From The Daily Telegraph (UK), 28 October 

Mugabe ignores his own land law 

Harare – President Robert Mugabe's government is ignoring even its own "rules" and resorting to the illegal seizure of land and escorting hundreds of settlers on to white farms. The Land Acquisition Act of 1992 requires farms to be formally listed and served with "occupation orders" before they can be acquired. But the government has decided that rewarding its supporters with land before the rainy season begins next month takes precedence over the law. At least 40 white farmers have seen hundreds of black settlers, often escorted by armed policemen, dumped on their properties in contravention of Mr Mugabe's own regulations. Four farms in the Bindura area, north of Harare, were illegally resettled yesterday. Local officials have warned scores of landowners that they will share the same fate. In its latest situation report, the CFU accused the authorities of mounting "a nationwide frenzy of illegal fast track resettlement". Obert Mpofu, the governor of Matabeleland North and an ardent supporter of Mr Mugabe, has led the campaign. In the Nyamandlovu area of Matabeleland, 18 properties have been flooded with settlers. Farmers in Mashonaland Central province, where support for Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party remains relatively strong, have also been badly hit. The government has promised to seize 75 per cent of all Zimbabwe's white farms and 2,295 have been listed for seizure. Yet the legal procedures involved make it impossible for Mr Mugabe to achieve his stated aim of resettling 500,000 black families by the end of this year. Although this target remains wildly unrealistic, the government is willing to break the law in a futile attempt to reach it. Farmers say this is more evidence of the collapse of the rule of law. 

From The Star (SA), 28 October 

What do Mugabe and Clinton have in common? 

Harare - The articles of impeachment presented to parliament on Wednesday against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, while unlikely to unseat him, contain issues of much greater legal significance than the impeachment charges that were offered against United States President, Bill Clinton. Emmerson Mnangagwa, the speaker of parliament and a ruling-party hardliner, told parliament on Thursday that the articles met the requirements of the constitution, and he would appoint a committee to investigate. Under section 29 of the constitution, the President can be removed by parliament for acts of gross misconduct and wilful violation of the constitution. The articles of impeachment drafted by the MDC level three main charges of wilful violation and three areas of gross misconduct. The wilful violation charges revolve around the President's duty to uphold and enforce the law and constitution.

The largest portion of the articles is dedicated to Mugabe's refusal to uphold court orders against illegal land seizures, and his public encouragement of war veterans and election violence. "The President has, during his tenure in office, deliberately and in some cases callously encouraged, condoned, incited and supported breaches of the law and in so doing has failed to ensure that all the laws of Zimbabwe are faithfully  executed, in violation of his constitutional obligation to do so," the articles charge. When The Standard newspaper ran a story concerning a coup plot, two journalists, Mark Chavunduka and Raymond Choto, were detained and tortured by the army, which has no legal powers to do either. The High Court ruled that the arrests were illegal and ordered the journalists' release in January last year. The ruling was ignored by the government. In response, judges of the Supreme Court and High Court wrote to Mugabe expressing concern about the government's violation of the rule of law. Instead of ordering their release, Mugabe went on national television and supported the army's actions. 

The articles cite Mugabe for repeatedly refusing to enforce High Court orders calling for the police to evict squatters who seized commercial farmland. The articles note that Mugabe repeatedly, and publicly, declared that the police would not take action against land invaders, and actively countermanded orders from the vice president and the minister of home affairs to the police to obey the court orders. For example, Mugabe said in a March 16 speech: "Those who cause disunity among us must watch out because death will befall them". The articles charge that: "What the President meant and was understood to mean was that those opposed to his Zanu-PF party would face death as a result of opposition". And on April 18, Mugabe "incited violence against whites by calling them 'enemies of the people of Zimbabwe' ". The articles assert that "in saying so, the President meant that white people, as enemies, could be treated as objects of violence". Perhaps most politically damaging to Mugabe will be the inevitable public review of his administration's history of corruption.

From The Times (UK), 28 October 

Politics are black rhino's new predator 

WEDZA - MVUU, an earless black rhinoceros, sucks on the half-gallon bottle of vitamin-and mineral-laced milk with all the gusto of a pregnant mother anxious to ensure that her rare and valuable baby thrives. Hyenas tore off Mvuu’s ears when she was a baby in the Zambezi Valley on Zimbabwe’s northern border, but her deformity has done nothing to deter suitors. At 14, she is into her third pregnancy. She is part of the most successful breeding programme for one of the world’s most endangered mammals, at Imire game park, about 75 miles east of Harare. Imire’s 7,500 acres, small for an African wildlife reserve, have proved that dangerous large mammals can prosper in a nearly normal wild environment and maintain a close relationship with human beings. The park’s six domesticated African elephants are the product of advanced scientific thinking, trained by quiet and gentle handling, a total contrast to the methods used by Indian mahouts, which break the animal’s spirit. Five of the elephants, with a handler seated on each one’s back and armed with an FN automatic rifle, amble around the park with Imire’s seven rhinos, on perpetual guard against poachers. Another elephant has been adopted by a herd of 24 Cape buffalo as their matriarch. 

Yesterday Imire appeared on the latest “preliminary notice to compulsorily acquire land”, the first step in President Mugabe’s vengeful campaign to confiscate white-owned farms. Farmers are no longer surprised by the lists of properties published almost every week, with no regard for the state’s assurances that it is interested only in underutilised farms. Among the 2,295 properties so far identified for resettlement of black peasants are the most highly developed agricultural estates in the country, schools, hospitals, missions, already resettled farms, a huge state-owned fuel storage tank facility and large chunks of wildlife conservancies in semi-desert incapable of sustaining anything except hardy game. Even among these, the absurdity of setting aside Imire for subsistence agriculture is conspicuous. “If they do take it over, there will no animals any more,” John Travers, 47, who runs the park, said. “They would all be snared and poached. The rhino project would cease to exist. It would be the end of everything here.” 

Imire’s rhinos were collected in 1986 in a dramatic operation to rescue the few-score survivors of relentless poaching of the world’s largest wild population of black rhino. Animal scientists scorned the plans of Norman Travers, John’s father, to breed rhino alongside cattle on his farm, believing the environment was “completely unsuitable”. Rhinos have a gestation period of 15 months and, in the wild, mate again only after three years, when the calf leaves its mother. The Travers doubled the rate of reproduction by weaning the calves at three months, removing them from their mothers and hand-rearing them. “As soon as the calf’s taken away, bang, she’s pregnant again,” Mr Travers said. “So far six calves have been successfully returned to a specially protected rhino zone in the Zambezi Valley. “My dream is to have about eight Imire schemes,” Mr Travers said. “We’ve found a way out of total extinction for them. In ten years we could have the numbers back to what they should be in Zimbabwe and we could be exporting black rhino to the rest of sub-Saharan Africa.”

From IRIN (UN), 28 October 

Rwanda admits loss of positions in DRC 

Rwandan forces fighting alongside Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) rebels in eastern DRC, have lost control of Pepa, in Katanga province, AFP quoted Rwanda's Foreign Minister Andre Bumaya as saying. "[DRC President Laurent-Desire] Kabila and his allies have initiated quite a large offensive in the southeast of Katanga, which has allowed his forces to capture positions formerly held by the RCD," he told journalists on Wednesday. "One of our positions, Pepa, the town and the airport, have recently fallen into the hands of Kabila's forces and allies, " he said. "Under the strength of Kabila's forces we chose to withdraw to the neighbouring mountains, but until then, we had not experienced any losses." He said that the DRC forces and its allies used barges on Lake Tanganyika equipped with artillery and heavy machine guns which allowed them to attack rebel positions on the lake at Moba. "If the international community does nothing to make Kabila's government see reason, so that he will respect the spirit and letter of the Lusaka ceasefire agreement, we will consider ourselves entitled to defend ourselves and retake our positions and those of our allies," Bumaya said. "If at any time, we realise that the situation is getting worse, we can order our troops on the ground to react," he warned. RCD-Goma spokesman Kin-Kiey Mulumba told IRIN the fighting in Katanga was "very heavy". He said it began at Musosa, near the Zambian border, before moving towards Kantaula and eventually Pepa and Moba. "Moba was bombed, with an initial death toll of nine civilians and several wounded," he said. Kabila's forces surrounded RCD positions forcing them to retreat. "Kabila used at least one brigade, Zimbabwean fighter planes, seven vessels on which were mounted ballistic missiles with a range of 25 km," Mulumba said. "It's a real war." He added that there had been a massive exodus of people towards the neighbouring province of Kasai and blamed Kabila for "taking advantage" of the RCD and Rwanda pulling back from their positions in August. "Obviously we are now seriously considering how we will respond," he said.