Court Is Asked to Set Aside Order to Evict

Police asked Zimbabwe’s High Court to set aside an order for them to evict black war veterans from mainly white-owned farms, saying they were outnumbered and risked plunging the country into civil war. “At the end of the day, any order issued by this court ordering the evictions will be unenforceable,” Atty. Gen. Patrick Chinamasa told the court in Harare, the capital. “To date, 1,000 farms are being occupied by 60,000 veterans,” he added. But Jeremy Grant, deputy director of the Commercial Farmers Union, which represents the country’s 4,500 predominantly white commercial farmers, rejected the numbers, stating that in reality there are 7,000 people occupying 500 farms. “I certainly believe it is within the [police] commissioner’s power to sort this thing out immediately if he wishes to,” he told reporters.