17/09/2026
*🟥FORBES BORDER POST EVICTIONS: 45 YEARS AFTER FARM BECAME BORDER, WORKERS TOLD TO VACATE BY OCTOBER 1*
*By Nhau dzekumakomo Field Team | FORBES BORDER POST, MUTARE*
Before Forbes was a border post, it was a farm. When the farmer was told to leave and the land was taken for state use to build the border, the farm workers were told to stay in the farm houses and were promised that government and ZIMRA would relocate them elsewhere. That was 45 years ago. The workers stayed, they built homes, they raised children, they buried their lovedones there, and the relocation never came.
Today Nhau dzekumakomo visited Forbes Border Post and found those same workers, now elderly, holding letters from the Ministry of Lands Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Resettlement telling them to vacate their homes by 1 October 2026. They say they have nowhere to go.
Among them is an elderly couple, the Magama family, who have lived at Forbes since before the border existed. Speaking to Nhai dzekumakomo, Sekuru Magama said they were told for decades they would be relocated, but for 40 years nothing happened, and now they are simply being told to go back where they came from. His wife said they served the farm, and when the border came they served the border, cleaning and carrying bricks for its construction, and now they are being called illegal occupants in their own home. Their children were born at Forbes, their graves are there, and they do not know any other home.
The community says dozens of families of former farm workers and their descendants have received the same notice, giving them less than 20 days to leave. They say they are not against development and understand that Forbes is being expanded and modernized as one of Zimbabwe's busiest gateways for lithium, to***co and other goods, but they argue that development cannot happen by burying the people who built the border.
For 45 years these families have lived in limbo, not classified as farm workers anymore, not
