DANDRENNAM Farm in Lions Den, Mashonaland West province, which is at the centre of a dispute between offer letter holder Brink Bosman and Zanu PF activists, is surrounded by three hills. On the other side, wounds Angwa River, making it strategically positioned.
Water for irrigation is in abundance, ensuring all-year-round farming activities.
Bosman has been at the 578,54-hectare farm since 1980, bonding well with the community that derives its survival from employment and other amenities.
A worker, who chose to be identified as Bigboy for fear of victimisation, said all was well until recently, when they started seeing people in the area trying to influence them to say that Bosman is a “bad and cruel farmer”.
“They came with a narrative that the child who had died in 2022 was killed by Bosman, not by his driver [Douglas Zhanewo] as reported to the police then,” Bigboy said.
Since then, the situation has never been the same at the farm as some Zanu PF members led by the party’s Chinhoyi constituency losing candidate in the 2023 elections, Thomas Chidzomba, occupied part of the farm without permission from the farm owner or the Lands ministry.
They were arrested, but charges of assault and illegal occupation were dropped after a plea, citing that they occupied the land using the power of attorney given to them by former Information and Broadcasting Services deputy minister Kindness Paradza, now a commissioner at the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission.
Investigations by NewsDay Weekender showed that at one time, three land reform beneficiaries —Paradza, former Mashonaland West governor Peter Chanetsa and Bosman had offer letters for the same farm.
- Lions Den farm invasion: A tale of lies, greed
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But the High Court, under case number HC/11155/04, ruled that Bosman was the bona fide owner of the farm.
Paradza was later given an offer letter for Plot 3 and 4, Summerhill, on November 27, 2004, and Chanetsa was offered elsewhere in the province.
“I was given an offer letter for this farm on 30 September 2004, after I surrendered title deeds for my other farm, Norman, which I surrendered under the willing-buyer willing-seller government programme,” Bosman said.
On the issue of double allocation, Bosman said he took Paradza to court after he came armed with an offer letter on the same piece of land.
“I took Paradza to court, that’s when I later learnt that Peter Chanetsa was also a beneficiary of the same piece of land, but I never saw him at the farm. Paradza was asked to leave after he was offered another farm,” recalled Bosman.
The white farmer has invested in the farm for years, boasting of several farming equipment.
Bosman said there was peace until early April when some people occupied part of the farm before reporting them to the police.
What irked Bosman most was false accusations that he concocted a story with his employee to exonerate himself for the crime he “committed”.
“My hands are clean. I never killed the boy,” he said.
The deceased was found dead in a field at the farm after allegedly being run over by a tractor.
Bosman said his enemies are behind all this to portray him as wicked so that they can take over the farm with the blessing of the misinformed community.
“They want to pressurise me with false accusations to relinquish part of my farm,” Bosman said.
But the father of the dead boy, Tichaona Moffat, still insists that the police did not do their job properly, as they did not take all the evidence gathered to court during the trial that cleared the accused, Douglas Zhanewo, the tractor driver at the farm.
“The police were bribed and the case of my child was not properly handled. I am still waiting for justice to be done.
“I still don’t understand why this case was handled by Chinhoyi traffic police officers instead of CID," Moffat said.
Bosman is not fazed even if the case is to be reopened.
“I don’t have any problem, but they need to also investigate the family because there is more to the story," Bosman said.
Investigations by this publication also revealed that the woman who claimed to be the mother of the dead child, Tafadzwa Chineni, is a stepmother who stands accused by the community of ill-treating the deceased boy.
When confronted by NewsDay Weekender, Chineni said a section of the community is wrongly accusing her of “killing the child” and dumping the body in the field.
“Indeed, I am not the biological mother of Suarance and some people are accusing me of killing the boy before I dumped the body in the field, but it is wrong because I was at work at a nearby farm when the child died,” Chineni said.
The murder case of Suarance was concluded in 2024 when it was established that the deceased had not been run over by the tractor as alleged under case number CHN/CD/1983/24.
Mashonaland West police spokesperson Inspector Ian Kohwera said there is nothing wrong with reopening a case, as long as sufficient supporting evidence is provided.
For the second time, the government, through the Lands ministry, has written a letter stating that Bosman is the owner of the farm. Whether the invaders will respect that and stay away from the farm remains to be seen.
For now, Bosman claims that his rivals are using Suarance’s death to seize the farm, despite him being the legitimate owner of the thriving piece of land.
