the town, percieving the harassment to be direct persecution, and many businesses and most farming concerns are consequently sitting idle, with much coffee rotting unpicked on the trees.

THE JAG TEAM

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