Kuimba Shiri update – “Zimbabwe police ‘thwart property invasion’”
I am very happily proven wrong about the Zimbabwe Republic Police and their responsiveness to an attempted take over of Kuimba Shiri and Lavon Bird Gardens at Lake Chivero this weekend. This morning, I claimed that the police did nothing, but according to article by AFP this afternoon,
Zimbabwean police drove out scores of so-called war veterans and supporters of President Robert Mugabe after they declared themselves new owners of several tourist resorts, a minister and media reports said Monday. The seizures on Saturday near Lake Chivero, west of the capital Harare, were ostensibly part of Mugabe’s land reforms, launched in 2000 in what he described as a bid to correct ownership imbalances in the former British colony. But Minister of State Jameson Timba said the latest confiscations were illegal and he had called in police to put a stop to them after he received pleas from the businesses’ owners. “They were moved out yesterday by riot police,” Timba, a member of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) which is in a power-sharing government with Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party, told AFP. “There were about 200 of them. Fortunately there was no damage to property.” Police could not be reached for comment.