Published by the government of Zimbabwe
Chakanetsa Chidyamatiyo
14 July 2009
Harare — SOS Children's Villages Zimbabwe is embroiled in an acrimonious farm ownership wrangle with 22 orphans the organisation raised at one of its villages in Bindura who now claim ownership of the property.
The 22 men and women, allocated stands to practise various skills they acquired at SOS' Bindura farm, are refusing to vacate the stands to make way for others.
Glen Avlin Farm is located on the outskirts of Bindura town.
SOS national director Mr Gary Birditt confirmed they were in a dispute with the SOS youths occupying the farm.
He said the SOS had no mandate to settle farmers at the farm which they used for training and producing food for their network of villages.
According to some correspondence, the 22 youths have written to Mashonaland Central Governor and Resident Minister, the provincial administrator, the chief lands officer, the police and SOS Children's Villages head office, insisting they were staying put.
The young farmers claimed they were being "unfairly evicted" from the farm.
"Please be advised that we are 22 SOS children youth farmers and we would like to bring to your attention the eviction order by SOS Children's Village Zimbabwe.
"We were resettled by the organisation in 1990, after completing a course in agriculture up to the last season.
"The organisation is evicting us for no apparent reason and we have nowhere to go and most of us are orphans and do not have rural areas to go to," reads part of the letter.
The letter claimed SOS had given them the land "permanently".
"We feel we were 'used' to defend the SOS farm from the land redistribution programme," they alleged.
"But Mr Birditt said the farmers were adults who benefited from SOS services and had limited potential academically.
"We took them and said they still have a future in society, though they had limited potential academically," he said.
"The organisation then offered them vocational training in agriculture, metal work and other skills." Mr Birditt said the children were then allowed to do the actual farming at the farm now in contention -- to fully prepare them for their integration into society.
He said the organisation had offered to assist them with US$2 500 each as capital.
He denied the Government ever expressed interest in acquiring the farm for resettlement purposes, saying it was reserved for training SOS children.
"That land is State land. Government is aware that we use that land for training children and for the organisation's food security," he said.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2009 The Herald. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
