Grinning with Mrs Mugabe, GP who was handed white couple’s farm
THE smiling faces in the photo belie its sinister undertones.
For this picture confirms the link between a wealthy British doctor and one of the world’s most heinous despots.
The man at the back is Nottingham-based GP Sylvester Nyatsuro, who has been allowed to seize a white family’s farm in Zimbabwe as part of Robert Mugabe’s controversial land reforms. The woman on the left is the dictator’s wife Grace.
Dr Nyatsuro took over a tobacco plantation belonging to Phillip and Anita Rankin, who were frogmarched off their land by AK47-wielding thugs.
The Rankins, who bought the land 35 years ago, were handcuffed and taken away in police lorries on the orders of Dr Nyatsuro and his wife Veronica, both 45. The land-grab took place as part of 92-year- old dictator Mugabe’s policy of handing land owned by whites to black Zimbabweans – usually as rewards to his cronies in the ruling Zanu PF party and their supporters.
Now, with these photographs showing the GP and his wife posing with Mugabe’s wife Grace, the link between the Zimbabwe-born Nyatsuros and the Mugabes is confirmed. It is unclear where and when the pictures were taken, but their emergence has led prodemocracy campaigners to accuse the wealthy couple of ‘cronyism’.
‘These pictures of the Nyatsuros with Grace Mugabe show the tentacles of Mugabe’s cronyism reaching all the way to Nottingham,’ Rose Benton, co- ordinator of Zimbabwe Vigil, a UK- based campaign group, told MailOnline.
‘It’s astonishing that such corruption can be allowed to continue.’
The Nyatsuros, who moved to Britain in 2000, have three children and live in a gated, five-bedroom home which they bought for £730,000 in 2006.
They also own a number of rental properties and a Mercedes sports car, thanks to a successful weightloss clinic they run in Nottingham.
The couple did not respond to requests for comment, but they have told the Zimbabwe press that their connection to the Mugabe family did not lie behind last month’s land seizure.
In September Dr Nyatsuro had turned up at the Kingston Deverill plantation with a government document saying he was now the rightful owner.
And the Rankin family were finally forced out of the tobacco plantation earlier this month as armed thugs took control of the farm and drove away their possessions.
The Rankins had tended the land for over three decades – with the business now understood to be worth up to £1.5million. Today at least 20 armed men – including one who claims to be Mrs Nyatsuro’s brother – remain in the home, which is about 140 miles north east of the capital Harare.
Mugabe’s ‘land reform’ has been taking place for 16 years, with 90 per cent of white farmers being driven off their land.
Many Zimbabwean activists are questioning why the Rankins’ farm should be given to a doctor who has made his home on another continent and is already wealthy.
Mrs Rankin, 54, wept as she described the trauma of losing everything the family owns. ‘I am born and bred on a farm. I don’t know town life. And I only know Zimbabwe,’ she said.
The Nyatsuros have denied using violence to enforce their claim to the Rankins’ farm, saying they were allocated the property in accordance with normal legal procedures.