White farmers “tackle” black employee

In what press reports called a disturbing twist to the occupation of white farms in Zimbabwe, the friend of a white farmer murdered by men occupying his farm at the weekend denied beating up a black employee in retaliation for the incident in the Beatrice district south of the capital, Harare.

Guy Watson-Smith, a Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) official in the Beatrice district, told a news conference that the black employee, Charles Mlambo, had been “rugby-tackled” after he had acted “suspiciously”. Mlambo was quoted in state media as saying that on Monday he had been walking along the road near Beatrice when a group of white farmers stopped their car, asked him if he knew Dunn, reversed the vehicle into him and then stomped on him with their boots.

Watson-Smith, who had spoken to the farmers involved in the incident but did not name them, said, however, that one of them had been driving along the road and recognised Mlambo from meetings they had both attended concerning invasions of white-owned commercial farms by veterans of Zimbabwe’s 1970s liberation war. When Mlambo allegedly tried to run off, they tackled him, bundled him into their car and drove him to a police station. He insisted there was no assault.