A farmer's tale: chased off his land by Mugabe's brutal young henchmen

Colin Taylor was chased off his farm yesterday by members of President Robert Mugabe's most feared youth militia. Now he is gathering his household possessions and moving to Zambia.

In the early morning, just hours after the expiry of a midnight deadline for white landowners to cease farming and surrender their properties, a group of youths armed with traditional weapons and sticks arrived at Insingizi Farm outside Bindura, about 70 miles north-east of the capital, Harare.

It is now a crime for Mr Taylor and 2,900 other farmers to feed their animals, work their land or produce food at a time when six million Zimbabweans face starvation. Any farmer defying the order faces a two-year jail sentence and a fine.

Most farmers fulfilled their threat to defy Mr Mugabe and remained on their land pending a hearing in the High Court.

In London the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, accused Mr Mugabe of engineering a "man-made tragedy" with his "extraordinary and reprehensible" order.

But commercial farmers were bracing themselves for more violence to force them off their land. In Mr Taylor's case the enforcers were members of ayouth militia known as the Green Bombers for the paramilitary-style jackets they sported during the campaign for the presidential election in March. They told his farm labourers: "If you report for duty ever again and if we see your boss on the farm we will kill him." The farm now belonged to the state, they said.

Mr Taylor avoided a personal confrontation with the youths but last night he could not conceal his despondency. "By chasing away my workers and looting my property, they have finally put me out of business," he said.

He is taking up an option to start again in Zambia. He is abandoning 40 hectares of citrus, three hectares of flowers, 1,000 hectares of wheat and all his farm equipment.

"I can't get on to the farm because they will kill me. My workers cannot get on to the farm either. So what's the point of staying? I can't just sit and hope things will come right," Mr Taylor said. "This is not resettlement. It's total theft."

Lindsay Campbell, who farms in Marondera, 37 miles east of the capital, has also conceded defeat and abandoned her tobacco crop after being confronted by illegal settlers who said they now owned the property. "They were very hostile ... they wouldn't let me drive my children to school. So I have just decided to comply and stop farming and let them do whatever they want on the farm."

Jean Simon, 42, a divorced woman who farms in Banket, north of Harare, said she had no choice but to keep feeding her animals despite the ban. She has been kidnapped by Mr Mugabe's thugs, and was beaten in jail after being arrested on trumped-up charges. She said she had nowhere else to go after her family has spent 200 years in Africa.

Mr Straw told MPs last night: "We condemn the extraordinary and reprehensible decision of Zanu-PF to order farmers in Zimbabwe to stop farming and to drive them and their workers off the land at a time when the people of Zimbabwe face a level of starvation unparalleled in their recent history."