SOUTH Africa-based business mogul and farmer Erasmus Nare —
a known Vice-President Kembo Mohadi ally — has reportedly invaded Denylynian
Animal Conservancy downstream of the Zhovhe Dam in Beitbridge.
Nare’s first attempt to invade the conservancy, alongside
13 others a few years ago, was unsuccessful after it was fiercely contested at
the High Court by the now deceased owner, Ian Ferguson.
Nare told Southern Eye yesterday that he was now occupying
the property although the court order issued against him and the Minister of
Lands,
Agriculture and Rural Resettlement, the Matabeleland South
Zanu PF provincial chairperson Rabelani Choeni and a local lands officer, still
subsists.
“I was invited by the other settlers for partnership in
farming. Our documents have gone to Harare for finalisation,” Nare said,
without elaborating.
Ferguson’s son, Ian Jnr., this week said Nare had deployed
his guards on the farm who he accused of interfering with wildlife
water-points.
“They are shutting down water for wild animals. We have
been patrolling with members of the police, but the invaders’ guards are
cutting fences and shutting water for wild animals,” he said.
“They have used fence poles stolen from the game farm a few
metres away from where they stole them. They cut fences and we have been having
sleepless nights with poachers.”
Denlynian is one of the few wildlife conservancies in
Beitbridge where various species of wildlife sought refuge as the human and
wildlife conflict increased with the takeover of farms in 2000.
In 2006, the government, through a Cabinet decision, agreed
that citrus farms and animal conservancies would not be put up for
resettlement.
But a lands official at Beitbridge in 2010 is believed to
have corruptly parcelled out land on Denylynian and Benfer Estates, which
Ferguson (Snr.) successfully contested.
After Ferguson contested the move, then Lands, Land Reform
and Rural Resettlement minister Douglas Mombeshora overturned the application
in line with Cabinet’s decision.
A lawyer close to the case said there was an eviction order
against Nare and the settlers, and a writ had been obtained.
“It is a matter of giving them notice and going to evict
them. They have no claim to the farm and it is particularly interesting that people
ignore our own laws,” said the lawyer.
Nare has gone on to build a state-of-the-art lodge inside
the farm albeit in the peripheries of the Zhovhe Dam. Newsday
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