Various - posted 7 May 2000
HARARE, May 4 (AFP) - Self-styled former guerrillas of
Zimbabwe's war of
independence invaded 42 more white-owned farms
within hours of a warning by
President Robert Mugabe that his
government would step up efforts to acquire
land for blacks, farming
officials said Thursday.
The fresh invasions
come ahead of a meeting scheduled Friday
between Mugabe and his South
African counterpart Thabo Mbeki in the
second largest city of Bulawayo.
The Commercial Farmers Union reported Thursday that 32 new farms
had
been invaded on Wednesday, the same day Mugabe warned that he
would not lift
a finger to remove thousands of war veterans from the
more than 1,000
white-owned farms they have invaded in the past
three months.
Ten
other farms were occupied Thursday, according to CFU
president Tim Henwood.
War veterans leader Chenjerai Hunzvi, a commercial farmers union
official Nick Swanepoel and a senior police officer, deputy
commissioner
Godwin Matanga, flew by helicopter to the invaded areas
of Arcturus and
Wedza, east of Harare, Thursday morning to calm the
invaders, Henwood said.
Mugabe on Wednesday told his supporters there was no going back
on
the land reforms and that war veterans who had invaded farms were
to stay
put. He said the government would seize at least half the
white-owned
commercial farms for redistribution to landless blacks.
On the strength
of special presidential powers invoked last
week, the farm seizures are due
to start imminently, without
compensation.
Mugabe said he backed the
invasions, and that the war veterans
would only "backtrack" if some 841
farms that government had
originally earmarked for acquisition two years ago
were made
available by their white owners.
Mbeki is to visit Bulawayo
on Friday to officially open the
Zimbabwe International Trade Fair, the
country's annual trade
showpiece. Mugabe was due to welcome him, but it was
not clear if
the two leaders would engage in official talks.
Initially scheduled to arrive in Zimbabwe this week for a state
visit,
Mbeki will now make his official visit after general
elections, a date for
which is still unknown. Mbeki has been lashed
by his political opponents for
accepting the invitation from
Mugabe.
South Africa's former leader
Nelson Mandela has pledged to
British Prime Minister Tony Blair that his
successor, Mbeki, would
play a key role in private discussions with Harare
over the land
dispute, it was reported Thursday.
Mugabe has shrugged
off concerns by the international community,
in particular by the
Commonwealth, over the ongoing land dispute and
the violence that has
accompanied the farm invasions.
Critics accuse Mugabe, in centring his
election campaign on the
land issue, of resorting to mere gimmickry
designed to keep his
ruling party in power.
Mugabe, who delivered his
election manifesto here on Wednesday,
alleges that a "vicious"
international campaign has been launched
against Zimbabwe and has vowed that
he will not give in to any
amount of pressure over the land issue.
"The world is inimical. Let's realise there is a vicious
campaign against
Zimbabwe," he told his supporters when he outlined
how his party intends to
run the country in the next five years.
Critics have accused Mugabe of
wasting his first 20 years in
government amassing power at the expense of
redistributing land.
But Mugabe brushes off his critics, saying the
government's
hands were tied by a compromise constitution drawn up in
Britain
just before independence which made it illegal to take land within
the first 10 years of black majority rule, and thereafter a
requirement
that land be acquired on a willing buyer-willing seller
basis.
Britain, in response to the pre-election violence and the
illegal
occupation of white-owned farms, has announced an embargo on
any new
applications for the purchase of military weapons from
Zimbabwe.
But
Zimbabwe says it can buy from many other international
producers of
military hardware and vehicle spares.
From The Scotsman [UK]
http://www.scotsman.com/cgi-bin/t3.cgi/taf/index.taf?function=detail&Scotsma
n_uid1=TS00047407&desk=News&cat=news&sec=11
Secret
meeting raises prospect of Mugabe coup
Farmers and army officers plot to
end land invasions
RON GOLDMAN in Harare and PAUL BEAVER
THE first
signs of a concerted attempt to wrest power from President
Mugabe emerged in
Zimbabwe yesterday.
Just 24 hours before Mr Mugabe repeated his hardline
stance on farm
occupations, the country's beleaguered white farmers met
Zimbabwe's
security forces secretly in Harare.
In a development that
will fuel expectations that a coup may be under
consideration, high-ranking
representatives of the army, air force,
police and Central Intelligence
Organisation attended the meeting.
Mr Mugabe, who declared yesterday that
he would not order an end to the
farm occupations, was unaware of the meeting
at the 4,500-member
Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU) in suburban Harare, a
reliable source
said. Those present included the police commissioner,
Augustine Chihuri,
and Air Marshal Perence Shiri, the chief of the air
force.
The source said the security forces were going to the farms to
"clean
up" the self-styled war veterans and squatters who have occupied
more
than 1,000 farms since mid-February. The security forces would "get
them
off the land". Asked when action could be expected, the source
replied:
"Maybe tomorrow [Thursday]."
German army sources said that
"the economic affects of the continued
political violence and the apparent
inability of the security teams to
stop the killing seems to be driving the
military high command to
reconsider its allegiance to Mr Mugabe".
Air
Marshal Shiri was commander of the notorious North Korean-trained
5th
Brigade, said to be responsible for the deaths of thousands of
people in
Matabeleland during the inter-party strife of the mid-1980s.
Ten thousand
men of Zimba-bwe's army of about 33,000 are fighting to
prop up President
Kabila in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a fact
that is deeply
resented by many Zimbabweans.
Since the land invasions began in February,
Commissioner Chihuri has
seen his men hindered by the politicians who have
ordered them to leave
the war veterans alone.
The source said that
news of the meeting had been intended as "top
secret" and wanted to know by
whom it had been leaked. However, it was
broadcast on Tuesday evening on the
farmers' private radio network - a
fact that deeply upset CFU executives when
they discussed the leak
yesterday.
Another concern appeared to have
been that the leader of the war
veterans, Chenjerai Hunzvi, had "lost
control" of the farm invaders.
While Mr Hunzvi is treated like a hero in
Harare and has had talks with
members of the CFU, there is a growing belief
that his popular-ity is
political window dressing, manipulated by Mr Mugabe
in his attempts to
win votes through the emotive land issue. In reality, the
land dispute
appears to be out of control. "It's running riot," said a
farming
source.
Farm occupations continue, land and crop preparation
is being severely
hampered, peasants are being allocated tiny plots on
previously huge
productive commercial farms. On the outskirts of Harare,
civil servants
and policemen are among those who have "paid" for
plots.
The whole exercise is being conducted haphazardly by ruling
ZANU-PF
party followers who have interpreted Mr Mugabe's continued support
for
the war veterans as an open invitation to do as they wish on the
farms.
Against this background, the meeting between the farmers and
the
security forces is being seen as one of the most
significant
developments in the crisis, in the realisation among all
Zimbabweans
that the destruction of the commercial farms and the
continued
instability is a rapid road to hunger and economic ruin.
In
London, Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, announced that all new
defence and
law enforcement equipment licences would be suspended and
that a shipment
from the West Midlands of 450 Land Rover Defender
vehicles for the national
police would be halted.
As a Commonwealth country, Zimbabwe has been a
regular but not large
customer of the UK defence industry. Data released last
year showed that
the UK exported considerable quantities of army equipment,
including
personal weapons (rifles and pistols), clothing, helmets,
detonators,
night vision goggles and ammunition. The Zimbabwean air force
took
delivery of spares for the Hawk and Hunter trainers.
On the
United Nations arms register for 1998, the UK declared shipping
five
consignments of small arms, worth £50,000, but no artillery pieces,
armoured
combat vehicles, helicopters or combat jets. In 1998 37
standard individual
export licences were granted for "listed" equipment
including weapons with
"a calibre greater than 12.7mm" and ammunition.
href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
ISSUE
1805 Thursday 4 May 2000
Harare's clubmen contemplate life as objects
of hatred
By Peter Foster
Mugabe vows to seize half of all white
farmland
AFTER a good lunch, three members of Zimbabwe's oldest
gentlemen's club
retired to the bridge room to digest President Mugabe's
latest attempt to
stir up popular feeling against the white community.
For
the past few months they have watched with increasing nervousness
as
landowners were made the scapegoat for Zimbabwe's economic failings,
being
described as colonial thieves and enemies of the state. Yesterday it
became
clear that the urban white middle classes who control many of
Zimbabwe's
business interests, such as mining and textiles, are not to be
spared Mr
Mugabe's anti-white rhetoric.
In his speech to the Zanu-PF
party faithful they were included for the first
time among "the enemies who
despise us". Tellingly, they were referred to by
the Zimbabwean president as
mabhunu, a derogatory Shona word equivalent to a
white man saying
"kaffir".
Sitting around a green-baize card table in the Harare Club, an
establishment
founded in 1893 on the principles of the gentlemen's clubs of
St James's and
Piccadilly, the three men said they could find little cause
for optimism.
Charles, an industrialist who, like his two friends, has lived
in Zimbabwe
for more than 40 years, was certain about the ultimate intention
of Mr
Mugabe and his "band of gangsters".
He said: "This is the start
of the ethnic cleansing. The white farmers were
an easy target because of the
land issue, but we will be next. I have lived
here for 42 years and never
actively considered leaving. Now I am thinking
about it for the first
time."
While a black waiter in a starched uniform brought coffee, the
members of
the Wednesday lunch club discussed their options if life in
Zimbabwe becomes
unbearable. They feared that they could not afford to leave,
even if they
wanted to. They were "financial captives" whose savings would
amount to
almost nothing if they were to emigrate to Britain or South
Africa.
John, a textiles businessman and engineer who arrived in Zimbabwe
as an RAF
flight instructor officer in 1942, draws the comparison with a pint
of beer.
He said: "Here we complain when a beer costs 34 Zimbabwean dollars
(about 50
pence), but in England a pint could cost over four or five times
that much.
We would have very little standard of living if we went to
Britain."
Charles, who worked with Mr Mugabe's government in the
Eighties, compared
the president to a petulant child who is prepared to
destroy the country
simply to deny it to others. He said: "He has turned
vicious because all the
things he wanted to be, he is not. He wanted to be
the leader of a
successful African country striding the world
stage."
Immaculate in their blazers and ties, all agreed that things are
close to
getting out of control. John said: "I think we all thought Mugabe
would go
so far and then put a lid on it, but this Hitler Hunvzi chap [the
leader of
the so-called war veterans] is grinning his way through
Zimbabwe's
Kristallnacht. He is going to see to it that the whites are going
to get
'what's coming to them'."
While Martin, a former British civil
servant who worked for Ian Smith's
Rhodesian government, reckoned it was time
to send in United Nations
peacekeepers, Charles, who was once an admirer of
Mr Mugabe, disagreed. He
said: "Views like that only perpetuate Mugabe's
ludicrous statement that
Britain must pay to move off the white farmers.
Today's generation can't be
made to pay for what was done by Cecil John
[Rhodes]."
Instead, Zimbabwe's problems must be "sorted out internally"
at this
summer's elections. Whether the main opposition leader, Morgan
Tsvangirai,
is the man for the job is yet to be seen, but, Charles added: "I
wouldn't
care if the man had two heads, anything is better than what we have
now."