Friend of ours gets evicted from her Zim farm

It is always a funny feeling when somebody you know is portrayed in the press. And this one is on the BBC. 

Catherine, a French friend of ours, had bought a farm in Zim just before the invasions began, and since it was protected under a bilateral agreement France-Zimbabwe, one of the last farmers to still have her farm. Until in February she's been kicked off. Here is a bit of her story as on the BBC website:

On February 6, a crowd of 30 men showed up on our land. Most of them were young, many of them wearing [President Mugabe's] Zanu-PF T-shirts.

I was away in South Africa visiting my son at university but my husband had stayed behind. We had a feeling that something could happen so we decided one of us should stay.

They told my husband that our farm was now being taken over by a local businessman. Their manner was boastful and arrogant. When I came back from South Africa a few days later, I was advised by the French embassy not to return to the farm (I'm originally from France). This is because in 2008 there were similar invasions of white-owned farms and it got quite violent. Back then, there were people threatening to kill us and we had to leave our farm for some time. This time, there was less violence, but I was in touch with my staff on the mobile from Harare. They told me the invaders had been menacing towards them and stopped them from working. This made my staff very angry, but they were under strict instructions from me not to lose it.

'Rent-a-crowd'

After a week, my husband and I returned to the farm. In the meantime we had obtained a court order in Harare saying the squatters had no right to our land...

Read the rest on the BBC website.