Zimbabwe land grab by US-citizen MD

The corruption gets deeper in Zimbabwe. A high-income American citizen is stealing farms now.

Dr Erikana Chihombori has a family practice in Antioch, Tennessee. Murfreesboro, TN, also. Why does she need to take a productive farm out of production? Because all the friends and family of the powerful in Zimbabwe can.

Scotsman.com
A RICH niece of Zimbabwe's prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai, currently on a three-week tour of western countries to beg for aid to kick-start his country's battered economy, has tried to take over a white-owned commercial farm by force.

Dr Erikana Chihombori, who owns a lucrative medical practice in the United States and has citizenship there, tried to seize Bertie Cremer's 60-hectare flower farm near Chegutu, 60 miles east of Harare, but the young land invaders she hired withdrew after complaining they were being paid too little.

She insists she has letters from the Zimbabwean government permitting her to expropriate Mr Cremer's De Rus Farm, which has been owned by his family for 81 years. She also says she has a right to the land, and that her takeover will help "correct historical injustices".

The attempted land grab by Dr Chihombori, who was born in Zimbabwe, is potentially hugely damaging to Mr Tsvangirai and to his efforts to secure western aid, as he seems to be complicit, at least by association, in her attempt to take the property.

Yesterday, he met President Barack Obama in Washington to ask the US to help him and Zimbabwe without assisting powerful president Robert Mugabe.