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Independent (UK)



News Analysis: While Mugabe turns white farmers into criminals, Zimbabwe
slips closer to famine
By Basildon Peta, Zimbabwe Correspondent
25 June 2002
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News Analysis: While Mugabe turns white farmers into criminals, Zimbabwe
slips closer to famine

As the midnight deadline for white farmers in Zimbabwe to surrender their
land moved closer last night, the quandary facing Mike Clark, a cattle
rancher, grew ever more acute.

Even though Zimbabwe, and indeed the rest of southern Africa, faces a
potentially devastating hunger crisis, nearly 3,000 white commercial farmers
have been told that they must stop farming and forfeit their lands, some
with crops that they were readying themselves to harvest.

Mr Clark and 2,900 other white farmers are determined to defy President
Robert Mugabe's latest decree and remain on their farms. Yet they know only
too well the consequences of refusing to obey Zimbabwe's ruthless dictator.

Mr Clark has seen 11 of his colleagues murdered in cold blood by Mr Mugabe's
supporters in state-sanctioned violence. He has also witnessed the killing
of hundreds of black opposition supporters who have dared to stand up to Mr
Mugabe's tyranny.

But Mr Clark said he has to reconcile his fears with reality. "I can't just
be expected to wind up 50 years of hard work in a few days and surrender
everything," he said.

"This new law has virtually criminalised the farming profession. It's now a
crime to produce food for my country at a time when the masses are starving
... What a mess."

From today, white farmers risk two years in jail or a $Z20,000 (£240) fine,
or both, if they dare attend to one of their sick animals. They will be
jailed if they carry out even the most insignificant farming activity on
their property.

The only option left for the them is to leave their land quietly and go to
start a new life elsewhere. Under the terms of the legislation, Mr Clark has
until 10 August to move off his land permanently.

On 10 May this year, Mr Mugabe's government amended the Land Acquisition Act
to order farmers whose properties had been earmarked to stop farming and
vacate their properties by midnight tonight.

The Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) estimates that 2,900 white farmers,
representing about 90 per cent of the CFU's 3,200 members, were affected by
the decree. But most have no option but to defy the ruling.

"A lot [of farmers] are just going to stay as they cannot stop farming in 45
days ... It's unrealistic," a spokeswoman for the CFU said. "Farmers have
been pushed to the wall and we will have to stand our ground and see what
happens."

Another farmer, who did not want to be named, said: "It's just the same as
being stripped of your citizenship and being told to go and get a new
country somewhere in the air to give you a new passport.

"It's ridiculous ... I have no option but to just hang around and see what
happens next."

Farmers do not know what to do next if they agree to surrender their land to
Mr Mugabe. Most of the affected farmers are citizens of Zimbabwe and have
nowhere else to go. Many do not even have alternative places to keep their
basic household goods after being forced off their land. They will have to
go onto the streets.

Zimbabwe has largely dropped off the radar screen of international
policymakers and the international media in the aftermath of the March
presidential election, widely believed to have been stolen by President
Mugabe.

Yet the political crisis is deepening and the economy continues to
haemorrhage. Year-on-year inflation to May was pegged at 122 per cent, while
the unemployment rate has risen to 70 per cent. And now the President seems
determined to chase the last few remaining productive farmers from the
country.

Mr Mugabe's decision to sponsor his supporters to begin a violent campaign
to occupy and seize white farms from February 2000 has led to agriculture,
the mainstay of Zimbabwe's economy, shrinking by about 60 per cent.

Zimbabwe used to export food throughout the southern African region. Now
shortages of daily basics like sugar, cooking oil and the staple maize meal
have become the order of the day. At least 80 per cent of Zimbabwe's 13
million people are now living below the poverty line.

The World Food Programme (WFP) raised the alarm earlier this month, warning
that at least six million people, almost half of the population, will need
emergency food aid in Zimbabwe. Yet international donors have not been
forthcoming to the WFP's calls for help to avert mass famine.

The WFP estimates that Zimbabwe needs to import at least 1.5 million tonnes
of maize to avert famine. But the organisation has managed to raise less
than 30 per cent of the US$60m (£40m) it needs to avert disaster in
Zimbabwe.

Mr Mugabe's failure to reform his policies and his determination to crank up
the pressure on opponents have only served to frustrate efforts by donor
agencies to get support for Zimbabwe from rich nations.

A few days ago Mr Mugabe arrested and charged 100 opposition supporters for
holding "illegal rallies". A dozen journalists have been charged for
publishing "false news".

"If anybody had thought that after winning the presidential election Mr
Mugabe would come back to his senses ... then they were obviously mistaken,"
the University of Zimbabwe law professor Lovemore Madhuku said.

"What we have seen is the Zimbabwe crisis getting worse by the day as Mr
Mugabe seeks to secure his controversial re-election and silence critics."

It is not only the white farmers who will lose from Mr Mugabe's drive to
confiscate their properties.

Landowners have been left with no option but to lay off at least 232,000
farm workers due to the uncertainties created by Mr Mugabe's land seizures.

Nor have black farm workers benefited as they had hoped to from the
government's resettlement programme.

Several civic society groups had urged the Mugabe government to give them
preference under the scheme because of their agricultural experience, gained
from working with white landowners.

And the government had promised that its land resettlement programme would
alleviate the poverty of ordinary Zimbabweans by giving them plots of land
on which to grow crops.

But despite that, the Farm Community Trust (FCT), a non-governmental
organisation dealing with farm workers, estimates that only less than two
per cent of the 220,000 black families allocated land so far are black farm
labourers.

And the General Agriculture and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe
(GAPWUZ) says that many farm workers are living in abject poverty.

The union is mobilising resources to provide food relief to such workers,
most of whom had been left sidelined in the allocation of the land because
of the disturbances on the commercial farms.

Indications are that farmland seized by Mr Mugabe from whites has instead
been distributed among his relatives, friends, ministers, cronies and party
supporters. The reports have done little to mollify the whites being
dispossessed of their land.

But Mr Clark believes that the situation in Zimbabwe, once a breadbasket for
Africa, might still be salvaged.

"We need to urgently sit down as Zimbabweans, black and white, and define
what is good for our country," he said.

But unless Mr Mugabe alters the direction in which his government is going,
many believe there is no chance of that happening.

A Nation in Crisis

. 6.1 million people need food aid. The famine is the result of the worst
drought in 20 years and the disruption caused by land invasions.

. Maize planted by large-scale farmers has declined from 74,000 hectares in
2001 to an estimated 61,800ha - 62 per cent lower than 1999-2000.

. Cereal production at 670,000 tonnes has dropped 57 per cent compared to
last year and 67 per cent compared to 1999-2000.

. Maize production at 480,000 tonnes is estimated to be 67 per cent less
than last year and 77 per cent less than 1999-2000.

. Cereal import needs, including maize, is up to 1.8 billion tonnes.

. More than one in four children is believed to be malnourished.

. Some 75 per cent of the population has been classified as poor.

Source: World Food Programme 2002

The Guardian

Zimbabwe White Farmers Stop Working

Tuesday June 25, 2002 11:30 PM


HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - Most white farmers in Zimbabwe stopped working
Tuesday, complying with an official deadline ordering them to halt
operations in preparation for a government takeover of their land.

Nearly two-thirds of the country's 4,000 white commercial farmers were
targeted in the order that took effect at midnight Monday. But many had
stopped farming months ago, paralyzed by disruptions caused by the
government's ``fast track'' land seizure program.

The land seizures come as a potentially devastating food crisis looms in
southern Africa. In Zimbabwe, the situation is blamed primarily on this
year's erratic rainfall and two years of often-violent seizures of land from
white farmers by loyalists of President Robert Mugabe.

Despite promises to redistribute the confiscated land to poor blacks, many
of the farms have been given to loyal lawmakers and confidantes of Mugabe
and ruling party leaders.

In a sign of defiance, two farmers filed lawsuits Tuesday aimed at striking
down the government order as a constitutional violation of property and
employment rights, said Commercial Farmers Union spokeswoman Jenni Williams.

But there was little hope for court intervention. Mugabe has stocked the
courts with loyalists who rarely rule against the government.

Those who break the order could face up to two years in prison or large
fines. However, farming officials in the key Chinhoyi and Karoi agricultural
districts northwest of Harare reported no efforts by authorities to enforce
the deadline Tuesday.

Dairy farmers said they milked their cattle as usual after warning officials
that their livestock risked illness if milking was prevented.

Some farmers spent the day packing up personal belongings, including family
photo albums and kitchen and household goods, to prepare for the next
deadline - an order to leave their homes by Aug. 8, farmer union officials
said.

The European Union has warned that the haphazard redistribution of property
in Zimbabwe - once a breadbasket of the region - could worsen the impending
crisis. The country's mostly white-owned, large commercial farms are about
five times more productive than small farms.

The World Food Program estimates that nearly half the country's 12.5 million
people would need food assistance this year.

Since June 2000, the government has targeted 5,872 mostly white-owned
properties for confiscation - about 25 million acres.

On many farms already vacated by their owners, livestock, irrigation and
other equipment have been seized without compensation being paid.

The state media has warned that security checkpoints would be set up in
farming districts to prevent ``sabotage'' of the land reform program, in an
apparent effort to stop farmers from removing goods and equipment from their
farms.

Whites make up less than 1 percent of Zimbabwe's population. Until Mugabe's
recent land seizures, white farmers - most of whom are the descendants of
British and South African colonial era settlers - owned about one-third of
the nation's productive farmland.

Critics say Mugabe has sped up land confiscations to bolster his waning
support and deflect attention from the country's crumbling economy.
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From The Independent (UK), 25 June

My mother's choice: eat cattle feed, or go hungry

My 68-year-old mother has to cope with tough choices in Robert Mugabe's present day Zimbabwe. Either she has to feed on yellow maize, which is grown in China for cattle feed purposes, or she must starve. Otherwise, she can wait for me to find a way of getting white maize to her from Johannesburg, about 750 miles away - no easy matter, as Zimbabwe customs officials are not allowing food imports without the hard-to-get government import licences. The work and effort needed to buy the yellow maize donated by President Mugabe's communist allies in China is no laughing matter. She has to queue alongside thousands other Zimbabweans to buy her share. The queues don't mean the yellow maize is available. People just queue in anticipation of its arrival. Many days it doesn't arrive, but the queues remain. The political and economic crisis in this beleaguered country of 13 million inhabitants is deepening despite Mr Mugabe's "victory" in the March election. Perhaps it is only now that many Zimbabweans have begun to feel the real impact of Mr Mugabe's drive to confiscate white land and distribute it among his supporters. Many of those have dismally failed to sustain production levels. Most were dumped on the farms in the run-up to Zimbabwe's parliamentary election in June 2000 without the necessary back-up equipment and resources. Many more were dumped in the period leading to Zimbabwe's March 2002 presidential election.

It took me a drive along the main highway from Harare to the once plush tourist resort of Kariba to appreciate the extent of the ruin of Mr Mugabe's land seizure policies on Zimbabwe's commercial agriculture. Commercial farms along the highway would normally make any visitor to Zimbabwe green with envy. Even the former prime minister Margaret Thatcher publicly acknowledged Zimbabwe's agricultural prowess when she flew over the area during a state visit in 1986 and saw huge swathes of tobacco, wheat, and maize. But a drive through the same highway today exposes one to large patches of emerging forests. The productive farms have been cut into small pieces of land where no production is taking place. Small grass-thatched huts stand distinctively on the small plots carved out of the large commercial farms.

It is not surprising that many of the ruling party supporters, who accepted the small pieces of land in the euphoria of Mr Mugabe's election campaign, are abandoning the plots to go back to their original communal areas. The equipment, the boreholes, the schools and the clinics they were promised are nowhere in sight. While everyone agrees in principle with the need for land reform and redistribution, Mr Mugabe's approach is not a credible reform process geared towards poverty alleviation. In fact, it is the easiest and fastest way of destroying a once viable agricultural sector. Repression and more repression has become a daily diet for Zimbabweans. As one political commentator said: "All he cares for is power, power and more power ... It's now power to Mugabe, poverty to the people." Yet the most surprising development is the deafening silence from the international community to Zimbabwe's human rights abuses. Regional analysts now warn that time might be running out rapidly to prevent serious bloodshed in Zimbabwe and throw the whole southern Africa region into turmoil. The need for the international community, particularly the EU, to revisit its "all bark, no bite" policies on Mr Mugabe cannot be over emphasised.

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From ZWNEWS, 25 June

Independent journalists operate in a climate of intimidation, repression and, now, licensing

On the very day that three employees of the independent Daily News were arrested and savagely beaten by police for trying to cover an opposition rally, Robert Mugabe’s regime unveiled regulations for "licensing" newspapers and journalists. The two events underlined the climate of increasing intimidation and repression, both physical and political, in which independent journalists – local and foreign – now operate in Zimbabwe. Newton Spicer, an independent filmmaker, was arrested in his stationary car at the June 16 rally in central Harare. Daily News reporter Guthrie Munyuki, photographer Urginia Mauluka, and driver Shadreck Mukwecheni were arrested in their car, made to lie on the ground and beaten with batons and rifle butts. Munyuki's arm was broken. The four were held with 80 suspected supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change for over 24 hours in freezing and vermin-ridden cells. For much of the time they were denied medical attention, despite their injuries, as well as food and access to lawyers. When she was eventually released and limped out into the arms of her family, Mauluka not unnaturally burst into tears. Formal charges against all four were dropped on June 20. But the fact is that it is now a crime, punishable by whatever "extra judicial measures" Mugabe's forces deem appropriate, for a journalist (or a lawyer) to be in the vicinity of a gathering the regime is trying to suppress.

The licensing regulations were issued under the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, signed into law by Mugabe on March 16. The deadline for complying with the regulations was June 16 itself - clearly nonsensical and impossible. Publishing houses, advertising agencies and cinemas must pay Zimbabwe $20 000 to apply for a year's licence to operate and Zimbabwe $500 000 if this is granted by the regime’s Media and Information Commission, headed by a virulently anti-white and anti-Western lecturer at the Harare polytechnic. Journalists working only for local media outlets pay smaller fees, but for those serving international media, things become vastly more expensive. An office serving foreign outlets must pay US$2 000 (in foreign currency notes) to apply for a licence and US$10 000 if it is granted. Any journalist serving foreign media - even if a Zimbabwean citizen - must pay US$50 (in foreign currency) to apply and US$1 000 for annual accreditation. Those who already hold press cards (under the previous informal arrangement with the Information Ministry) will be deemed to be operating lawfully until December 31, and need not apply until then. Since banks have no foreign currency for sale, local journalists seeking accreditation to serve foreign media will have to buy the US dollar notes at black market rates of US$1 to Zimbabwe $600 -- in other words Zimbabwe $30,000 to apply and Zimbabwe $600 000 for the accreditation itself. Where - to whom - the money will go is anyone's guess. A foreign correspondent seeking to enter Zimbabwe will have to pay US$100 to apply for temporary accreditation and US$500 in the unlikely event it is granted. All fees will be forfeited if the commission revokes a licence or accreditation for alleged infringement of the state-imposed "code of conduct."

International media watchdogs denounce the fees as a huge "tax" on the news media and the journalistic profession, regardless of how they are administered. However, the fees are not just "conscience money" intended to make us think twice before annoying the authorities. The Media and Information Commission has the right to refuse accreditation and to set conditions for individuals and organisations hoping to operate here. It may, in theory, require staff to possess certificates they have completed ruling Zanu PF "Youth National Service", or to be graduates of the Harare polytechnic "school of journalism". It may forbid work for specific outlets such as the BBC, or limit correspondents to one topic (say, gardening notes). Commission head Tafataona Mahoso has no known journalism training but in 1986 obtained a doctorate of philosophy from a university in Philadelphia, USA, on the sinister role of white liberals in frustrating liberation between 1920 and 1980. In the state-run Sunday Mail of June 16 Mahoso wrote a half-page article headlined "Neo- Colonial Media Seeks to undermine African Morale." He has previously declared civilisation to have been a uniquely black African phenomenon, besieged to this day by white "barbarians." On June 23, as proof of a conspiracy by whites and their lackeys to censor African history and undermine morale, Mahoso cited surveys carried by the Daily News that most Zimbabweans want Mugabe to retire, and that security force moguls are in all arms of government. Having toiled through Mahoso's verbiage, many may feel it is pointless to apply to his commission for accreditation.

Alan Rusbridger, editor of Britain’s Guardian newspaper, is among voices urging a boycott of the entire process. However, journalists’ lawyers advise we ought to go through the niceties of applying, while simultaneously arguing in court that the process violates constitutional rights of free expression. Correspondents for foreign media might claim, for example, that the fees being levied against us (in foreign exchange) are discriminatory and irrational. Lawyers advise that if journalists apply and are refused registration, the onus will be thrown on the commission and the regime. To begin with defiance will risk summary seizure of equipment, and imprisonment of staff for up to two years. This, many argue, would merely enable the authorities to accomplish by legislation what the terror squad failed to do last year when they blew up the presses of the Daily News with impunity: silence us. At the first trial this month under the draconian press law, lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa argued that Guardian correspondent Andrew Meldrum did no more than state the truth: that the murder of an opposition supporter was reported by the Daily News, while police declined to comment. Subsequently, doubts were cast on the credibility of the Daily News' source, who disappeared - and may have links to security police. Mtetwa also says prosecutors have failed to prove publication. They rely entirely on a printout from a Guardian web page. An international expert on media law, British barrister Geoffrey Robertson, who is attending the Meldrum trial, says the Mugabe regime may have "shot itself in the foot" by seeking to internationalise and exports its oppressive laws, thus provoking an international response.

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Comment from ZWNEWS, 25 June

Subsidising tyranny

Aid, it has been said, is the transfer of wealth from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. This is not necessarily a reason not to give, as a proportion of most direct aid does benefit the starving child, the desperate mother, even if another proportion goes to buy a new car for the official responsible. But the provision of aid becomes yet more morally complex when it directly subsidises a tyrannical regime such as that of Resident Mugabe.

First the ironies: Mugabe is primarily responsible for his people’s hunger as even his regional allies now concede, albeit still on the sly. He blames the drought but his people go hungry alongside full dams, the waters unexploited. His fast track programme has replaced farmland with wasteland, his A2 commercial pioneers are concerned only with plunder. As hunger spreads, his regime seeks to eliminate 17 out of any 20 commercial farms once and for all in less than two months’ time. Every speech he makes is a foam-flecked condemnation of the West yet it is the UK, Australia and, most of all, the USA who are supplying the aid to keep his people alive – millions of US dollars, thousands of tonnes of food. A last irony is that the real food hardship is, so far, primarily rural: hence the West is feeding many of that small proportion of the electorate which willingly voted for Mugabe.

Mugabe facilitated the famine, now it is the West who is coming to his help. But does he pass any of the further tests that confront him? Are there, perhaps, pleas in mitigation? Has he checked or modified his disastrous land policy to ensure some kind of future food security? No, the reverse is true as the few remaining productive farms are annexed and despoiled. Has he opened up the food system to permit a more competitive and effective import of food? No, the Zanu PF-run state monopoly, the GMB, continues to run the trade to the greater enrichment of Zanu PF cronies and the greater suffering of the Zimbabwean people. Spared, in part, the obligation to feed his people by the West, has he used the exchequer monies so saved to benefit Zimbabwe? Of course not – most of the money saved goes in financing dubious loans from dubious banks, in paying his all-important apparatus of army and police and so-called war veterans, in subsidising non-productive squatters and in shoring up deals with Libya and the DRC where senior Zanu PF officials can make personal fortunes behind the facades of state enterprise.

Worse than all of this: even the aid provided by the Englishman in Truro, the taxpayer in Seattle, is sometimes twisted to Mugabe’s direct benefit. However much the NGOs in Zimbabwe – World Vision, Christian Care, WFP - try to distribute food fairly, it is often the case that after their trucks bump away, the Zanu PF system closes it, re-allocating food to the Zanu PF faithful in Mugabe’s name or simply selling it for personal gain.

So, international food aid directly subsidises Resident Mugabe and he uses the resources so saved to maintain himself in power. Should the West swallow its liberal principles and shut down supplies? It is true that such a move might kill those who starve now but it might help ensure that such starvation does not become a permanent feature of life in Zimbabwe, as it surely will under Mugabe. But this is the sort of decision the West is temperamentally unable to take and the world is probably a better place for that. Sadly, the world cannot even seek a half way point and request more realistic policies from Mugabe in exchange for propping him up, as he has already shown himself willing to let his people die rather than yield to sanity. So what can be done?

1. Those responsible for smashing Zimbabwe’s food security, and for its selfish and incompetent policy of food distribution, should suffer targeted sanctions from the EU and from the West: Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Local Government, the DAs and the governors and the GMB: put them all on the list. Hitherto damp squibs, these sanctions are about to bite with the inclusion of spouses and offspring.

2. Aid should be calibrated, so far as is possible, so that its quantities keep mothers, infants and the elderly alive and healthy. It should reach those recipients directly. There should be no surplus to line Mugabe’s pockets. Aid should cease where integrity of distribution cannot be guaranteed.

3. The UN should establish a Zimbabwean task force that researches, and reports upon, the integrity of international aid distribution throughout Zimbabwe.

4. All sacks and containers of maize and other foodstuffs should be clearly marked so that recipients cannot be led to believe that they are recipients of Mugabe’s largesse.

5. Running totals for the provision of aid, and the areas of its distribution, should be available to the independent press in Zimbabwe.

6. The WFP should present to SADC and to the AU organisation its prognosis for long term food shortage in southern Africa should Mugabe utterly destroy the Zimbabwean agricultural sector, as is his intention.

There can be no mutually beneficial alliance between the conscience of the West and Mugabe’s tyranny. The latter will always exploit the former whilst Mugabe curses those who are saving his people. But we should not simply accept this fact; rather we should broadcast it and fight it. We wish to help Mugabe’s victims. We wish to see an end to Mugabe. For with his departure, and the end of his vicious regime, there will come hope for all.

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Business Day


What can we do for Zimbabwe?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
THERE have been a number of international articles recently reporting on the
potential famine looming in Zimbabwe. This has given rise to a new terror in
southern Africa.

The scariest thing about this new threat is that it is being orchestrated by
men in power to manipulate people for political gain. Much pressure has been
put on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his cronies to do something
about this horror, to what seems like no avail.

Farm occupation (recently reoccurring), bad weather and political
manipulation are some of the causes for the potential disaster. As more and
more pictures showing starving people clinging onto their dying babies get
shown I, like many people around the world, wonder how or what we could do
to help the situation.

We know that food is being sent to Zimbabwe but when I spoke to a Zimbabwean
the other day, he confirmed that none of the people in need of the food
actually see it.

Little of the aid is reaching the masses, rather ending up in the back yards
of the elite. I wonder if the United Nations would consider the death of
thousands of people by forced starvation as genocide.

The question I ask is: Are we as South Africans doing enough to make a
difference in Zimbabwe? Our government's strategy is "quite diplomacy",
which may have worked in the past but does not seem to be working now.

Let them eat cake famous last words. I'm afraid that the same situation
might occur in Zimbabwe. How long is Mugabe going to push his people into a
revolution. Is that what he really wants? Our rand drops at the slightest
indication of anything happening in Zimbabwe.

Imagine how our rand is going plummet if war strikes.
Kerry Gibson
Sandton
Jun 25 2002 12:00:00:000AM  Business Day 1st Edition
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BBC
 
Tuesday, 25 June, 2002, 06:34 GMT 07:34 UK
Zimbabwe farming ban defied
Looted farm
Many of Zimbabwe's farms have been looted
An order to almost 3,000 white farmers in Zimbabwe to stop working and begin leaving their land has been widely ignored as many vowed to stay put.

White farmers
2,900 must stop farming
500 have given up land
One court case won by the government
95% of white-owned farms listed for acquisition
CFU membership down by 30%
Source: CFU
They were told to stop working at midnight on Monday, and now have 45 days to leave their farms or face imprisonment, under a deadline imposed by Zimbabwe's government.

The Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU) says farmers do not want to leave their crops to rot at a time when a severe food shortage is affecting millions of Zimbabweans

The policy of confiscating white-owned farms was begun by President Robert Mugabe over two years ago, and his critics say it is partly to blame for the food shortages.

Leave

In some areas of Zimbabwe, the ban comes into effect when white farmers are still harvesting sugarcane.

Sign on farm
War veterans have spearheaded the government's land push
The number of farmers affected represents about 60% of the total of white farmers who were in Zimbabwe at the time that land seizures began.

One farmer has been quoted as saying that you cannot wind up 50 years' work in 45 days.

Last month the government passed the legislation giving farmers until 10 August to stop working land which has been listed for acquisition and redistribution.

A spokeswoman said farmers would finalise papers on Tuesday to make a court appeal against the ruling.

Government spokesmen have not commented on the issue, but one official complained to Reuters news agency that the farmers were using the deadlines as a "propaganda war".

'Man-made crisis'

Zimbabwe is facing severe food shortages as a result of a drought and a crippled economy.

Since the beginning of June almost all domestic grain stocks have been exhausted, and nearly two-thirds of the country's needs are not being supplied.

Launch new window : Southern Africa famine
In pictures: Southern Africa famine

For a country that was once the breadbasket of southern Africa this is nothing short of a disaster.

International aid agencies - including World Food Programme - say the food shortages are directly linked to the often chaotic redistribution of land.

They warn that about half of the country's 14 million people might be in need of food assistance by the end of the of the year.

Farmers in Zimbabwe also say the food crisis in mainly man-made.

"When one looks at it, the drought was a minor drought - it was nothing compared to the 1991-92 drought," Mac Crawford, cattle farmer in Matabeleland, said.

"But yet we're facing a major disaster... for the simple reason of politics."

But the government says that by taking land from white farmers and giving it to landless black peasants, it is ensuring greater self-sufficiency in the future.

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Impunity enables ever more human rights violations
      Amnesty, Tue 25 Jun 2002

      AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
      PRESS RELEASE



      Embargo Date: 25 June 2002 10:00 GMT
      Zimbabwe: Impunity enables ever more human rights violationsThe
Zimbabwean government has systematically ensured that those responsible for
torture, abductions and political killings are never brought to justice,
Amnesty International said in a new report released today; The Toll of
Impunity.

      "Impunity has become the central problem in Zimbabwe where state and
non-state actors commit widespread human rights violations without being
brought to justice. Unless the cycle of impunity can be broken, human rights
abuses will continue unchecked and victims and their families will not see
justice," the organization said.

      The failure to bring to justice those who committed human rights
violations during the June 2000 Parliamentary elections seems to have given
a green light for further violations committed later in 2000, in 2001 and
most recently at the time of the March 2002 Presidential election. This
report uses case studies to illustrate how impunity has been promoted by the
Government of Zimbabwe and it proposes key recommendations on how to break
that impunity for perpetrators of human rights violations.

      Under President Robert Mugabe, the presidential power of amnesty has
been used several times to excuse politically motivated human rights
violations. Following the 1995 presidential elections, a presidential
amnesty was declared to shield from justice those who carried out
politically-motivated beatings, burning of homes and intimidation
perpetrated by supporters of ZANU-PF during the elections. More recently, a
presidential amnesty issued on 6 October 2000 granted immunity for
politically motivated crimes committed during the period 1 January 2000 to
31 July 2000. Although the order made exceptions for some grave crimes, it
protected perpetrators of human rights abuses by exempting from prosecution
those alleged to have committed acts including grievous bodily harm
(torture), common assaults, kidnapping and abductions.

      Beyond the use of presidential amnesties, clemencies and indemnities
the Zimbabwean authorities have employed a range of techniques to cover up
state involvement in politically motivated violence and to prevent
perpetrators of human rights violations from being brought to justice. These
include:
      the use of state-sponsored "militia" to obscure the identification of
the state's agents as the perpetrators of human rights violations;
preventing human rights defenders and the independent media from
investigating and publishing accounts of human rights violations;
politically manipulating the police; undermining the judicial system by
eroding the independence of the judiciary and circumventing its
effectiveness.
      This week marks the second anniversary of the "disappearance" of
Patrick Nabanyama, a polling agent for the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) in the June 2000 Parliamentary elections. According
to witnesses, he was abducted on 19 June 2000 by a group of "war veterans",
supporters of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front),
ZANU (PF). The ten "war veterans" were acquitted of charges of the murder of
Patrick Nabanyama, on the grounds of lack of evidence. Two years on, his
body has not been found and no-one has been brought to justice for his
"disappearance".

      Amnesty International calls on the Zimbabwean authorities to bring an
end to human rights violations perpetrated by state and non-state actors and
to bring those responsible to justice.

      "To break the cycle of impunity, the authorities in Zimbabwe must
ensure conditions exist for the proper and impartial reporting and
investigation of alleged human rights violations. There should be a clear
and public signal given to the Zimbabwe police to abide by the highest
standards of professionalism and respect for human right," the organization
added.

      In the longer term, the authorities in Zimbabwe should repeal or amend
laws that violate human rights and take steps to ratify the United Nations
Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment
or Punishment. The Government should also invited the United Nations Special
Rapporteurs on torture and on the independence of judges and lawyers, to
investigate matters falling within their mandates.

      Amnesty International called on member states of the Southern Africa
Development Community, in particular, and upon the international community,
in general, to bring pressure to bear on the Zimbabwean government to end
impunity.

      For a copy of the report visit:

      For more information contact Amnesty International in South Africa on
+ 27 83 261 2656.
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Africa Strategy to Convene Conference On Zim




The Herald (Harare)
June 24, 2002
Posted to the web June 24, 2002
Phillip Magwaza

A public relations company, Africa Strategy, will convene a conference in
the United Kingdom on the Zimbabwe land programme to demystify propaganda
from the Western media.
The company said it had consulted a number of African scholars and Africans
in the diaspora who felt that Zimbabwe was being given a raw deal when the
country genuinely had to address the land issue. Africa Strategy director Dr
David Nyekorach Matsanga, who is in Zimbabwe on a research trip, said the
conference was scheduled for August 25 and 26.
"This is meant to coincide with the Commonwealth games. We understand there
are big things being planned at the same time against Zimbabwe and we would
like to take advantage of the athletes coming to sell Zimbabwe to the entire
Commonwealth.
"The purpose of the conference is to take the message to the "heart of
Europe" and show the British government how their double standards have
ruined a good country," said Dr Matsanga.
Dr Matsanga said he voluntarily defended Zimbabwe because of his
Pan-Africanism and fight against neo-colonial regimes like the one in Uganda
that he fled from 15 years ago to live in England.
Former Zambian ruler Dr Kenneth Kaunda has agreed to address the conference
in defence of land in Africa and Zimbabwe. Africa Strategy is contracted to
handle publicity for Dr Kaunda's Child of Africa Organisation, which looks
after orphaned Aids children.
"We have tentatively pencilled in Professor Mwesiga Baregu, Professor Dan
Wadada of Uganda and several other scholars to address the conference. Land
will be the main topic but we will also tackle other issues like famine and
aids. We will appeal to the international community to increase humanitarian
aid to African countries ravaged by the epidemic," said Dr Matsanga.
Dr Matsanga is scheduled to leave later this week for London to prepare for
this conference which also aims to conduct a peaceful march through the
streets of London and hand over a petition to the Foreign and Commonwealth
secretary, Mr Jack Sraw.
Africa strategy exposed the connivance of General Abdulsami Abuba-ker when
he presented a biased report on Zimbabwe, which he did not take part in its
compilation because he had been given prior instructions to demonise the
country's presidential election. Dr Matsanga said the conference is aimed at
conscientising and making British and other citizens that the Zimbabwean
situation should not be criticised.
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The Times

            Letters to the Editor



                  June 25, 2002

                  Africa needs G8 lead on Mugabe
                  From Baroness Park of Monmouth



                  Sir, The sanctions taken against Zimbabwe so far are
derisory and the situation is rapidly getting worse. The African countries
who should be bringing pressure to bear on President Mugabe to end, for the
sake of his own people, policies which have already led to famine even
beyond his borders, are instead reported to have applauded him in Rome
(report, June 11). Both he and they clearly believe that neither the EU nor
the Commonwealth has the will to do anything effective.
                  We do, however, have power if we will only exercise it. Is
it too much to expect the G8 countries to refuse, at their forthcoming
meeting, to move one step further to discuss, still less implement, the New
Partnership for Africa's Development until the African countries concerned
prove that they are using all their influence to secure the return to good
governance in Zimbabwe which they are pledged to deliver in Africa? Nothing
but good could come of this for the whole of southern Africa. Nothing but
evil will come of allowing the African countries to condone inhuman
behaviour by an African leader. They must understand that their own good
name is at stake.

                  Yours etc,
                  PARK of MONMOUTH,
                  House of Lords.
                  June 22.
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   theherald.co.uk



      Ex president's PR bid for Mugabe
      TREVOR GRUNDY and KAY JARDINE
      KENNETH Kaunda, the former Zambian president and son of Scottish-based
missionaries, will next month mount a paid public relations campaign in
Britain on behalf of Robert Mugabe.

      Dr Kaunda, 77, is to address a series of seminars to coincide with the
Manchester-based Commonwealth Games, telling as many Britons as possible
that Mr Mugabe is a "great African" who has been seriously misunderstood in
the west.

      Dr Kaunda, who invented the homespun philosophy of "humanism" in 1964
when he became head of state of the former Northern Rhodesia, is understood
to be being paid a fee for his trip to the UK, but no more details are
available.

      The PR campaign is being organised by African Strategy, a Harare and
London-based PR/political analysis company run by a David Matsanga.

      Until recently, Mr Matsanga was chief spokesman for the Lord's
Resistance Movement (LRM) in Uganda, which has been branded as "terrorists"
by the US and UK governments.

      Mr Matsanga, who claims British as well as Ugandan citizenship (plus a
doctorate from an un-named British university), said that Dr Kaunda would
talk to African and British scholars to rid them of the impression created
in the British media that Robert Mugabe is a monster.

      Senior executives of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) fear that Mr Matsanga is being financed by the Libyans. One highly
placed source in Zimbabwe said: "Libya is one of the few countries left
which would give money to Mugabe."

      Mr Mugabe's bankrupt government is presently spending vast sums of
money with American and Canadian PR companies. Last year, the government was
attacked in Parliament for paying the equivalent of £750-an-hour to the
Washington-based Cohen and Wood lobbyist set-up.

      In London, Colin Farrington, the director general of the Institute of
Public Relations, said that British companies had every right to represent
the Zimbabwean government.

      "But they must give President Mugabe sound advice on how to improve
his bad image in Britain. If the president takes good advice, all well and
good, but if he fails to respond, no self-respecting PR Company should touch
the account," he said.

      - June 25th
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Group Arrives to Assess Alleged Human Rights Abuses


The Herald (Harare)
June 24, 2002
Posted to the web June 24, 2002

AN African human rights body has sent representatives to Zimbabwe to probe
the human rights situation in the country.
The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights delegation - led by its
vice chairperson Mrs Jainaba Johm of Gambia with members Dr Barney Pityana
of South Africa and legal assistant Ms Fiona Adolu of Uganda - arrived in
Harare yesterday.
Dr Pityana is also the principal and vice-chancellor of the University of
South Africa.
Secretary for Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Mr David Mangota said
the delegation is in Zimbabwe to establish the human rights situation in the
country following contradictory and false reports by some Non-Governmental
Organisations and the opposition MDC.
Mr Mangota said as a way of promoting basic human rights, Zimbabwe was
committed to the redistribution of land to the landless since it was
forcibly taken from their ancestors by colonial settlers.
He said the delegation would meet top MDC officials, president of the Law
Society of Zimbabwe Mr Sternford Moyo, Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri
among other stakeholders.
They would also meet Vice President Joseph Msika, Speaker of Parliament Cde
Emmerson Mnangagwa, Zanu-PF national chairman Cde John Nkomo and the
Minister of State for Information and Publicity Professor Jonathan Moyo.
The delegation is also scheduled to meet other stakeholders such as farmers,
academics, churches and NGOs among others.
Mr Mangota said the human rights activists had shown interest in visiting
one of the country's prisons to see if there were political prisoners and
examine the conditions there.
However, Zimbabwe does not have political prisoners or prisoners of war.
The activists' visit comes at a time when the police have begun
investigations to establish whether the people the opposition MDC claimed to
have died in political violence during the 2000 parliamentary elections and
the recent presidential poll really existed.
Police recently said they had decided to investigate the MDC's "death list"
following a false story carried by The Daily News claiming that an MDC
supporter in Magunje had been murdered by Zanu-PF members.
The leader of the human rights delegation, Mrs Johm, said yesterday that
they came to Zimbabwe with an open mind to establish whether the allegations
levelled against the Government were true.
She said they could not make any conclusions on the human rights situation
until they had looked into the issue themselves.
After the weeklong mission, the delegation would make independent findings
on the human and peoples' rights situation in the country.
Mrs Johm said the commission had deferred a resolution on Zimbabwe until
their visit after which a report would be produced.
"Some NGOs have made serious allegations against the Government. So we have
decided not to pass any resolution before an independent examination has
been done on the situation here. It is important to establish the human
rights situation in the country before making any resolutions," she said.
Dr Pityana said there had been negative reports about human and peoples'
rights violations by the Government and other political parties prompting
the commission to examine the allegations.
"We work in terms of our charter. We would want to find out whether human or
peoples' rights have been violated according to this charter. After our
findings we will prepare a report and ask Zimbabwe to respond after which we
will make our own recommendations. A resolution will be made in the Gambia
about Zimbabwe in October based on our findings," said Dr Pityana.
The request by the Africa Commission to visit the country on a fact-finding
mission followed representations by the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum and
other individuals in the run-up to the 2000 parliamentary elections, Dr
Pityana.
"The land reform programme has attracted a barrage of criticism from the
West with an onslaught by purported guardians of human and political rights
alleging systematic abuse of human rights by the Government of Zimbabwe," d
Zimbabwe's head of delegation to the 31st ordinary session of the African
human rights commission Mr Godfrey Dzvairo had said in South Africa last
month.
He told the session that the onslaught went as far as accusing the
Government of "State-sponsored terrorism and the unleashing of torture,
rape, murder and general mayhem against its own citizens.
"It is this unprecedented step of redressing (imbalances in land
redistribution), which has brought about hue and cry against Zimbabwe that
characterises the numerous reports being tabled before this (session) for a
dealing with human and political rights," said Mr Dzvairo.
He had said the issue of human rights in Zimbabwe was characterised by
"hypocrisy, selectivity and a common thread of the glaring design to
demonise the Government and leadership of Zimbabwe and thus discredit the
bold steps it has taken to right past wrongs."
Despite overwhelming proof that there were no State-sponsored human rights
abuses, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, which embraces Amani Trust, has
been on a campaign to misinform the international world.
They issue monthly bulletins of "so-called" statistics of human rights
abuses.
In their last December bulletin, they recorded 14 770 victims of human
rights abuses.
They have a 125-death record, which is not verified by the police but mainly
comes from reports submitted by the MDC.
In April, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights threw out a
British-sponsored resolution by the European Union to call for an
investigation into alleged human rights violations in Zimbabwe.
African, Asian and Middle East countries thwarted the resolution that urged
Zimbabwe to invite UN rights experts into the country and thereafter submit
yearly reports on alleged human rights abuses.
Zimbabwe was subsequently elected to the influential 15-member Geneva-based
UN Commission on Human Rights amid protests by some Western countries.
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Independent (UK)



A farmer's tale: chased off his land by Mugabe's brutal young henchmen
By Basildon Peta
26 June 2002
Colin Taylor was chased off his farm yesterday by members of President
Robert Mugabe's most feared youth militia. Now he is gathering his household
possessions and moving to Zambia.

In the early morning, just hours after the expiry of a midnight deadline for
white landowners to cease farming and surrender their properties, a group of
youths armed with traditional weapons and sticks arrived at Insingizi Farm
outside Bindura, about 70 miles north-east of the capital, Harare.

It is now a crime for Mr Taylor and 2,900 other farmers to feed their
animals, work their land or produce food at a time when six million
Zimbabweans face starvation. Any farmer defying the order faces a two-year
jail sentence and a fine.

Most farmers fulfilled their threat to defy Mr Mugabe and remained on their
land pending a hearing in the High Court.

In London the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, accused Mr Mugabe of
engineering a "man-made tragedy" with his "extraordinary and reprehensible"
order.

But commercial farmers were bracing themselves for more violence to force
them off their land. In Mr Taylor's case the enforcers were members of
ayouth militia known as the Green Bombers for the paramilitary-style jackets
they sported during the campaign for the presidential election in March.
They told his farm labourers: "If you report for duty ever again and if we
see your boss on the farm we will kill him." The farm now belonged to the
state, they said.

Mr Taylor avoided a personal confrontation with the youths but last night he
could not conceal his despondency. "By chasing away my workers and looting
my property, they have finally put me out of business," he said.

He is taking up an option to start again in Zambia. He is abandoning 40
hectares of citrus, three hectares of flowers, 1,000 hectares of wheat and
all his farm equipment.

"I can't get on to the farm because they will kill me. My workers cannot get
on to the farm either. So what's the point of staying? I can't just sit and
hope things will come right," Mr Taylor said. "This is not resettlement.
It's total theft."

Lindsay Campbell, who farms in Marondera, 37 miles east of the capital, has
also conceded defeat and abandoned her tobacco crop after being confronted
by illegal settlers who said they now owned the property. "They were very
hostile ... they wouldn't let me drive my children to school. So I have just
decided to comply and stop farming and let them do whatever they want on the
farm."

Jean Simon, 42, a divorced woman who farms in Banket, north of Harare, said
she had no choice but to keep feeding her animals despite the ban. She has
been kidnapped by Mr Mugabe's thugs, and was beaten in jail after being
arrested on trumped-up charges. She said she had nowhere else to go after
her family has spent 200 years in Africa.

Mr Straw told MPs last night: "We condemn the extraordinary and
reprehensible decision of Zanu-PF to order farmers in Zimbabwe to stop
farming and to drive them and their workers off the land at a time when the
people of Zimbabwe face a level of starvation unparalleled in their recent
history."

Breaking News
(On behalf of the Commercial Farmers Union)

Mr Colin Taylor of Insingisi Farm in Bindura, Mashonaland Central has called
in to report that a group of youth have stopped his labour force from
harvesting citrus on his farm at 11:30 am this morning. The Citrus is valued
at over ZD $ 5 million.

Acquisition of the farm was thrown out of court early May on a technicality
so this farm is under no legal notice of acquisition.

The youth who live on the farm are in the employ of Mr Saviour Kasukuwere
Member of Parliament for Mount Darwin. It is alleged that the Member of
Parliament has identified himself to the Taylor's as the beneficiary of the
farm under the A2 Model Phase of the Land Reform Programme.  Kasukuwere is
said to have "acquired" millions of dollars of irrigation equipment which he
has diverted to his own use. He has a wheat crop planted on the farm.

The Citrus crop (40 hectares) is for sale to Mazoe Citrus Estates and the
farm also has a Z$ 25 million dollar packing shed where the fruit is
processed for sale as juice.

The Taylor family were evicted by the youth two months ago and a Supervisor
and 50 staff have remained on the farm to harvest the fruit from the 12 year
old trees. At least 10 staff were evicted from the orchard today as they
were picking fruit. A transporting contractor was also threatened and chased
away.

More information will be made available as information comes to hand.

ends
For more information, please call Jenni Williams on Mobile (+263) 91 300456
or 11213 885 Or on email jennipr@mweb.co.zw or Fax (+2639) 63978 or (+2634)
703829 email:  prnews@mweb.co.zw
A member of the International Association of Business Communicators. Visit
the IABC website www.iabc.co.za

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Australian Daily Telegraph


Zimbabwe farmers in fear

By JANE FLANAGAN in Johannesburg
26jun02
ZIMBABWE'S white farmers are bracing themselves for a confrontation with
Robert Mugabe's thugs, who are determined to use new laws to force them off
their land.

It is now a crime for nearly 3000 white farmers to feed their animals, work
their land or produce food at a time when six million Zimbabweans face
starvation.
Many farmers are expected to defy the order, risking violence at the hands
of Mr Mugabe's self-styled war veterans and youth militia who stand ready to
enforce the order.

Jenni Williams of the Commercial Farmers Union said: "We are expecting
widespread violence but it won't be from the farmers' side."

The Land Acquisition Act is the latest move in the Zimbabwe Government's
campaign to seize white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks.

The white farmers now have 45 days to leave their homes and those who defy
the order risk jail.

Mrs Williams said: "There are people with millions of dollars of wheat in
the ground. People cannot just get up and walk away from everything they
have built up in their lives."

The order will leave almost 250,000 mostly black workers without jobs or
homes.

Taking into account the impact on families, an estimated 1.4 million people
will lose their livelihoods as Zimbabwe plunges into a famine that has been
blamed in part on Mr Mugabe's land reforms.

Jean Simon, 42, a divorced woman farmer in Banket, north of Harare, said she
had no choice but to keep feeding her animals.

Mrs Simon has been kidnapped by Mr Mugabe's thugs and beaten in jail after
being arrested on trumped-up charges.

She said yesterday: "I'm staying because I have a right to stay. This is my
home. I'm African. My family have been in Africa for 200 years."

White farms have been the scene of politically charged unrest since
February, 2000, when pro-Mugabe militants invaded the land days after Mr
Mugabe's loss in a referendum on a new constitution.

Since then 12 farmers have died and tens of thousands of their workers have
lost their jobs, been displaced and attacked.

"Nobody knows what to do, where we're going," one farmer said.
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New Zealand Herald

It's power to Mugabe but poverty for the people

26.06.2002
BASILDON PETA fled Zimbabwe in February after years of persecution. He
writes from Johannesburg.
My 68-year-old mother has to cope with tough choices in Robert Mugabe's
Zimbabwe.

Either she buys yellow maize, which is grown in China for cattle feed, or
she starves.

Otherwise, she can wait for me to find a way to get white maize to her from
Johannesburg, 1200km away - no easy matter, as Zimbabwe customs officials
are not allowing food imports without the hard-to-get import licences.

The effort needed to buy the yellow maize donated by President Mugabe's
communist allies in China is no laughing matter. She has to queue alongside
thousands of other Zimbabweans to buy her share.

The queues do not mean that the yellow maize is available - people just
queue in anticipation of its arrival. Many days it does not arrive, but the
queues remain.

The political and economic crisis in this beleaguered country of 13 million
people is deepening despite Mugabe's "victory" in the March election.

Perhaps it is only now that many Zimbabweans have begun to feel the real
impact of Mugabe's drive to confiscate white land and distribute it among
his supporters. Many of those have dismally failed to sustain production
levels.

It took me a drive along the main highway from Harare to the once- plush
tourist resort of Kariba to appreciate the extent of the ruin of Mugabe's
land seizure policies on Zimbabwe's commercial agriculture.

Commercial farms along the highway would normally make any visitor to
Zimbabwe green with envy.

But my trip finds large patches of emerging forests. The productive farms
have been cut into small pieces and no production is happening.

It is not surprising that many of the ruling party supporters, who accepted
the small pieces of land in the euphoria of Mugabe's election campaign, are
abandoning the plots to go back to their original communal areas. The
equipment, the boreholes, the schools and the clinics they were promised are
nowhere in sight.

While everyone agrees in principle with the need for land reform and
redistribution, Mugabe's approach is not a credible reform process geared
towards poverty alleviation. In fact, it is the easiest and fastest way of
destroying a once-viable agricultural sector.

Repression and more repression has become a daily diet.

One political commentator said: "All he cares for is power, power and more
power. It's now power to Mugabe, poverty to the people."

The most surprising development is the deafening silence from the
international community to Zimbabwe's human rights abuses.

Analysts warn that time may be running out to prevent serious bloodshed in
Zimbabwe, throwing southern Africa into turmoil. The need for the
international community, especially the European Union, to revisit its "all
bark, no bite" policies on Mugabe cannot be overemphasised.

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS
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* News Release Issued by the International Secretariat of Amnesty
International *

25 June 2002 AFR 46/035/2002

Zimbabwe: Impunity enables even more human rights violations

The Zimbabwean government has systematically ensured that those responsible
for torture, abductions and political killings are never brought to justice,
Amnesty International said in a new report released today; The Toll of
Impunity.

"Impunity has become the central problem in Zimbabwe where state and
non-state actors commit widespread human rights violations without being
brought to justice.  Unless the cycle of impunity can be broken, human
rights abuses will continue unchecked and victims and their families will
not see justice,"
the organization said.

The failure to bring to justice those who committed human rights violations
during the June 2000 Parliamentary elections seems to have given a green
light for further violations committed later in 2000, in 2001 and most
recently at the time of the March 2002 Presidential election.  This report
uses case studies to illustrate how impunity has been promoted by the
Government of Zimbabwe and it proposes key recommendations on how to break
that impunity for perpetrators of human rights violations.

Under President Robert Mugabe, the presidential power of amnesty has been
used several times to excuse politically motivated human rights violations.
Following the 1995 presidential elections, a presidential amnesty was
declared to shield from justice those who carried out politically-motivated
beatings, burning of homes and intimidation perpetrated by supporters of
ZANU-PF during the elections.  More recently, a presidential amnesty issued
on 6 October 2000 granted immunity for politically motivated crimes
committed during the period 1 January 2000 to 31 July 2000.  Although the
order made exceptions for some grave crimes, it protected perpetrators of
human rights abuses by exempting from prosecution those alleged to have
committed acts including grievous bodily harm (torture), common assaults,
kidnapping and abductions.

Beyond the use of presidential amnesties, clemencies and indemnities the
Zimbabwean authorities have employed a range of techniques to cover up state
involvement in politically motivated violence and to prevent perpetrators of
human rights violations from being brought to justice.  These include

the use of state-sponsored "militia" to obscure the identification of the
state's agents as the perpetrators of human rights violations; preventing
human rights defenders and the independent media from investigating and
publishing accounts of human rights violations; politically manipulating the
police; undermining the judicial system by eroding the independence of the
judiciary and circumventing its effectiveness.

This week marks the second anniversary of the "disappearance" of Patrick
Nabanyama, a polling agent for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC) in the June 2000 Parliamentary elections.  According to witnesses, he
was abducted on 19 June 2000 by a group of "war veterans", supporters of the
ruling Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front), ZANU (PF).  The
ten "war veterans" were acquitted of charges of the murder of Patrick
Nabanyama, on the grounds of lack of evidence.
Two years on, his body has not been found and no-one has been brought to
justice for his "disappearance".

Amnesty International calls on the Zimbabwean authorities to bring an end to
human rights violations perpetrated by state and non-state actors and to
bring those responsible to justice.

"To break the cycle of impunity, the authorities in Zimbabwe must ensure
conditions exist for the proper and impartial reporting and investigation of
alleged human rights violations.  There should be a clear and public signal
given to the Zimbabwe police to abide by the highest standards of
professionalism and respect for human right," the organization added.

In the longer term, the authorities in Zimbabwe should repeal or amend laws
that violate human rights and take steps to ratify the United Nations
Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment
or Punishment.  The Government should also invited the United Nations
Special Rapporteurs on torture and on the independence of judges and
lawyers, to investigate matters falling within their mandates.

Amnesty International called on member states of the Southern Africa
Development Community, in particular, and upon the international community,
in general, to bring pressure to bear on the Zimbabwean government to end
impunity.

For a copy of the report visit
http://www.web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/index/afr46/034/2002

Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

ZIMBABWE: Report finds ''structural impunity'' rife

JOHANNESBURG, 25 June (IRIN) - The heat was turned up a notch on Zimbabwe on Tuesday as Amnesty International, which once campaigned for the release from prison of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, presented a report documenting what it called "structural impunity" in the country.

Added to a looming food crisis expected to affect six million people and the introduction of a law banning 2,900 mainly white commercial farmers from working on their land, the government now also had to fend off fresh accusations that it allowed human rights violations to go unpunished.

Amnesty International spokesman Samkelo Mokhine said at the launch of the report in Johannesburg that there had been a pattern of human rights violations in Zimbabwe since the 1970s and 1980s. But Zimbabweans had never seen the issue of impunity addressed, they had only seen pardons, amnesties and clemencies.

"The ordinary Zimbabwean hasn't had any sense of justice - not just from the 70s, (under the previous Rhodesian government) but up to 2002," he said.

"With this report we are hoping to jog the international community and the Southern African Development Community into action. If we don't do anything, what hope are we giving to the ordinary Zimbabwean?

"They are facing a food crisis, unattended human rights violations and the undermining of their judiciary. People are assaulted and killed with impunity - what message are we sending to them?"

The report, 'Zimbabwe: The toll of impunity', examined politically-motivated violations before, during, and after the March 2002 presidential election which returned Mugabe to power.

It alleged that violations were primarily committed by members of state-sponsored militia who operated with the consent of the state, and also by state security forces. It said the authorities in Zimbabwe had systematically failed to bring those responsible for serious violations to justice.

To do this the government used presidential amnesties, clemencies and indemnities, prevented investigations into human rights violations, and curbed the freedom of the media. It also allegedly manipulated the police and eroded the independence of the judiciary.

An example of the use of amnesties was a clemency order proclaimed by Mugabe on 6 October 2000 after the June 2000 parliamentary elections. This gave indemnity to anyone who committed a politically motivated crime from 1 January to 31 July of that election year. The indemnity excluded rape, murder and fraud but included grievous bodily harm - the category of crime that torture falls under.

To facilitate impunity, the state denied involvement with the militia, even though the militia had often been transported and supported by the police, the report charged.

The 2002 Public Order and Security Act criminalised a wide range of activities associated with freedom of expression, association and assembly, and violated Zimbabwe's obligations under international human rights law, Amnesty said.

The new Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act empowered the Information Minister to launch investigations into the operations of media houses without the involvement of either the police or the judiciary.

The judiciary itself was being undermined with the government openly defying superior court rulings that contradict its policy and harassing judges perceived to be critical. Since 2000, two Supreme Court judges, including the Chief Justice, and four High Court judges have resigned.

Impunity was allegedly reinforced by undermining the police. Mokhine said that this also affected policemen who were trying to carry out their duties properly.

"If a policeman investigated allegations of rape against certain militia he would find himself transferred to a rural area or relegated to the 'Commissioners pool' where he will have no desk and no duties. NGOs have stopped trying to report rapes because the policemen don't want to investigate," he said.

Mokhine said Zimbabwe was in clear violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which says states have a duty to bring to justice those within their jurisdiction who are responsible for human rights violations.

Amnesty recommended that Zimbabwe ratify the United Nations Convention Against Torture, allow a thorough impartial investigation into allegations of human rights violations, make sure the police abide by international human rights standards, and that an independent police monitoring mechanism be created.

Laws not conforming to international human rights standards should be repealed or amended, and further international pressure should be applied on the Zimbabwean authorities to allow the United Nations Special Rapporteurs on torture and on the independence of judges and lawyers to take action.

It also encouraged more visits by bodies like the Commonwealth and the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

The African Commission on Human and People's Rights was currently in Zimbabwe on a fact finding mission. The delegation included Jainaba Johm of Gambia, Fiona Adolu of Uganda and Barney Pityana of South Africa.

Mokhine also urged SADC to become more involved. "The rights of ordinary Zimbabweans should take precedence over politics," he said referring to regional "quiet diplomacy" policies.

The report had been presented to the Zimbabwe government.

For the full report visit: http://www.web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/index/afr460342002

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utvinternet

      TUESDAY 25/06/02 10:52:02
      Zimbabwe's farming fears
      The UK Shadow foreign secretary today called for an international
coalition to put pressure on Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe to hold fresh
presidential elections.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----


      Michael Ancram`s call comes after the country`s white farmers were
told to stop working their land.

      The farmers were told to cease operations as a prelude to handing over
their land to blacks in a mass transfer which observers have warned could
worsen food shortages in southern Africa.

      Mr Mugabe is pressing ahead with his land transfers policy following
his election victory in March.

      The election was disputed because of evidence of intimidation and
violence directed at supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic
Change.

      Mr Ancram said: ``What we are seeing in Zimbabwe at the moment is
tragic. We are seeing six million people facing malnutrition.

      ``The crop this year will be a quarter of what it was two years ago.

      ``We are beginning to see farmers being driven off their farms before
they can sell their crop,`` he told a radio programme.

      The world should unite to force Mr Mugabe to deliver on the terms of
the Abuja Agreement, in which he promised to end violence and allow free
democratic politics, and to re-run the presidential elections, said Mr
Ancram.

      But he added: ``We shouldn`t try to do anything on our own.

      ``The coalition would include the European Union, Commonwealth,
southern African neighbours of Zimbabwe and the US.

      ``It could bring sufficient pressure to bear on Mr Mugabe to make sure
that in a reasonably short time there are fresh presidential elections,
which are independently monitored, and then let the people of Zimbabwe
decide freely and fairly.``

MSNBC



Zimbabwe farmer hopes against hope to keep land



RAFFINGORA, Zimbabwe, June 25 - Zimbabwe farmer Jean Simon has been fighting
for the last two years to stay on her land, resisting efforts by President
Robert Mugabe's men to settle on the property.


       But Simon said on Tuesday the latest battle to keep her farm after
the expiry of a 45-day government deadline for white farmers to wind up
their operations to make way for black settlers, could prove much tougher.
       ''We just have to hope, even if the basis of hope is not there, that
the government will realise the crisis that the country is in and allow
farmers to grow food for the people because people are facing starvation,''
she said.
       About 3,000 white farmers were given until midnight on Monday to stop
working their farms, and just over a month to leave entirely after Mugabe's
government amended its land acquisition law last month.
       Zimbabwe is one of six southern African states suffering severe food
shortages. Analysts blame its crisis partly on the ''fast-track'' land
acquisiton programme, which Mugabe says is necessary to redress the
imbalances of the colonial era.
       Simon, a mother of two teenage boys, bought her 500-hectare
(1,235-acre) farm in the fertile Raffingora region some 10 years ago,
leaving a job as a chartered accountant to pursue her love of farming. But
the last two years have been hellish, she says.
       The 44-year-old said she had been abducted by militant supporters of
Mugabe's sometimes violent land-seizure drive, wrongfully jailed for
involvement in opposition politics and saved by her workers from assault by
unruly ruling party activists who wanted to evict her from the farm.
       ''In some respects, you could say I have been lucky because I have
mostly been dealing with threats...but now this is very serious,'' she told
Reuters at her farm.

NOWHERE TO GO
       Simon is one of the white farmers ordered to stop farming operations
from Tuesday under the government notice called Section 8. On Monday,
Simon's 340 employees had been given time off from working the farm, where
she grows maize and tobacco and rears chicken, cattle and sheep.
       ''If we work, we will be breaking the law...but we are desperate,''
she said. ''We have appealed to the authorities to be allowed to continue
with our operations, and I am hoping this will come to pass.''
       The government order has forced the farm to stop grading over 200,000
kg (440,000 lb) of tobacco, preparing tobacco seedlings for next year and
fields for maize.
       Asked how much how she would lose if she was eventually forced to
pack up and go, Simon said: ''This is not a money issue...when we are facing
starvation, we are fighting about who should be growing food.''
       A hundred metres from the interview, workers were walking apparently
aimlessly. ''Wouldn't you be dazed if don't know where your next meal is
going to come from, where you are going to sleep, what your immediate future
is going to be?,'' Simon said.
       Simon's farm manager said a majority of the 340 workers on Erewhon
Farm were of Malawian, Mozambican and Zambian origin and others had no
Zimbabwean rural homes to return to.
       Under the government order, nearly 3,000 farmers were given 45 days
to wind up their operations, and another 45 days to vacate the farms --
which for most would come on August 10.
       With teary eyes, Simon looked out into the distance where other white
farmers were grappling with their future.
       ''I am hoping this will not be the end of the story because it would
hurt me so much,'' she said.

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Telegraph

Mugabe orders 'reprehensible', says Straw
(Filed: 25/06/2002)


Foreign Secretary Jack Straw today condemned a Zimbabwean government order
to farmers to stop working their land as "extraordinary and reprehensible".

A 45-day countdown for 3,000 white Zimbabwean farmers to abandon their land
began today but many vowed to stay put rather than watch vital crops rot in
a country on the brink of famine.

The farmers were given until midnight on Monday to stop working the land and
just over a month to leave entirely by president Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF
government.

Straw said that the international community blamed the Mugabe regime for
current food shortages that had" little to do with drought". It is "a man
made tragedy brought on by Mugabe"" he told the House of Commons.

He said: "Zimbabwe's only way back from disaster is through the restoration
of the rule of law, an end to political violence, an end to the intimidation
and arrest of journalists, a return to democratic legitimacy and the
adoption of credible economic policies," he said.

The order to stop farming was the latest shot by the government in its
battle to seize white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks --
which it asserts is needed to redress the imbalances of the colonial era.

Straw accused Mugabe of parcelling out land to his cronies, including
300,000 acres of prime land handed out to, among others, 10 cabinet
ministers, seven members of parliament and his brother-in-law.

He said: "This land has not even been handed over to ordinary black farmers
but in place of this to Mugabe's henchpeople."

The Conservative spokesman on foreign affairs Michael Ancram said earlier
today that the European Union, the United States and African nations should
form a coalition to pressure Robert Mugabe to hold fresh elections.
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Sunday Times (sa)

Farmers appeal to Zimbabwe courts

HARARE - Some white farmers in Zimbabwe have begun to legally challenge land
reform laws which required them to have stopped farming by midnight Monday
before the government allocates their land to black farmers.

"As of today, strictly speaking I am supposed to stop farming yet I have 20
hectares (50 acres) of coffee in the middle of reaping, tobacco in the barns
waiting to be graded, and paprika," Andy Kockott of Tengwe Estate said.

"This is why I am challenging," he told AFP by telephone from his farm,
explaining that he wanted at least to be allowed to reap his crop.

Kockott, who said his case was initially heard in the High Court on Monday
and would continue Tuesday, indicated that many farmers want to challenge
the land laws.

Kockott said he bought his 586 hectare farm in 1995 and that it is the only
farm he owns, but he has received a notice for a compulsory takeover of his
property, despite government's promises that it will not take away land from
farmers who possess only one farm.

Meantime Jenni Williams, spokeswoman for the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU),
said farmers who were trying to move their movable equipment, in compliance
with the order to stop farming, have been intimidated and barred by settlers
and war veterans.

"They are moving some of the equipment which they are allowed under to law
to move, but there is a different set of rules applied by war veterans and
settlers on the ground (from what is in the books)," she said.

Some 2,900 farmers were supposed to stop farming Monday under the new land
law which came into effect on May 10, but many farmers defied the order,
which came as the southern African country faces a serious shortage of food.

"This move defies logic, that 13% of GDP (gross domestic product) could be
rendered illegal overnight in a country that is facing starvation," said
Williams.

Zimbabwe faces a food shortage affecting up to 7.8 million people, or more
than half of its 12 million population.

Government blames the shortage on a drought while aid agencies, including
the UN World Food Programme (WFP), say the food crisis is also partly due to
disruptions from the government's violence-wracked land reforms.

Under the new law's deadline, the first group of affected who were supposed
to cease farming Monday night, should vacate their properties in the next 45
days, or by August 8, 2002.

The farmers who violate the law open themselves up to the threat of up to
two years' imprisonment or a 20,000 Zimbabwe dollar (364 US dollar) fine.

The Zimbabwe government is taking millions of white-owned land for
re-distribution to hundreds of thousands of landless blacks.

Although totalling less than 1% of the population, white Zimbabweans had
owned about 30% of all the country's land.

The land reforms have targetted as much as 95% of white-owned lands.

Sapa-AFP
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Mail and Guardian


Zimbabwe justice minister faces arrest

      Harare

      25 June 2002 12:54

Zimbabwe's High Court has issued a warrant for the arrest of its justice
minister after he failed to appear in court to answer charges of contempt of
court, a state-owned daily said on Tuesday.

Patrick Chinamasa was supposed to answer charges arising from his criticism
of a six-month jail sentence imposed on three US missionaries for possession
of arms in 1999.

Charges against Chinamasa, who is currently out of the country, arose from a
statement he made after the three men -- Gary Blanchard, John Dixon and
Joseph Pettijohn -- were convicted and sentenced to six months in jail.

Chinamasa, who was then Zimbabwe's chief prosecutor, complained that the
sentences were too lenient, accusing the judges of trivialising the crimes
which carried a maximum life term.

"The leniency of the sentences constitutes a betrayal of all civilised and
acceptable notions of justice and of Zimbabwe's sovereign interests,"
Chinamasa was quoted as saying in 1999.

He said the six-month jail terms induced "a sense of shock and outrage in
the minds of all right-thinking people".

The High Court took exception to the statement and charged him with
contempt.

The men had been found in possession of 39 firearms, about 70 knives,
camouflage uniforms and night-vision sights while trying to leave Zimbabwe.

"This is an amount of arms that cannot be described as something that
missionaries would carry in their normal vocational exercise," he said.

The men said they were trying to ship the weapons home after keeping them
for self-defence and hunting while working as missionaries for the US-based
Harvestfield Ministries in the Democratic Republic of Congo. - Sapa-AFP
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News24

US slams Mugabe's reform plan

Washington - The United States on Monday decried an order from Zimbabwean
President Robert Mugabe's government for white farmers to stop working their
land, calling it part of a misguided reform programme.

"We think the government of Zimbabwe's land policy, including the chaotic
and the often violent seizure of privately owned farms has greatly
compounded the country's worsening social, economic and political crisis,"
state department spokesperson Richard Boucher said.

"It has also greatly exacerbated the food crisis in Zimbabwe and southern
Africa much more broadly. We continue to support rational, sustainable and
equitable land reform in Zimbabwe. Very sadly, that's not what's happening."

He noted that the land seizures had "resulted in numerous deaths and serious
human rights abuses".

The ban on white farmers working their land, part of a new reform law that
affects 2 900 of them and is aimed at enabling the government to resettle
their properties with black farmers, took effect overnight.

The farmers almost universally ignored the ban, which came into place
without the violence some had feared, and opened themselves up to the threat
of up to two years' imprisonment or a Z$20 000 (US$364) fine.

White farms have been the scene of politically charged unrest since February
2000, when pro-Mugabe militants forcibly invaded the land days after
Mugabe's loss in a referendum on a new constitution.

Since then, 12 farmers have died while tens of thousands of their workers
have lost their jobs, been displaced and attacked by the militants. -
Sapa-AFP

Independent (UK)

Africa offers reform in exchange for aid
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
25 June 2002
Five African leaders will this week present the world's richest countries
with a bold new plan to bring Africa back into the global economic
mainstream, offering good government in return for increased aid and
investment, and easier access for African goods to Western markets.

Along with terrorism and the fragile world economic recovery, the so-called
Nepad initiative - the New Partnership for African Development - will top
the agenda of this year's G8 summit, which opens in Kananaskis, Canada,
tomorrow). The plan, which aims to attract an extra $64bn (£42.5bn) of
resources a year to the world's most impoverished continent, will be
unveiled by Presidents Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt,
Olesegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria and Abdoulaye
Wade of Senegal. Its authors say it offers the best, and perhaps also the
last, real chance of breaking the vicious circle of bad government, war,
disease and poverty in which Africa is trapped.

Under the scheme, the rich world will increase debt relief, aid and
long-term investment. In return, participating African countries will commit
to standards of good governance and human rights which they will police. In
this way, they hope to lay to rest the negative image of Africa, perhaps the
greatest single deterrent to private investment in the continent.

But just as at the UN development summit at Monterrey last March, the
promises will be easy, delivering on them less so. Kananaskis will be a new
test of the sincerity of the rich developed world's promises to do more to
help Africa, and of Africa's ability to put its own house in order. On both
scores, substantial doubts exist.

Having agreed in Monterrey to increase American foreign aid by 50 per cent
by 2004, President George Bush undid much of the good work shortly
afterwards by announcing a 10-year, $190bn subsidy package for US farmers.
It will generate extra surpluses of agricultural goods, which will be dumped
on African markets, making it even harder for African producers to sell both
on their own markets and in a key potential export market such as the US.

And Africa must lay to rest the spectre of Zimbabwe, as it plunges deeper
into economic misery and political crisis. Despite expressions of concern,
neighbouring countries have failed to pressure President Robert Mugabe to
moderate his brutal, self-defeating policies, which have brought Zimbabwe to
the brink of ruin.

In an effort to get back to the G8's origins as a chance for world leaders
to talk informally, the summit will be at the idyllic Rocky Mountain retreat
of Kananaskis, with the press kept 50 miles away in Calgary.

But magnificent mountain vistas will be no guarantee of a smooth ride for
the G8, which comprises the US, France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Canada,
Japan and Russia. Hopes of a vigorous US-led recovery from a shallow
recession are fading, and concerns over the runaway US current account
deficit and the rash of corporate scandals are reflected in the plunging
dollar.

The G8 leaders will try to show all is well. But there may be strong
differences over the dollar between the US and its partners. The leaders
will also take stock of Mr Bush's "war against terror" and the fear of new
attacks by al-Qa'ida.
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