White farmers charged with inciting violence

Twenty-three white farmers were charged in a Zimbabwe court on Wednesday with inciting public violence following clashes on a white-owned farm occupied by self-styled war veterans and ruling ZANU-PF party supporters.

Tension was high in the town of Chinhoyi, 120 km northwest of Harare after mobs of pro-government supporters staged retaliatory attacks on whites on Tuesday.

"The noisy group outside court threatened to attack the white farmers if they were released on bail," Lewis Machipisa, a journalist at the hearing told IRIN. As the farmers stood in the dock, one of them, 72-year-old Gert Pretorius, collapsed and was rushed to hospital, reportedly with a heart problem. The 23 farmers were all formally charged with inciting public violence and the case was adjourned until Thursday morning. Witnesses said the farmers had been brought into the court through a back entrance. "The farmers will be held in custody for a third night until Thursday," Machipisa said.

Police brought the men to the courthouse an hour before the scheduled close of court and there was not enough time to hear bail applications for all 22 of them, court officials said.

In Tuesday's attacks on whites, Reuters reported that at least one white man had been stabbed and another had his ear slashed. Police said five settlers had been seriously injured in Monday's violence when they went to the rescue of a neighbour barricaded in his house by militants.

"Chinhoyi and the surrounding districts are very volatile, it's a virtual no-go area for whites right now," Machipisa said. "A mob of about 200 youths chased away white foreign reporters from the court premises before the hearing, threatening to beat them up," he added.

Local sources said two farmers were forced off their properties by suspected war veterans and supporters of the ruling ZANU-PF party. "There's a bit of trouble going on at the farms. One farmer's wife was chased out of her property by a mob," an official at the local branch of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) told Reuters.

The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) on Tuesday condemned President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF for the violence in Chinhoyi, saying it was meant to provoke a violent response from the public to justify a state of emergency or the cancellation of presidential elections due by April next year. The police denied ZANU-PF was waging a campaign of violence across the country, or that there had been attacks in Chinhoyi.

The latest victim of the violence on white-owned farms was Ralph Corbett, 76, who died at a private clinic in Harare on Monday night after unknown assailants allegedly hit him on the head with an axe at the weekend. His hands were tied with wire and he had been left for dead. Body text here is justified