From the Commercial Farmers Union
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Sent: Friday, 24 March 2000 1:10

Subject: CFU update

COMMERCIAL FARMERS' UNION
INFORMATION CENTRE

FARM INVASIONS

SUMMARY - 23/03/2000

Total affected since Feb
Mash Central 172
Mash West (South) 58
Mash West (North) 56
Mash East 179
Manicaland 106
Midlands 84
Masvingo 52
Matabeleland 24

TOTAL 731
49 new farms have been invaded since and including Monday, and 30 of those are still currently invaded.
Sent: Friday, 24 March 2000 1:11
Subject: CFU update

Subject: TEN DAY WEATHER OUTLOOK FOR ZIMBABWE - 22 to 31 MARCH 2000
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2000 11:17:45 +0200
TEN DAY WEATHER OUTLOOK FOR ZIMBABWE
( 22 to 31 MARCH 2000)

PREAMBLE:
The middle level circulation pattern is expected to remain stable. Meanwhile the ridge of high pressure from the Indian Ocean Anticyclone should maintain an east-south-easterly airflow across the country throughout the forecast period. These conditions should result in decrease in weather activity although some temporary moistening is expected around Sunday. FORECAST:
Mazowe, Makonde, Harare, Midlands, Gweru, Marondera/Wedza and North of Eastern Highlands: Generally partly cloudy with isolated thundershowers. Gwayi, Bulawayo, Gwanda, Masvingo, Lowveld and South of Eastern Highlands: Generally partly cloudy with patchy drizzle in the morning up to Saturday. There are chances of afternoon showers. Weather Summary for the week ending - 22 March 2000 Low pressure over Botswana and South Mozambique maintained a moist and unstable airflow over the country, resulting in moderate to heavy rainfall over the southern districts where Shurugwi recorded the highest weekly rainfall total of 163 millimeters followed by Kezi with 145 millimeters. Towards the end of the week, the Indian Ocean Anticyclone extended a ridge over the southeast resulting in the westward shift of the low which was over Botswana, this caused a decrease in rainfall activity especially over the northern areas where some areas recorded a weekly rainfall total of less than 10 millimeters. The cumulative rainfall received since the start of the rainy season remains above average in most parts of the country. The highest percentage of average is 312% at Beitbridge followed by Rupike with 245%. The northern districts are still reporting rainfall below 80% of long-term average with Centenary having received 64% so far.

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UK told to show some backbone' - BUSINESS DAY

LONDON - Zimbabwe, where squatters have invaded hundreds of white-owned farms with the apparent consent of President Robert Mugabe, should be suspended from the Commonwealth, Britain's Conservative Party said yesterday.
"I am now calling for this government to call for the suspension of Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth," shadow foreign affairs spokeswoman Cheryl Gillan said during a brief parliamentary debate.
She urged the Labour Party government in the UK to "show some backbone and set an example by saying no' to what is going on in Zimbabwe".
Thousands of liberation war veterans continue to occupy more than 600 white-owned farms in Zimbabwe as police ignore a court order to evict them.
The veterans began squatting on the land after the Mugabe was defeated in a referendum on a new constitution which would have changed the terms for land redistribution to the black majority.
In response to Gillan's demand, Foreign Office Minister of State John Battle said Britain was not in a position to suspend Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth since decision-making is consensual in the group of nations mainly consisting of former British colonies.
He said: "We have actually led action against what is going on in Zimbabwe. We raised concerns directly with ministers, we raised concerns directly with the government of Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwean Attorney-General Patrick Chinamasa announced his intention this week to seek a variance of a court order compelling the police to evict the thousands of squatters illegally occupying white farms. - Sapa-AFP.

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Zimbabwe Government to defend squatters - BBC AFRICA
Squatters are seeking to claim white-owned land
Squatters occupying farm land in Zimbabwe will be able to remain there longer if the Zimbabwe Government succeeds in a legal action which is expected to be brought to court on Thursday. A High Court ruling on Friday gave thousands of black squatters 24 hours to leave the white-owned farms which are being occupied, and ordered the police to evict them if they did not move.
But the government, which supports the redistribution of white-owned land to black farmers, has announced it will seek to "vary" the court's decision.
The squatters have so far defied the High Court ruling, and the police have made no moves to evict them.
Landowners have come under attack on some of the farms Attorney-General Patrick Chinamasa said he held talks with the police chief to assess the "rather volatile and fluid situation" and the "security implications" of police intervention. "We concluded that we should take steps to place before the High Court certain available information on the basis of which the court would be asked to vary the order it granted," Mr Chinamasa said.
"I believe that an objective consideration of this further information and submissions might persuade the court to come to a different conclusion on the matter," he added.
Jerry Grant, deputy director of the Commercial Farmers' Union which is seeking to have the squatters removed, warned Zimbabwe was "descending into a lawless state" as the police had failed to act.
Since independence in 1980, President Robert Mugabe has frequently spoken of plans to take land from the white farmers who own most of Zimbabwe's best agricultural ground and redistribute to the black majority - but so far, such plans have failed to materialise.
Last month, supporters of President Mugabe began moving onto 600 white-owned farms, with the approval of the president.
Questions in Westminster

In the United Kingdom, opposition Conservative members of parliament urged the government to call for Zimbabwe's suspension from the Commonwealth.
But a government minister, John Battle, said Britain was not in a position to do so since Commonwealth decision-making was by consensus.
He added that Britain was making sure that aid programmes for Zimbabwe were helping the people that needed them rather than going directly to the government in Harare.
Relations between London and Harare reached an all-time low two weeks ago, after a UK diplomatic bag was forcibly opened by the authorities at Harare airport.
President Mugabe has also said that the UK - where the ancestors of most white Zimbabweans came from - should bear responsibility for compensating any white farmers whose land was expropriated.

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Zimbabwe Urged to Evict Squatters - SA DAILY NEWS
By ANGUS SHAW, Associated Press Writer
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - Farm leaders on Wednesday accused the government of using delaying tactics to defy a court ruling and deter police from evicting black ex-guerrillas from white-owned farms.
A judge has given police until Tuesday to evict and arrest squatters armed with spears, clubs, axes and guns from some 700 farms they have occupied over the past month. But police commanders say have not received formal orders or sufficient manpower from the government to enforce the ruling.
Citing security reasons, Attorney General Patrick Chinamasa on Tuesday said the state was appealing a High Court ruling compelling police to remove the thousands of farm invaders, veterans of the guerrilla war that ended colonial rule in Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was known before independence in 1980.
``We are descending into a lawless state, '' said Jerry Grant, deputy director of the Commercial Farmers' Union.
``Are they saying they cannot enforce the law?'' Grant said. ``Are they saying the country is being run by war veterans? Then we are saying - there is anarchy.''
Chinamasa was not available for comment Wednesday.
Grant said there were no grounds for appeal because both the government and the union consented to it before Judge Paddington Garwe signed it Friday.
``There is inaction and more delay for political reasons,'' Grant said.
The veterans say they were angered by farmers' opposition to the government's plans to nationalize white-owned properties without paying compensation to owners.
Some 4,000 white farmers own about a third of the country's productive land, while poor rural blacks account for more than 70 percent of the 12.5 million population.
President Robert Mugabe has said he backs the occupations by landless blacks of land owned by the descendants of British settlers.
Naison Chuma, a veterans' leader, said the squatters would stay until Mugabe ordered them to leave.
``Do not expect us to shake when the High Court gives such empty ultimatums,'' he said.

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The Bare Necessities - TIME EUROPE
Robert Mugabe's 20-year reign has left the Zimbabwean economy in ruins By Peter Hawthorne
These days Zimbabwe is filled with fear, loathing and laughter. In the capital a joke currently making the rounds goes: you can tell the tourists and the drunks in the city because they are the only ones who drive straight; everyone else weaves and swerves to avoid the potholes, which are fueling a brisk informal trade in secondhand hubcaps. Those who retrieve and sell them by the roadside call them "Bob's bonuses," a paltry dividend from President Robert Gabriel Mugabe's reign of neglect.
Potholes in Harare are but one sign that the bare necessities in Zimbabwe are wearing dangerously thin. Telephones don't work and power failures are frequent. Last month the country ran out of gasoline because it couldn't pay the import bills. When precious fuel supplies do arrive, queues stretch for blocks. In the industrial areas, groups of unemployed gaze enviously through factory fences at those lucky enough to be working. Food trucks are regularly hijacked at gunpoint in overcrowded slum townships. Sometimes the frustration becomes too much. Two taxi drivers recently pulled out guns and began shooting at each other in a dispute over who was first in the fuel queue. "The wheels are really coming off," says Eddie Cross, a former vice president of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries and now an economic adviser to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
A visit to a modern shopping precinct on the edge of Harare would seem to contradict this view. When the going gets tough, it seems, the tough go shopping at Westgate Mall. Here the parking lot is packed with vehicles, many of them late-model 4x4s, and the stores, restaurants and cafés are filled with smartly dressed shoppers, both black and white, and their families. The shops stock plenty of consumer goods, mostly from South Africa, fashionable clothes and fresh farm produce.
But Westgate is an example of the socioeconomic gulf that 20 years of independence under the socialist rule of Robert Mugabe has not changed. Zimbabwe is still a country of a few haves and a large majority of have-nots. "Westgate is only for whites who have the money and black government people who steal the money," says a weary John Chidzema, a parking attendant at the mall. Chidzema is fortunate. His wife is a live-in domestic servant in a white household. In exchange for sharing her two-room accommodation he does odd jobs around the house and works an occasional shift as a night askari patrolling the electrified fence around the grounds of the suburban estate.
Most of Zimbabwe's 70,000 whites, like most blacks who have become wealthy through government or business, live with similar security arrangements.
Many of the 4,000 or so whites who form the bulk of the country's Commercial Farmers' Union are linked by the same security alert system they used during the eight years of guerrilla war that preceded Zimbabwe's independence in 1980. Now those alarms are ringing again, this time at an invasion by hundreds of Mugabe's independence war veterans who feel they have waited long enough for government promises of land. A provision to seize white-owned farmland for peasant resettlement was part of the government's new draft constitution that was rejected last month in a surprising referendum defeat for Mugabe. Now, Mugabe's defiant proposal of a constitutional amendment, which will allow him the contentious land take-over anyway, is seen by the opposition as evidence he will use the emotive land issue to maintain the support of the rural population that has helped keep him in power so long.
But in the capital it's evident that Mugabe's credibility is at its nadir. Ten years ago people could be arrested for drawing Hitler mustaches on posters of the President. Now supporters of opposition groups wear T shirts with his picture captioned "Rob Mugabe" on the front and "before he robs you" on the back. Playing on the fact that the International Monetary Fund has withheld loans to Zimbabwe because of the government's disastrous economic management, business students at the University of Zimbabwe joke that imf stands for "It's Mugabe's Fault."
In his house in the Harare suburb of Belgravia, Ian Douglas Smith--the man who Mugabe once called Public Enemy Number One--says with grim satisfaction that what he forecast back in 1980 has come true. "Mugabe and his gangsters are scraping the bottom of the barrel," says Smith, now almost 81. He has declared his intention to join an opposition front against Mugabe in the next general election, possibly next month. He seethes at what he describes as "the rape of my country." Smith, who led what was then white-ruled Rhodesia in a rebel declaration of independence from Britain for almost 15 years before agreeing to a Westminster deal that put Mugabe into power, still has a farm in Selukwe in the Zimbabwe midlands. "What upsets my own workers most," he says, "is that the first black government in Zimbabwe has brought disgrace to the black people. That's what Mugabe has to answer for."
A graffito on the wall of Mugabe's towering party headquarters in Harare reads, in large letters, "NO"--exactly what most voters said to him in the recent referendum. And another slogan could well have been written by Mugabe himself. It says simply, "God help me."