The agreement, struck in September 1998 between the Zimbabwean government, the farmers and international aid donors, meant the West would fund land redistribution in return for fair elections, an end to violence and the imposition of the rule of law.
African leaders at Friday's conference in Victoria Falls appeared to be rallying behind Mr Mugabe in urging Britain and the West to make good that commitment. But Britain reacted positively to the statements of African leaders, including South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki and President Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique, indicating that there had been an element of co-ordination between Britain and the Africans.
In a first sign that the Victoria Falls talks might be bearing fruit, police moved to free two white farmers, Ian Miller and Chris McGraw, who had been abducted by self-styled war veterans in the Bindura area north-east of Harare.
Peter Hain, the Foreign Office minister, said the African leaders' statement should be viewed by "reading the African tea-leaves, not looking through a London telescope".
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "If anyone expected them to come out and denounce Mr Mugabe, they were extraordinarily ill-informed. That was never going to be the case."
And in a statement ahead of the arrival in London of a high-level delegation from Harare, the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, insisted his agenda for change in Zimbabwe was shared by the presidents of South Africa, Namibia and Mozambique. Mr Cook said: "I share the priorities of the three African presidents. They want a fair programme of land reform. So do we. They want the violence to stop. So do we. They want a return to dialogue and an end to confrontation. So do we. We have now got dialogue back on track."
He said he was ready to start discussions with the Zimbabwean delegation on Thursday on the basis of the 1998 agreement. But he added: "It has to be a programme that is within the rule of law and helps the rural poor. And the occupations have to stop. The farmers and Zimbabwe both need a solution that brings an end to the occupations and the violence."
The Foreign Secretary has been fiercely criticised by political opponents in Britain for failing to act swiftly and firmly enough to bring Mr Mugabe into line following the murders of two white farmers sympathetic to the Zimbabwean opposition party, one policeman, and 10 black members of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). But senior Foreign Office sources insisted last night that Mr Cook had been engaged in "24-hour hotline diplomacy" and had personally ensured that African leaders met last week and began talks.
The Government is, however, being careful not to be seen to be playing the colonial master. Mr Hain told The Independent on Sunday: "Zimbabwe is an independent sovereign state and has been for 20 years. Some people in the British press and the Conservative Party seem to think it is send-in-the-gunboats time but, apart from the fact that Zimbabwe is landlocked, there needs to be a Zimbabwean and African solution to what is a Zimbabwean and African problem." In a further sign of pressure on Mr Mugabe, Mr Mbeki yesterday postponed a visit to Zimbabwe, scheduled for early May, until after that country has held parliamentary elections.
A South African foreign ministry spokesman, Ronnie Mamoepa, said Mr Mbeki met Mr Mugabe on Friday and agreed to reschedule the state visit. No reason was given for the postponement of the visit, which was strongly criticised as an inappropriate endorsement of Mr Mugabe shortly before the parliamentary elections, which must be held by August but are expected in May.
Meanwhile in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second largest city, hundreds of friends and well-wishers turned out yesterday to bid a tearful goodbye to the murdered white Zimbabwean farmer Martin Olds.
"He was a man of uncompromising principle. His word was his bond," Olds' brother-in-law David Gifford told the packed St Andrews Presbyterian Church. "Here lies one amazing bull of a man," he said, choking back tears.
Mr Olds, 44, was bludgeoned and shot to death on Tuesday when his Compensation Farm was attacked by more than 100 people wielding AK-47 assault rifles, machetes and metal poles.
"I believe the government and the president are to blame," Reverend Paul Andrianatos told more than 600 mourners who packed the church and spilled outside. "He [Mugabe] is a criminal. He is the enemy of the state."
Mr Olds' disabled wife, Catherine, and her two teenage children, Martine and Angus, sat with his mother Gloria, brother David, sister-in-law Laura and their daughter Mandy in the front pew, alternately crying and cuddling each other.
Money available for Zimbabwe land reform: UK
LONDON (April 23) : The British government reaffirmed on Friday
that money was available for land reform in Zimbabwe but that it must be "within
the rule of law".
..........In reaction to an
appeal by Southern African leaders for Britain and others to pay money to end
Zimbabwe's land crisis, Foreign Office Minister Peter Hain emphasised that
finance had been available since 1998.
..........The leaders of Namibia, Mozambique, South Africa
and Zimbabwe, meeting in the Zimbabwe resort of Victoria Falls, called Friday on
Britain and other donors to provide funds to resettle landless blacks on
white-owned farms in Zimbabwe.
..........They met
as squatters led by veterans of Zimbabwe's independence war occupied hundreds of
farms owned by white farmers amid increasing violence which has seen too white
farmers and two black opposition activists killed in the past week.
..........Hain said in reaction: "Thabo Mbeki (South
African president) and Joaquim Chissano (Mozambique president) are right to
focus on a genuine land reform programme. This is what we have always been
prepared to help fund, provided it is within the rule of law.
.........."This is what we will discuss with the Zimbabwean
delegation in London next Thursday, a fair land reform programme and fair
elections, within the rule of law.
.........."This
has been on the table since 1998. We have been waiting since then for President
(Robert) Mugabe to pick it up.
.........."Violence
should never have got in the way of the 1998 programme". The British government
assured in 1998 that it would honour engagements on land reform under the
Lancaster House agreement of 1979 which paved the way for Zimbabwe's
independence, after a seven years independence war against a white minority
government.
..........A Zimbabwean delegation led
by Local Administration Minister John Nkomo is expected in London next Thursday
for talks.
..........Britain said the first
redistribution was tainted by nepotism and corruption and suspended payments in
1980 with about 70 million dollars handed over.--AFP
..........Copyright 2000 AFP (Published under
arrangement with Associated Press of Pakistan)
Priest blasts 'Nazi methods' of Mugabe
By Ian Cobain in
Bulawayo
THE beleaguered white community of Zimbabwe turned out in force yesterday for the funeral of Martin Olds, the farmer murdered last week, and heard the minister condemn President Robert Mugabe as evil, corrupt and a criminal.
In a powerful address that brought gasps from many of the mourners, the Rev Paul Andrianatos compared the president and his regime to the Nazis. He said: "There will be no fancy jets and no red carpets for them in heaven". Mr Andrianatos even declared that a vote for the ruling Zanu-PF party in next month's parliamentary elections "would be a vote for the devil".
Mr Olds's widow Cathy, who has been disabled by polio and walked with crutches, held her head in her hands during the minister's address. His daughter Martine, 17, wept, while his son Angus, 14, simply looked bewildered.
More than 400 mourners crammed into the modern Presbyterian church of St Andrew's in the smart Bulawayo suburb of Hillside for the funeral of the farmer, murdered during a three-hour gun battle with squatters when they invaded his farm north of the city last Tuesday. Several hundred more milled around outside, unable to find even standing room.
They were a cross-section of white Zimbabwe: elderly farmers rubbed shoulders with urban professionals and teenage students. Some had driven through the night from the capital, Harare, more than 200 miles away. Less than a dozen of the mourners were black.
There were hymns, prayers and tears, but few suits or back dresses, and even fewer black ties. Many people came to pay their last respects in dusty boots and khaki shirts, the clothes they had been wearing when they hurriedly abandoned their homes as the country slid deeper into anarchy last week. Even the dead man had been dressed in a safari suit.
Many of the mourners, numb with fear and exhaustion after weeks of land invasions, murders, rapes and beatings by the Zanu-organised veterans, were astonished that he should deliver such a courageous and forthright address.
Others said afterwards that they feared his words could bring even more of Mugabe's wrath crashing down upon their heads. Mr Andrianatos told them that Mugabe's actions could destabilise the entire region. He said: "Is the president pouring oil on troubled waters, or is he putting a flame to the oil? He puts himself alongside criminals. He is indeed a criminal."
Echoing the words used by the president when attacking white farmers on the 20th anniversary of majority rule, he added of Mugabe: "He is the enemy of the state." Comparing the crisis in Zimbabwe to the early years of Hitler's rule, when the Nazis persecuted and imprisoned first communists, then Jews, then Catholics and trade unionists, he said: "First it was homosexuals, then white farmers, followed by other whites - then Indians, then coloureds, then the Ndbele."
He asked the mourners to pray for the police, "that they might put the vows they have taken into action", and for the country's corrupt and power-seeking leadership, "that they might realise they are public servants". He also implored the people of Zimbabwe to "take a stand" against the growing tyranny. "Martin Olds took his stand, he stood up for his principles. If you do not stand up for principles you will fall for anything."
Mr Olds had evacuated his family to Bulawayo after being warned that he was a likely target for a gang of between 100 and 300 supposed war veterans who had been bused into Matabeleland. He was known to be a tough character - his farming neighbours say "respected" - who served in the feared Grey Scouts, a mounted reconnaissance unit, during the Rhodesian army's war against black guerrillas.
He had been in trouble in the past for shooting at poachers, and warned police he would do the same to any would-be squatters. Furthermore, he was deeply unpopular with many local black people.
The police refused to lift a finger when his home was attacked shortly before dawn by up to 150 gunmen, who were riding in a convoy of new cars and pick-up trucks and armed with AK47 assault rifles. Instead the officers set up a road block and prevented other farmers from coming to his aid.
Mr Olds tried to fight it out with a shotgun and a magnum pistol. When he telephoned his mother and said he had been shot in the leg, the police also held up the ambulance. He fled through the back door after petrol bombs were thrown through the windows, and was shot in his other leg, beaten and then shot in the head.
Many of his neighbours were impressed by Mr Andrianatos's attack on Mr Mugabe. Peter Rosenfels said after the funeral: "We are losing everything that we have struggled so long to build and have been turned into refugees. Why? Because of the colour of our skin." Another mourner, Henning Stratham, said: "We came to bury a friend, not to hear a political speech. This can only cause more trouble."
Asked whether he feared for his own safety, Mr Andrianatos, a 43-year-old white South African, said: "I never really gave any thought to possible repercussions. I just thought about what had to be said, and then said it."
Uganda Welcomes Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers
KAMPALA (April 23) XINHUA - The Uganda Investment Authority (UIA) will try to woo the white farmers from South Africa and Zimbabwe next month when it launches an investment drive of Southern Africa, the New Vision daily reported on Sunday.
"We are conducting an investment mission to South Africa and Zimbabwe next month and if we meet any white farmers they will be welcome," the report quoted UIA Executive Director Maggie Kigozi as saying.
Agriculture, agro-processing, fish and horticulture are among the most promising sectors in Uganda, said Kigozi, adding that UIA is intent on bringing in large commercial farmers to start nucleus farms.
Uganda also has an urgent need to develop service sector because the investors now ask about schools for their children and medical facilities, the UIA boss said.
She said that Zimbabweans would find the facilities they need in Uganda and they would do much better in the east African country because the climate in Uganda is much better than that in Zimbabwe.
Uganda is now paying special attention to agricultural modernization. Early this year the government announced the strategy to modernize the sector. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni urged local farmers last week to adopt advanced techniques to develop the country's agriculture.
White commercial farmers in Zimbabwe have had their farms ransacked by black land squatters over the past few weeks in a bid to evict them and redistribute their land to thousands of landless people.
Copyright XINHUA NEWS AGENCY
HARARE, April 22 (Reuters) - Police moved onto occupied farms in Zimbabwe on Saturday to defuse tension in the first sign of a possible turnaround in the land crisis, although attacks on farms continued and a small bomb exploded in Harare.
The bombing near a pro-opposition newspaper marred a day of relative calm in the country thrust into political crisis by a state-sanctioned land grab and a sharp economic decline including a critical fuel shortage.
The bomb, apparently thrown from a passing car, exploded against the entrance to the Stone Art Gallery about five metres (yards) from the front door of a newspaper critical of President Robert Mugabe and his government.
"It was a bomb that exploded," a policeman told Reuters as he moved reporters away from the glass-strewn street. No one was hurt in the explosion at about 9:15 p.m. (1915 GMT).
Near Bindura, 90 km (55 miles) northeast of the capital Harare, a farmer said 60 people had invaded his farm on Saturday morning, assaulting him and a colleague.
"They asked to speak to us and while we were walking down to the gate with them they hit us a couple of times and made us shout (pro-ruling ZANU-PF) slogans," said Ian Millar, 55.
"We managed to talk to them and I think we managed to defuse the situation temporarily," he told Reuters.
Millar said about eight policemen later came and calmed the situation by talking to the invaders and his 300 farm workers. All but 25 of the invaders later left.
On Friday, three African presidents rallied behind Mugabe -- who has called white farmers enemies of the state -- in a summit at the Victoria Falls resort.
DEMANDS DIRECTED AT WEST
They demanded that Western donors, including Britain and the United States, fund a land redistribution scheme.
No specific plans were announced but a South African diplomatic source at the meeting said it was a successful first step towards defusing the crisis.
"The presidents were not there to support President Mugabe. We support Zimbabwe getting out of a difficult situation. This must not be personalised," he told Reuters.
He said the next step would be a visit to London by a senior Zimbabwean government delegation on April 27, when foreign funding for land distribution would be finalised.
Many farmers and their families have quit their land. While farmers manning communications centres reported first signs of police intervention, some violence against farm workers went on.
Police in Harare confirmed that some additional policemen were being sent to white-owned farms being occupied by war veterans and supporters of Mugabe's ZANU-PF.
A black farm foreman, a policeman and two white farmers have been killed since the invasions began in February. Three others have died in violence ahead of an election due by August.
British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said in a statement that he would discuss the funding of land reform with the Zimbabwean delegation, but that the occupations had to stop.
"OCCUPATIONS MUST STOP"
"The starting point for our discussions will be the offer we made in 1998 to help fund a programme of land reform," he said. "But it has to be a programme that is within the rule of law and helps the rural poor. And the occupations have to stop."
Ian Smith, the last white ruler of the former Rhodesia, who once vowed that whites would rule for 1,000 years, told Germany's Welt am Sonntag Mugabe was fomenting unrest.
"The man is a dictator obsessed with power, he is running a regime of gangsters and is doing everything he can to keep himself and his clique in power in the state," he told the paper, according to a German translation of his comments.
Presidents Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Sam Nujoma of Namibia and Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique said after the talks with Mugabe that Western governments should make good their promise at a 1998 donor conference to finance land reform.
"We need an orderly and fair distribution of land. They are supporting that position. We have no problem with that. But if they are endorsing Mugabe's lawlessness then we have a serious problem," said Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
Tsvangirai was speaking at an MDC rally in the black township of Muramdinda, 250 km (150 miles) south of Harare, where his driver and another party official were killed in a petrol bomb attack a week ago.
The MDC is tapping into widespread popular discontent with a collapsing economy and an acute shortage of hard currency and fuel. It has emerged as the greatest challenge to Mugabe and his ZANU-PF in their 20 years at the helm.
Botswana Worries about ZIMBABWE'S Land Question
JOHANNESBURG (April 22) XINHUA - Botswanan President Festus Mogae has said he fears the growing crisis in neighboring Zimbabwe will result in an influx of refugees to Botswana and so impact on the country's economy, South African Press Association reported on Saturday.
"We are concerned about developments in Zimbabwe," he told a press conference before he leaves on Sunday for a tour of Nigeria, Germany and the United States aimed at attracting foreign investors to Botswana.
"The impact of events in Zimbabwe is unlikely to be helpful, not only to all Africans, but also to us as Botswana," Mogae noted.
He predicted an influx of refugees, "which will have consequences for our budgetary situation because they have to be looked after while they are here."
Last year, Botswana handled over 11,000 illegal immigrants and 2,500 asylum seekers, 98 percent of who were Zimbabweans.
Mogae's comments came in the wake of an article in the London-based Economist magazine, which warned of the negative economic impact of the war veterans' occupations of white-owned farms in Zimbabwe.
The magazine said the crisis will threaten the economic growth, investor confidence and political stability of the entire southern African region.
Botswana's economic growth may slide from the projected eight percent to five percent this year due to the negative influence of Zimbabwean land question, the Economist added.
Copyright XINHUA NEWS AGENCY
Police Intervene after Two White Farmers Assaulted in Zimbabwe
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) -- Ruling party activists seized and beat two white farmers Saturday, holding them until police negotiated their release, amid high tensions over Zimbabwe's farm occupation crisis.
At a funeral for a farmer slain by squatters, a minister lashed out at President Robert Mugabe and accused him of sparking violent takeovers of white-owned farms by squatters.
The farmer, Martin Olds, was killed on Tuesday, the second white farmer killed in clashes with black militants and Mugabe supporters. Later Tuesday, Mugabe delivered a speech describing white farmers as "enemies of the people" who had resisted a government program to hand over white-owned land to landless blacks.
Presbyterian minister Paul Andrianotis told some 500 mourners at Olds' funeral that it was Mugabe who was "a criminal and an enemy of the state."
Most mourners at the funeral in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second-largest city, were white but included the slain rancher's black farm workers. Eulogies praised the 42-year-old rancher's loyalty to friends, colleagues and his workers.
In the Bindura district north of the capital Harare, two white farmers were assaulted Saturday by ruling party militants, according to the Commercial Farmers Union.
Bindura farmer Ian Miller and his manager Keith McGraw were forced to march, hopping in a squatting position, from their homes to their workers' village on their farm about 50 miles northeast of Harare. There the militants questioned them about their political views and beat them, said Tim Henwood, head of the farmers' union.
Police mediated and won their release, then escorted them back to their homesteads. Both men were slightly injured, Henwood said.
"It is pure political intimidation," Miller later told the South African Broadcasting Corp.
Police have previously mediated in several standoffs since the farm occupations began in February, although their actions have been limited and they have even allegedly stood by while white farmers were attacked.
Mugabe has ruled out using the police to evict the squatters from the 1,000 or so farms they have seized, despite court orders that police should do so. He says the squatters are veterans from the country's war of independence protesting inequitable distribution of land.
Britain, the former colonial ruler, demanded Saturday that Mugabe's government work to resolve the crisis before it will provide any more funds to help a fair redistribution of land.
"The choice is the government of Zimbabwe's," Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who is to meet a Zimbabwe delegation Thursday, said. "The crisis can be resolved this week if the government of Zimbabwe chooses."
Since Zimbabwe achieved independence, Britain has spent $70 million to help distribute white-owned lands to landless blacks. But Britain froze the funding after complaining that much of the land went to Mugabe cronies. In a legacy of colonial rule, one-third of the country's productive farmland in the hands of 4,000 white farmers.
Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, said Mugabe was ignoring the rule of law.
"Mugabe is embarking on a state of lawlessness and anarchy," Tsvangirai said at a rally in Murambinda, 155 miles east of Harare.
Mugabe has accused white farmers of backing the Movement for Democratic Change, in a bid to thwart his program to seize white-owned land.
Chenjerai Hunzvi, head of a war veterans group, vowed Wednesday his followers would remain on the farms until a new round of talks was held with white farmers' leaders.
Mugabe's opponents say he has allowed farm occupations to continue as a ploy to win support from impoverished blacks as his own popularity diminishes ahead of parliamentary elections expected to be called in May.
Apr 23 2000 4:42AM ET
| Zimbabwe's Mugabe to End
Occupations, UK to Fund Land Reform | |
| Bloomberg News Apr 23 2000 4:03AM |
|
Johannesburg, April 23 (Bloomberg) -- Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe agreed at a meeting Friday with regional leaders to order war veterans to end their occupation of farms in the country, to hold free and fair elections and to tone down his rhetoric, South Africa's Sunday Times newspaper reported without citing sources. In return, the U.K. has agreed to fund a land reform program and the International Monetary Fund will back the release of loan finance for Zimbabwe. The accord came after Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano, Namibian President Sam Nujoma and South African President Thabo Mbeki warned Mugabe that his sanctioning of the illegal occupation of farms would undermine Southern Africa's regional economy; it also followed a week in which Mbeki spoke by telephone to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, U.S. President Bill Clinton and European Commission President Romano Prodi to win their support for land reform in Zimbabwe, according to the Sunday Times.
After the meeting with Mugabe Friday in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, Mbeki told journalists that ``all of us surely should have learnt some lesson from all of this.''
(Sunday Times 4/23 1)