Grace Mugabe continues to expand her empire

around the dam.

“We were warned that anyone who violated the order would be arrested. This is painful because some of us depend on fishing as a livelihood,” a fisherman told the local Independent newspaper.

Mugabe began seizing homes, farms, other buildings and sites around Mazowe since 2003 and is now the largest landowner in her country. She has never paid for any of the properties seized.

Much of the land taken is no longer productive. A dairy built on one of the farms near the dam was once the most productive in Zimbabwe and is no longer operating.

Mugabe, allegedly built a luxury school with Chinese funding, but classrooms are short of pupils and teachers.

Several huge citrus farms in the district, established by Anglo American and irrigated from the Mazowe Dam, were sold to local businessmen. Mugabe, has also taken them in recent years and several no longer operate.

With faction fighting among Zanu-pf leaders over who will succeed President Robert Mugabe, 93, when he dies or chooses to retire, there has been a resurgence of land invasions.

Several white tobacco farmers who still work parts of their land have been evicted in recent weeks.

One who asked not to be identified claimed he had been paying protection money to the leader of a Zanu-pf faction but was chased off last week by supporters of another faction.

The most sensational recent land invasion drama in Zimbabwe, has been condemned by church leaders as one of the invaders say he leads a pentecostal congregation in eastern Zimbabwe.

Several people were injured and much property destroyed when 16 riot police surged onto Lesbury farm in eastern Zimbabwe.

It is on this farm that Bishop Trevor Manhanga is claiming land.

Manhanga owns and runs the Victory Tabernacle on his periurban poultry farm on the edge of the small eastern city of Mutare.

Manhanga says the government awarded him the last small chunk of arable land on Lesbury farm, which has occupied by the Smart family, for more than 80 years.

Robert Smart, 71, gave 90% of the 8 000 hectare property to the government for resettlement in 2000 after land invasions began.