Farmer Exchanges Gunfire

9^th September 2002

WHITE farmers and supporters of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe traded shots yesterday on a farm in the north-west of the country, as tensions over land reform reach boiling point in the former British colony.

Ian Cochrane, a farmer of Scottish descent, said he was forced to fire shots into the ground and the air after self-styled war veterans levelled their guns at his mother.

Neighbouring farmers who came to the Cochranes' rescue also exchanged gunfire with the settlers, who are believed to have been trying to force the family off the farm. There were no reports of injuries.

Mr Cochrane told The Scotsman that around 100 war veterans surrounded the two homesteads on his farm, in the tobacco and grain-producing Karoi district, early yesterday morning.

Black veterans of the war for independence from Britain have led the invasions of white-owned farms in Zimbabwe over the past two and a half years. They have been suspected of - but never charged with - the murder of at least 11 white farmers.

From his garden, Mr Cochrane saw three armed men disarm his mother, who was staying in the next-door house with her daughter and two children.

"My immediate concern was that they were going to shoot her," Mr Cochrane told The Scotsman. "I trotted across to my mother's house with this crowd surging with me.

"These guys were watching to lynch me," a clearly shaken Mr Cochrane said.

He said that two militants shot at him, and he fired back to "keep them behind me".

About 50 farmers answered his distress call, but were fired at as they drove towards his house. The war veterans had barricaded all roads leading to the property, Mr Cochrane said. "It was not very nice at all," he said.

The situation stabilised when police eventually reached the farm - more than three hours after they were first called. White farmers complain that police are slow to intervene when they are under attack, while some police say that farm invasions are "political matters" which they are not allowed to intervene in.

The father of two had been told to vacate his farm by Sunday afternoon under the latest ultimatum issued by the regime of the ageing Zimbabwean president.

Mr Mugabe has made the battle to seize land from those he calls "greedy" white farmers his rallying call. More than 95 per cent of farms have now been earmarked for government acquisition.

Dozens of white farmers vacated their farms last weekend, fearing a repeat of the mass arrests which followed the expiry of an earlier eviction deadline last month.

But Mr Cochrane, who is descended from Lord Cochrane, 9th Earl of Dundonald, says he has not received a valid eviction order and had decided to stay on at his farm, which is the only property he owns in Zimbabwe. "This is just to intimidate us. We've all resolved to stay on in the area. We are not going to get out." "Hopefully the world will realise that something has to be done to stop this," he said.

Jenni Williams, spokeswoman for the farming pressure group Justice for Agriculture (JAG), said that Mr Mugabe's regime had turned to "land terrorism".

Nine farmers were arrested on Monday in Centenary, northern Zimbabwe. They were held overnight but released without charge yesterday morning, Ms Williams said. Another farmer, Jean Simon, of nearby Raffingora, said she was packing up after war veterans had told her to leave yesterday.

Mr Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party this week through its mouthpiece, the People's Voice, promised that more white farmers "are going to be arrested in the coming week in an effort to complete the programme of redistributing land".

Meanwhile the government has expelled a US journalist, Griffin Shea of AFP.

The Scotsman (UK)