Images Of Farm Workers Shot At Friedewal Farm Last Week

Harare, Zimbabwe, 04 November 2009

These are images from Sokwanele's Flickr Album of Terror and they show some of the farm workers who were shot this last week at a farm that is being taken over by the Deputy Governor of The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe.

The farm in protected  by the SADC Tribunal ruling, but we all know that the government has said that it will not listen to anything the Tribunal says.

Of the farm workers shot (with rubber bullets, apparently), two were seriously injured and sent to Harare for treatment. The farm under discussion is in Mugabe's home province. Interestingly, these farm workers are being shot at and brutalised like this over a few piggeries- yes- piggeries.

The deputy governor has already taken over the bulk of Friedewal Farm, but now wants the farmer, Louis Fick, who is a South African and a leader of the Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers' Union, to give up what little he is still hanging on to.

Fick himself has not been allowed to set foot on the farm. The workers, who have nowhere else to go, are trying to fight for their livelihoods by defending the cattle, pigs and crocodiles that are still on the farm. Some of their own houses have been burnt down in an effort to get them to move off, but when one has nothing else to lose, they tend to want to fight to the death and this is what these farm workers are doing.