I’ve an offer letter, ‘land grabber’ claims

ERNEST Buseti, who faces charges of unlawfully occupying State land at Umvutcha Farm, has an offer letter regularising his and other settlers’ occupation of that land, his lawyer has said.

Buseti was arrested after he led a group of people to occupy the farm owned by Alister Michael Fletcher.

Disputes over the farm date back several years back after the land was erroneously declared agricultural land instead of municipal land and should be governed as per provisions of Statutory Instrument (SI) 212 of 1999.

However, when Buseti, who is in police custody, appeared before Bulawayo magistrate Shepherd Munjanja on Tuesday seeking bail, his lawyer Bartholomew Mhandire said the group had offer letters and had been paying rates to Umguza Rural District Council (RDC) since 2008.

The investigating officer, Detective Roy Mushayi of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID’s) Law and Order Section, however, opposed bail, saying there was however, a possibility the accused could interfere with witnesses and invade the farm again.

In response, the accused’s lawyer said his client deserved bail.

“Surprisingly the witnesses are unknown even to the investigating officer and accused person as well. The resettled farmers were resettled by the Ministry of Lands at Umvutsha Farm in 2008. These farmers were issued with offer letters and regularising documents from the Umguza RDC, which is the responsible local authority they built structures and paying rates since 2008,” Mhandire said.

Mhandire told journalists that they would formally apply for bail countering all the issues raised by the investigating officer.

“The State will respond and the court will make a ruling,” he said.

Mhandire said in 2019, a third party in the form of Fletcher then approached the courts, alleging that the land where the accused had resettled belonged to him and, hence was private property and not a gazetted farm.

“Unfortunately, the resettled farmers had no gazettes as evidence by that material time and the courts ruled that without the proof that the land was gazetted, it has no option but to order the eviction since Fletcher produced the title deeds,” he said. “The resettled farmers started to appeal from 2019 until November 2023 when the Supreme Court ruled and confirmed the resettled farmers’ position that indeed the land was State land, it was gazetted land and any other court which had purported to deal with the matter had no jurisdiction.”

Mhandire said the import of the Supreme Court order meant that once land had been gazetted, an aggrieved party cannot go to the courts because there is a remedy as provided for under the Constitution.

“The same Constitution has been clear, one will have to go through the Lands ministry, then the Land Board who will then make a recommendation to the president because in essence a gazette has been effected by the president, so if it’s to be set aside, automatically it should be through the president,” said Buseti’s lawyer.

“The resettled farmers have offer letters. They were issued with certificates of occupation by the Umguza RDC. They occupied and built (their) structures on the land, only to be evicted in 2018.”

Mhandire said the offer letters, which were issued to the resettled farmers were “never set aside”.

“They were never revoked by the Lands ministry so the eviction order which ordered the eviction of these resettled farmers cannot be said to set aside the offer letters,” he said, adding that Buseti and the other resettled farmers were not evicted not by the Ministry of Land, but by Fletcher.