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Whites Dispossessed 24th April 2002 AN 89-YEAR-OLD white
Zimbabwean farmer was recovering in hospital yesterday after enduring a 37-day
siege by President Mugabe’s armed “war veterans”. Thomas Bayley, who left his
home in Britain in 1936 to settle in what was then Rhodesia, barricaded himself
inside his property and refused to leave after a mob armed with sticks, knives,
steel bars and chains told him that they were taking over the farm. With his 79-year-old wife,
Edith, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, Mr Bayley locked the doors and
windows, drew the curtains and defied their orders to hand over the property. The couple’s five-week-long
siege ended only when Mr Bayley — who walks with the aid of a Zimmer frame
after a hip replacement two years ago — tripped and fell in his bathroom,
breaking his leg. He was evacuated and yesterday underwent surgery at a hospital
in the capital, Harare. “He lived on that farm for
66 years, but he left it in an ambulance and he couldn’t even look back to see
it one last time,” his wife said yesterday. “He is a wonderful, strong man,
but if he hadn’t been in an ambulance, that moment would have broken him.” The Bayleys’ stand against
Mr Mugabe’s land grab, which has been stepped up since last month’s disputed
presidential election result, served as a symbol of determination for
Zimbabwe’s farmers. Jenni Williams, spokesman for
the Commercial Farmers’ Union, said: “This was not intransigence on the part
of an elderly couple, this was a principled last stand by a husband and wife who
had worked hard on their farm for decades and knew no other home. They are an
inspiration.” Mr Bayley came to Zimbabwe
from his home in Danbury, Essex, aged 22 bringing with him nothing more than a
suitcase full of clothes. He got a job as a farm labourer and saved up money
gradually to buy small areas of land for himself in Mazoe, Mashonaland, creating
his own 865-acre farm out of virgin bushland, employing 80 workers and naming it
Danbury Farm after his home town. “He built it up bit by bit,
and worked hard to buy every last thing himself — he’d buy a little piece of
land, then perhaps an ox-wagon or a tractor,” his daughter, Jennifer Taylor,
said. “He cleared the land of rocks by hand, and as a young girl I remember
helping him to make bricks to build the house layer by layer.” The drama began on March 13,
the day Mr Mugabe claimed victory in the election, when a gang of so-called
“war veterans” beat up three of the Bayleys’ workers with steel bars and
chains, forcing them to hand over the keys to the farm’s workshops and fuel
stores. One worker, Simion Pilosi, died 13 days later. He had suffered bruising
to his brain. Mr Bayley’s son, Tommy, who
lives on a separate homestead at Danbury Farm with his wife, Trish, brought
police to the scene, because they said that they had no transport to come
themselves. The police officers watched war veterans in the fields stealing seed
maize, but made no arrests. Over the coming days,
squatters moved on to the farm, lighting fires on the Bayleys’ lawn and, at
one point, throwing Mr Bayley Jr into the flames, burning his leg. But the only
police action came when officers arrived at Mr Bayley Jr’s door to tell him
that they were charging him with “being in possession of an antique set of
traffic lights”, which he had bought legitimately from Harare City Council in
1998. Meanwhile, his parents, who
married in 1944, remained barricaded in their house, as the militia camped
outside. If they so much as opened their door to let their dogs out, the crowd
would try to hit the animals as they ran out. “It has all been a very
traumatic experience,” Mrs Bayley said yesterday, as she rested at her
daughter’s home in Harare while awaiting news of her husband’s operation. “Each night, we had around
30 people banging drums, shouting, dancing and hitting our windows to intimidate
us, but we sat tight. What else could we do? We have lived here together for
this long, we were not about to give up our home to anybody who came along and
demanded it.” The siege ended when Mr
Bayley was evacuated by medical staff on Saturday. The Bayleys can now only hope
to fight for the right to return to their property, which it is believed has
been overrun, through the courts. “If it wasn’t for my
husband’s fall, I have no doubt we would still be there,” Mrs Bayley said.
“We didn’t do a lot in there, but we said to each other: ‘We’re not
leaving.’ Why should we?” Another victim of Mr Mugabe’s militias, a
53-year-old woman whose son was murdered by the President’s supporters last
year, was buried yesterday, two days after she was beheaded for being suspected
of supporting the opposition. The Daily News, Zimbabwe’s
only independent daily newspaper, said that the killing was carried out in front
of two of her daughters at their home in the remote Magunje tribal area on
Sunday. The family’s home was burnt down. Brandina Tadyanemhandu was
the 23rd person to have been murdered in the wave of bloody retribution exacted
by Zanu (PF) militiamen since Mr Mugabe was declared winner of last month’s
presidential elections. Human rights agencies say that the violence is a
strategy used in previous elections by Zanu (PF) to crush its opponents. Mrs Tadyanemhandu’s
husband, Enos, 63, told the Daily News that he reported the murder to local
police and was advised to bring in the culprits himself. He said he was away
from home on Sunday when Zanu (PF) youths came looking for him. His wife was the
third person to suffer beheading in four months. Zimbabweans learnt yesterday
of worsening economic hardship, with a 20 per cent increase in the price of
bread, to Zim$60 (70p), and a 35 per cent increase in cooking oil, to Zim$199
for a 750ml bottle. A loaf a day will consume 20
per cent of the pay of a factory worker on a minimum wage. The Times (UK) - From Jacqui
Goddard in Bulawayo and Jan Raath in Harare |