UK-BASED medical doctor, Sylvester Nyatsuro, 45, was Wednesday inundated with death threatening messages and demands for his immediate deportation for alleged attempts to stampede a white Zimbabwean off his tobacco farm.
The dispute over the Mashonaland Central property was expected to be heard in the Zimbabwean courts Thursday.
Nyatsuro’s distraught wife, Veronica, currently in Zimbabwe, told NewZimbabwe.com that some irate locals have besieged the family’s Nottingham home calling for the General Practitioner’s head.
“Zvinhu zvanyanya kuoma manje kuEngland (we are now under siege in England), we don’t know what to do now,” Veronica said.
“People are now phoning, issuing death threats; the local MP and newspapers have also phoned saying he has to be deported.”
Nyatsuro moved to the UK in 2003 and is now a British citizen. He runs a slimming clinic – Willows Medical Centre – in Nottingham.
His wife denied British media reports the couple has deployed violent youths in attempts to force Phillip Rankin, 57, off the 2000-acre property.
She says reports about the couple’s alleged violent tendencies towards the farmer were all cooked up by Rankin to whip up emotions in Britain and put pressure on them to give up the farm.
“People are now saying he (Nyatsuro) has to be killed together with his children. He was holed up in the house for the whole day (Wednesday),” Veronica said.
“We just don’t know how to handle it now and the most unfair thing is that it (allegations) is not true. It is just scary and they are even threatening to come to the surgery.”
Press reports claim Nyatsuro used his close connections with the first family to muscle his way into the productive Mashonaland Central farm which has a $360,000 worth tobacco crop on the ground.
The couple is further said to have visited the Muzarabani farm last month along with a posse of menacing Zanu PF youths and ordered Rankin to vacate the property.
On his part, Rankin has vowed he will not give way to “a British citizen”.
But Veronica spent 15 minutes with our reporter Wednesday painstakingly pleading the couple’s innocence.
“There is no form of violence at all, not at any one time,” she said, adding that they were lawfully offered the property like everyone else and had all along been communicating with a “cooperating” Rankin, even offering him more time to wind up his business.
Veronica admitted knowing the Mugabes but denied the first family ever played any active role in the acquisition of the property.
She further says a lot of the hostilities directed towards Rankin were in fact emanating from the farmer’s long time neighbours he has in the past angered by shooting willy-nilly at their livestock.
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