From The Independent (UK), 23 July

Farmers call Mugabe's bluff on land

Harare - "Robert Mugabe has created this monster, now it's out of control," says Ian King, a farmer. Outside his office armed police try to negotiate with government supporters who say they have come to throw Mr King off "their" land. In the build up to last month's elections in Zimbabwe, President Mugabe encouraged his followers, led by "war veterans", to occupy hundreds of white-owned farms. He told them: "After the elections, the land will be yours." Having just scraped through the poll, he is now trying to meet their impossibly high expectations.

The veterans want their land and are losing confidence that Mr Mugabe will deliver it, so they are giving farmers deadlines of between 24 hours and seven days to leave. The government is desperate to be seen to be doing something but can only make more empty promises, which further heightens the tension. Last Saturday, the Vice-President, Joseph Msika, announced that people would be given land "within hours". The official in charge of implementing the land reform programme confided it would take "at least four or five weeks". This represents the view of technocrats. Some officials do want to allocate land in an orderly way by providing water and credit to the beneficiaries so that they can become productive farmers. But this takes time - a commodity which Mr Mugabe is running out of.

Critics argue that the President does not want to solve the land question, so as to keep what he sees as his trump card for the next election in 2002. Making grand announcements when it is obvious that nothing is actually happening on the ground does nothing to dispel that impression. A week down the road, with more farm invasions, more death threats and not a single person given land, those who have been squatting in makeshift shelters are only becoming more angry and frustrated. And so are the farmers. Last week a group of farmers in Glendale, 40 miles north of Harare, went on strike. Over a breakfast of wholemeal toast and instant coffee, Richard Arkell said: "For the past five months, we've been wondering what was going to happen tomorrow. When we stopped work, at least we knew what tomorrow would bring. We had regained some control over our lives." The authorities, grappling with an acute shortage of foreign exchange, know the importance of farms to the economy. Three days later, the police had begun to take action and the Glendale farmers began watering their wheat again, lifting the spectre of bread shortages later this year.

Before the strike, government supporters had forced their way inside the gate of one of Mr Arkell's neighbours and lit fires on his front lawn, while singing war songs about killing whites. He ran for his life. Mr Arkell knows that the police are not going to evict the squatters. "But we want to be able to carry on with our work. [Protesters] should remain 100 yards from our homes, they mustn't interfere with the farmers, our wives or workers, and they mustn't demand fuel, food, transport, or anything else." The police agreed to these requests and are now asking farmers to lay charges against anyone stealing or being violent. Two squatters' leaders have been arrested. Others have moved to a corner of a nearby farm. They refuse to speak to reporters "until we receive instructions from our superiors". They live in shacks made from plastic sheets. A Zimbabwe flag flutters in the wind, while washing is hanging on a wire fence. From time to time they go into the wheat fields and drive pegs into the ground, marking out "their" plots. But as long as they don't demand the farm labourers stop work, farmers accept this as progress in Zimbabwe.

Farmers in other areas are following the Glendale example. Mr King's Dorking farm, which supplies Harare supermarkets with dairy produce, is 15 miles away. He and his neighbours went on a one-day strike last week. The next day he was issued with a 24-hour ultimatum to pack his bags. But when the deadline expired and the squatters returned in a brand new pick-up truck, armed police were waiting for them. Mr King reflects: "Thank God they were here, otherwise who knows what would have happened?" He has received several death threats and, until the strike, the police did nothing. After a three-hour meeting, Mr King agreed to give the squatters a portion of his farm. Although they said they would not stay to claim it, the situation was defused. But as one of his neighbours observed: "We're not farming any more. We're spending all our time dealing with these invasions." Mr King says that Mr Mugabe now has a choice - he can either evict the war veterans or let them take over and destroy the country. "A week ago, we believed that he was prepared to let the country melt down. But his appointment of a government of technocrats has given us hope."

From News24 (SA), 22 July

Zim police watch assaults

Harare - Police in northwest Zimbabwe looked on as war veterans occupying a white-owned farm beat four workers for helping their boss try to prevent the occupiers from poaching wild animals on the land, the owner said on Saturday. "They were beaten with the backs of axes - four or five heavy blows on the back and legs," said the farmer, Finn O'Donoghue, by telephone from the Karoi farming district. He said his 80 workers had a confrontation with a group of war veterans after the militants confiscated a rifle and ammunition from a government-appointed ranger patrolling the farm's game ranch, where O'Donoghue breeds buffalo.

"We called in the police, but they arrived with a contingent of war veterans," said O'Donoghue, whose 1 600-hectare farm was among hundreds invaded, often violently, by landless blacks in a government-backed campaign that began in February, spearheaded by veterans of Zimbabwe's 1970s liberation war. O'Donoghue said he was called a "white pig" and forced to leave his workers who were then subjected to beatings and "re-education". "They told them I'm a white man and don't belong in this country," he said. "My workers all had clubs and axes with them, but they were all taken away before they were beaten," he said, citing an eyewitness account from one of his workers. He said one of the policemen involved was the Member-in-Charge of the police station in the town of Karoi, about 170 kilometres from Harare. The white farmer told AFP the situation prevailing in the district was one of "total lawlessness". White farmers in several provinces this week launched work stoppages in protest against police inaction towards the war veterans.

From The Zimbabwe Standard, 23 July

Mazowe ballot boxes to be recounted

JUDGE president, Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku, has ordered that the ballot boxes for Mazowe East constituency, won by Zanu PF candidate, Chen Chimutengwende, be reopened and inspected in order to verify an alleged irregularity raised by the MDC candidate, Shepherd Mushonga. In an urgent chamber application heard on Friday before Justice Chidyausiku, Mushonga, through his lawyer, Advocate Eric Matinenga, argued there were strong suspicions that some members of the ruling Zanu PF party voted more than once in his constituency. He also alleged that there was a lot of movement of people from one polling station to another, and that some people travelled more than 30 km to cast their votes when they could have done so at polling stations closer to their homes.

Chimutengwende polled 18 824 votes against Mushonga's 7 473. In his application to the High Court, Mushonga wanted the registrar-general to open for inspection all the sealed voting packets, voters rolls/registers, and the election materials used in the June 2000 parliamentary election for Mazowe East. "The contents of the sealed packets, election materials and voters rolls/registers shall be opened and inspected under such conditions as are necessary to ensure that the way in which a particular person voted shall not be discovered or disclosed until it is proven that he/she voted and his vote or votes have been declared by the High Court to be involved," said Mushonga.

The MDC candidate, who is also a Harare legal practitioner, said last night there were a number of allegations that he raised in his chamber application which violated the provisions of the Electoral Act. Mushonga alleged that Chimutengwende bussed people to vote for him and that his supporters were intimidated. But in his opposing affidavit, Chimutengwende said his constituency had around 46 000 registered voters, and that if 26 000 people voted in the constituency, that was something to be commended.

"It is unlike the previous elections. What is interesting is that if there was as much intimidation and corrupt and illegal practices as applicant alleges, why such a high percentage turnout? Besides, nothing has been led to show that by virtue of such intimidation, applicant's supporters shunned the voting exercise. Certainly no evidence is before this court to show that one had otherwise left his or her home to vote, and had to refrain from doing so, thanks to my supporters' intimidation," said Chimutengwende in his opposing affidavit. Although Chimutengwende, who recently lost his cabinet post as minister of information, posts and telecommunications, had initially opposed the inspection of the ballot boxes, lawyers representing the two parties agreed to have the ballot boxes inspected.

From News24 (SA), 22 July

Mugabe blames West, whites, for loss of power

Harare - President Robert Mugabe launched an angry attack against the West, white farmers and critical churches, blaming them for the ruling party Zanu-PF's loss of its former near-total control over national politics in recent elections. Addressing the meeting of the party's hierarchy Mugabe said the country's problems were mostly foreign-induced, with "Western forces destabilising the economy" to make the government unpopular and to boost the opposition MDC. He said there was a campaign of "donor hostility" from the IMF, the World Bank and the EU who, "in apparent concert, decided to punish us for pursuing our land reforms". Mugabe said the British government had mobilised "the rest of the world" not to do business with Zimbabwe and tried to influence political events in the country to replace the government "with a pliant one which would not threaten European interests historically entrenched by colonialism".

The senior hierarchy of Zanu-PF went into a second day of meetings on Saturday to try to resurrect its fortunes after suffering unprecedented damage in parliamentary elections last month. On Friday Mugabe admitted the party had suffered "a major political disaster". The party's organs "either do not exist or have long gone dormant", he said. "Probably we got the shock and punishment we deserved." He denounced white farmers - about 800 of whose farms he is in the process of trying to confiscate without proper compensation - as "a beachhead for the retention of British influence". Anglican and Catholic clergymen whose "prayers became full-blooded politics" also came under attack.

Mugabe is expected to address the party's national consultative forum, a larger and broader-based body than the central committee that includes groups like guerrilla war veterans and traditional leaders, on Saturday. At the last central committee meeting in February, after Zimbabweans voted overwhelmingly in a referendum against a Zanu-PF-manipulated draft of a new national constitution, angry party officials shocked the 76-year-old Mugabe with an undisguised offensive against his 20-year domination. However, members may be more reserved at Saturday's meeting as some may be hoping for positions as deputy ministers and ministers of state. According to reports in the Zimbabwe independent press, Mugabe has come under immense pressure from senior party officials demanding to be "rewarded" with official positions.