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Statement by the President of the Movement for Democratic Change,
Morgan Tsvangirai
10/05/2000
Ladies and Gentleman of the press, as you know in the past week two more Zimbabweans have been murdered.
They have been murdered by men who, through their actions, are believed to be agents of the Zanu PF Government.
They were murdered for no other crime than supporting democracy and for undertaking activities which are guaranteed by the constitution of Zimbabwe. The right of every Zimbabwean to join a political party of his choice and to freely elect a government that will determine his or her future lies at the heart of any democratic society and is the lifeblood of a free country.
But as has become blatantly obvious over the past months, this government has no respect for the constitution, for democratic processes and for the rule of law. Every Zimbabwean, regardless of race, tribe or belief who does not support ZANU (PF) has become an enemy of the state and is threatened with elimination. The state has promoted lawlessness anarchy and violence to a point where it is now commonplace. This has been done without calculating the economic cost and without revering the sanctity of human life which is God-given.
Ladies and Gentleman the question is where do we go from here? How can a democratic party like the MDC compete against a violent, dictatorial and increasingly desperate government like that of Zanu PF?
The answer is that we must compete with the only weapons we have. These are truth and the peoples determination for democratic change. I have said it before and I repeat that every Zimbabwean has the right to self defence and I stand by that principle. But any legitimate government in waiting must use the weapons that are enshrined in its manifesto and in the constitution of Zimbabwe.
To the people of Zimbabwe, I say that truth and democracy will prevail. That these principles will set the people free.
Should Zanu PF steal this election from the people what future will we have? The country has no money. The crops that should have been planted to prevent hunger in the coming months have not been planted. Without these crops and without money to buy them from other countries the people of Zimbabwe will starve unless a new, legitimate and democratic government comes to power.
I would also like to address the issue of alleged defections from the MDC as portrayed by the State Media. I have no doubt that due to intimidation and fear there have been some superficial defections. I do not criticise those people who have been forced to make these moves to prevent themselves suffering physical harm. I have no doubt in my mind that when it comes to election time the people of Zimbabwe will know who to vote for. However I ask the members of the public to treat the stories of large scale defections from the MDC with the contempt they deserve.
We at the MDC have heard of no such mass defections. As the actions of Zanu PF become more desperate, more violent and more detrimental to the well being of every Zimbabwean so the MDC gains more supporters. We have right on our side and the people on our side and we shall prevail.
PLEASE SEND YOUR REPLIES/E-MAILS TO:  SUPPORT@MDC.CO.ZW
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THE CLENCHED FIST AND THE OPEN HAND

The clenched fist says "The Struggle Continues".
There will be no Peace.
The fist is closed. It hides the corruption within.
Outside, it is hard, to smash the poor and innocent.
There is no compassion in the fist.
Power, and only power, matters.
The fist never opens, except to crook the finger that pulls the trigger.
The open hand is peaceful.
It has nothing to hide;
there is no corruption rotting within.
It is the hand of friendship,

the hand that is ready to lift the poor,
to care for the weak,
to feed the hungry.
The open hand looks to the future -
it is the hand at the computer as well as the hand that holds the new seeds.
The open hand is not all black, nor all white but
like God's children it has many shades.
Yet the open hand is also strong.
It is the hand that says "STOP" to wrong.
Held high, it protects the innocent,
and seals the fate of evil.
The struggle does NOT have to continue for ever.
Peace IS possible.
Change the way!

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You still think it is only a WHITE/BLACK thing? - Then READ THIS.
From: "Chaz Maviyane-Davies"

Because most of the western media has chosen to highlight the WHITE/BLACK issue in Zimbabwe, over the real problems of an obsolete and dangerous Government willing to sacrifice its nation to stay in power, it seems
that a few of my BLACK friends abroad, feel that, what is now happening to the WHITES, is deserved for the years of oppression meted out by colonisation.
To them I say: "Please come and live here, if you dare" Stand up for the 30,000 BLACK farm workers who are also under siege and haven't been paid for the last 2 months and look unlikely ever to be able to feed their families again because they have incurred the wrath of the 'so called' war veterans -and you will soon see how quickly your head will be smashed in.

Try and join a legal peace march with other BLACK protesters and see how quickly your legs will be broken, as the police join in. Put an oppositionparty sticker on your BLACK car and see how quickly it goes up in flames, probably with you in it.

You still think it is only a WHITE/BLACK thing?

As I write this hundreds of people have been beaten and 6 people have died through violence -all opposition -2 WHITE and 4 BLACK. I can show you a picture of a WHITE farmer who after being beaten and went to a police
station for help, only to be dragged out by his persecutors and shot at point blank range between the eyes. Unfortunately I can't show you a picture of 2 BLACK opposition members whose car was petrol bombed, while the police stood by and watched, because their bodies were burnt beyond recognition.

You still think it is only a WHITE/BLACK thing?

Terror is terror no matter what colour it is. All these people are Zimbabwean, just as you are American, British or whatever. If you believe like, Mugabe pretends to believe, that Africa belongs only to BLACK Africans, then come over to your spiritual homes and feel the wrath of our leader's anger if you decide to disagree with anything he says or does.
He will soon tell you and not only the WHITES, where you belong. The informed, educated urbanites absolutely rejected his undemocratic proposed constitution so he recently called the BLACK people of Mbare (formerly Harare township) 'totemless' -basically meaning: they don't belong here.

In the eighties, Mbare was his party's fortress of support. How things change when you're not wanted and vindictive.

Can you support the racist rhetoric of a man who one day hugs a WHITE tennis player because he won a match for the country, and the next day calls them "the enemies of the state". A man who spends all his holidays shopping
in London, never in Senegal or Nigeria. What of Chenjerai 'Kill all the whites' Hunzvi -the leader of the war veterans who recently hired a WHITE South African lawyer to defend him on charges of corruption.

When we fight for human rights, it is not a selective fight to be used only when it suits us. Mugabe has a sinister agenda and is willing to manipulate any issue to maintain power. If you choose to be used and soothed by his
simplistic and emotive lies and violent action without considering all the facts of his corrupt rule and the options and mechanisms available for peaceful co-existence, then you do not have my respect as a human being or a friend.

The situation for us is too serious as there is a larger picture to life in Africa and the consequences of 'spiteful actions' are usually devastating. History has warned us through Idi Amin's expulsion of the Asians, that it doesn't end there -the worse follows soon after. In a population of 12 million, 50,000 BLACK war veterans chase out 50,000 WHITES -then what?

Do you believe that justice and equality will ensue, bliss will prevail and our problems will be resolved? Then come to paradise, if you dare.

I do not believe the is one Zimbabwean, BLACK or WHITE who doesn't feel that land reform needs to be addressed. I also don't have the aptitude nor disposition here to explain how after 20 years of BLACK rule, the
government has chosen rather to plunder the economy and enrich themselves and their cronies at the expense of the people -while holding the land issue as a weapon to be wielded on the eve of every election since independence.

Picture this, think with your conscious and don't let preconceptions blur the issues here: Not far from here is a large farm. The WHITE farmer grows food and wheat for the NATION on a large scale. His 200 or so workers are the highest paid in the land. He has built them homes with 'bricks and windows', electricity and running water. Their toilets use a proper sewage system and he bought this farm in 1990 (ten years after independence) and is still paying for it.

Next to this farm is another large farm and is one of two owned by a BLACK minister who was given a 100 year lease for this land while paying a paltry annual rental of about US$25. He is hardly there, knows nothing about farming and the land is barren. When the WHITE farm was attacked and invaded with the endorsement and encouragement of the president, the farmer fled for his life. The BLACK farm workers then demanded to know why the invaders didn't take the neighbouring farm as well especially as it was totally under-utilised (???). Some of them were beaten for even daring to ask that question but the workers resisted and after much bloodshed, repulsed the
invaders -twice.
Finally the invaders came back with the police (upholders of justice and keepers of law and order) who told the workers not to intervene and leave. A supply of food to feed a large city for 2 months now rots and the BLACK
workers are jobless and homeless while the land is carved up between those who are loyal supporters of a regime that has out lived its usefulness.

And our leader feels that this is the only way of correcting the imbalance of land distribution because intimidation and fear silences resistance and a land grab win votes -how short sighted and demeaning.

In all of your countries, generally speaking, 10% of the population owns 80% of the wealth. Why not ask for your leader's consent to grab a gun and take it forcefully -if you think that's the way forward for humanity and civilisation.

The law is there to protect its citizens and not indiscriminately. Politicians are elected to address issues of governance and unite nations. Not turn one against the other when the people have shown their disapproval of their rule. If this is democracy and it works for you, don't you think we deserve it too. I did not fight discrimination and racism to endorse it when it suits me.

Of course I will never endorse crimes of the past and there are many bitter issues that linger with us today need to be addressed -but for Africa I tend to choose the pragmatic, honest Mandela way to the self-serving, destructive Mugabe way. When our country lies in ashes and anarchy prevails. I wonder if it will be gratifying to know -at least the WHITES were fixed.

Chaz
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Zimbabwe 'war vets' claim land-grab success, warn more violence
Wednesday, May 10 12:31 AM SGT - HARARE, May 9 (AFP) - Zimbabwe's militant war veterans Tuesday declared their land-grab of white owned-farms a success but warned of more of the kind of violence that saw farmer Alan Dunn beaten to death unless redistribution of land is speeded up.
The warning came as Dunn's tearful wife, Sherry Dunn, told a media conference here that a well-known war veteran, whom she did not name but clearly identified, was responsible for her husband's murder on Sunday.
But even as international pressure increased on the Zimbabwe government to halt the use of violence against political opponents, businesses claimed they are starting to be attacked for their support of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
Agripah Gava, director of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association, told AFP the operation to take land from whites had succeeded, albeit at the cost of the lives of three farmers.
"In so far as our policy of occupation is concerned, within the peaceful atmosphere ... we consider our policy of occupation as a success," Gava said.
"Over a thousand farms have been occupied and over a thousand white commercial farmers have been able to cope with the people who have been coming to occupy," he said.
The land invasions, led by veterans of Zimbabwe's 1970s war of liberation and backed by supporters of the ruling ZANU-PF party, began in February.
At least 17 people, including three white farmers and a black policeman, have been killed and hundreds of farmworkers have been beaten in violence accompanying the invasions and in political tension ahead of general elections due in the next month or two.
In the latest incident, Dunn was beaten unconscious Sunday on his farm at Beatrice, just south of Harare, by men his widow claims were sent by a senior war veteran in the area who had a "vendetta" against her husband.
The killing was clearly politically motivated, his widow, speaking for the first time since her husband died of his injuries Sunday night, told a media conference here.
Describing the death of Dunn as "unfortunate," war veterans leader Chenjerai Hunzvi said Tuesday it was the result of the slow pace of land redistribution in Zimbabwe.
Some 70 percent of the country's prime agricultural land is owned by whites, who make up just 70,000 of the 12.5 million population.
"We are not quick in resolving the land issue," Hunzvi told the state-run Ziana news agency. "We should speed up the process, people are losing their tempers."
In an attempt to calm passions, Hunzvi Tuesday accompanied members of the Commercial Farmers Union to three areas affected by violence in recent days -- Marondera, Mutare and Middle Sabi -- continuing a process which started last week.
A top Zimbabwean business leader, meanwhile, Tuesday called on the country's business community to keep a "cool head" in the face of veiled warnings against supporting the political opposition.
Kumbirai Katsande, president of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI), was reacting to a front-page editorial comment in the state-controlled Herald newspaper, which lashed out at the business sector for "using the might of the dollar in a total campaign to support the opposition MDC."
Opposition political activist and businessman Clive Puzey claims an armed robbery at his garage Monday was aimed at scaring him off politics. Other businessmen who support the MDC were also targetted, he said.
In Johannesburg, US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott on Tuesday accused the Zimbabwe government of using inequalities in land distribution to instigate violence against its opposition.
And in Oslo, the Norwegian government said Tuesday it was suspending 20 million kroner (2.5 million euros/2.25 million dollars) of financial aid to Zimbabwe this year in protest against human rights violations there.
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Zimbabwe Farmers, Veterans Remain at Odds

Tuesday May 9 2:32 PM ET

By Cris Chinaka
HARARE, Zimbabwe (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's white farmers held talks Tuesday with black war veterans who have occupied hundreds of their farms, but said they failed to win assurances that the violence would end.
Chenjerai Hunzvi, leader of the veterans who began seizing white farms in February, told Reuters after the three-hour-long meeting that the surrender of white-owned land to blacks was the key to ending the violence.
``We are making progress, but our aim is to take our land. The farmers agree we must take some land back...We are going to give people the land,'' he told Reuters.
Farmers coming out of the meeting in Marondera, southeast of the capital, said privately there had been no assurance from the war veterans that violence would end.
Sherry Dunn, whose husband Alan died Monday after a beating by suspected liberation war veterans, told reporters she and her three daughters would stay in Zimbabwe.
Farmers simultaneously denied a report that a black farm worker had been beaten up in revenge for her husband's death.
``Alan left England and he has been living here longer than he did in England. He loved Africa. He loved farming in Africa. We'll stay,'' Dunn's widow said in Beatrice, south of Harare.
``We are all Zimbabweans. We are born and bred here. Our children are Zimbabweans. We all are. Where this racialism comes from... It's not us. It's not the Europeans,'' she said.
Farmer Denies Revenge Attack
A white farmer denied that farmers beat up a black farm worker but admitted that farmers grabbed the worker as he tried to run away and put him in the back of a pickup truck.
Black worker Charles Mlambo said Monday he was beaten by white farmers and knew of a second man also attacked in apparent retaliation for the attack on Dunn.
Mlambo told Reuters in hospital: ``I was going to the post office. These white people stopped their car near me. One asked me in Shona whether I knew Mr. Dunn, then the guy in the car reversed and knocked me down and they started stomping me with their boots.''
Speaking on condition that he was not named, a white farmer from Beatrice, where Dunn was killed, denied Tuesday there was any revenge attack.
He said he saw a neighbor stop by the roadside to talk to Mlambo, who he said had given farmers a guarantee a week earlier that Dunn, a local opposition party official, would not be hurt.
The farmer told Reuters his neighbor asked Mlambo about the promise and the subsequent killing.
``Charles ran away. We drove after him and rugby tackled him and we put him in the back of a pickup truck. At no time was he touched in my presence. He had no cuts, no bruises,'' he said.
In northwest Zimbabwe tension built at Rydings Junior School, a leading private school. Classes for 350 mainly white children were cancelled after reports that war veterans camped nearby planned to take over some of the buildings.
``They want 50 percent of the school, which is just not acceptable. That is why the parents have decided that we close the school temporarily until the situation is resolved, `` said Charles Slight, chairman of the school's board of tustees.
Norway Freezes Aid Payments
The Norwegian government joined most of Zimbabwe's donors on Tuesday by announcing a freeze on most aid payments.
``Aid that goes to social measures targeting the poorest will be shielded from the freeze as far as possible,'' said Norwegian Development Minister Anne Kristin Sydnes.
British Foreign Office minister for Africa Peter Hain said Britain was committed to land reform but that order had to return to the former British colony.
``Britain remains ready to help fund a fair land program...But this can only be provided if President Mugabe ends the illegal farm occupations, restores law and order and stops the violence,'' Hain told reporters on a visit to Namibia.
Traders and investors in South Africa and abroad cited the Zimbabwe crisis as a key reason for the fall of the South African rand to a new all-time low of 7.09 to the dollar.
The Zimbabwe stock market fell nine percent as more investors took flight amid a worsening political and economic climate, brokers said.
In Kenya, a white government minister said hundreds of families invaded two farms after calls by radicals in parliament for the occupation of under-utilized white-owned farms.
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, 76 and in power for 20 years, has refused to condemn the illegal land invasions and has said white brought the violence on themselves by resisting the seizure of land taken from blacks under British colonial rule.
But the deputy director of the farmers union, Jerry Grant, said the invasions were less about land than about the ruling party's efforts to win parliamentary elections expected in June.
``I have said it before. This has nothing to do with farming. It's politics at its dirtiest,'' Grant told Reuters.
At least 19 people -- including three farmers, farm workers and opposition supporters -- have died during three months of farm invasions and associated political violence.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott said on Tuesday the United States would not help to fund land reform in Zimbabwe until the government acted to end violence.
(Adds UK minister Hain paras 20-21, stock market fall para 23)
By Cris Chinaka
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HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's white farmers held talks Tuesday with black war veterans who have occupied hundreds of their farms, but said they failed to win assurances that the violence would end.
Chenjerai Hunzvi, leader of the veterans who began seizing white farms in February, told Reuters after the three-hour-long meeting that the surrender of white-owned land to blacks was the key to ending the violence.
``We are making progress, but our aim is to take our land. The farmers agree we must take some land back...We are going to give people the land,'' he told Reuters.
Farmers coming out of the meeting in Marondera, southeast of the capital, said privately there had been no assurance from the war veterans that violence would end.
Sherry Dunn, whose husband Alan died Monday after a beating by suspected liberation war veterans, told reporters she and her three daughters would stay in Zimbabwe.
Farmers simultaneously denied a report that a black farm worker had been beaten up in revenge for her husband's death.
``Alan left England and he has been living here longer than he did in England. He loved Africa. He loved farming in Africa. We'll stay,'' Dunn's widow said in Beatrice, south of Harare.
``We are all Zimbabweans. We are born and bred here. Our children are Zimbabweans. We all are. Where this racialism comes from... It's not us. It's not the Europeans,'' she said.
Farmer Denies Revenge Attack
A white farmer denied that farmers beat up a black farm worker but admitted that farmers grabbed the worker as he tried to run away and put him in the back of a pickup truck.
Black worker Charles Mlambo said Monday he was beaten by white farmers and knew of a second man also attacked in apparent retaliation for the attack on Dunn.
Mlambo told Reuters in hospital: ``I was going to the post office. These white people stopped their car near me. One asked me in Shona whether I knew Mr Dunn, then the guy in the car reversed and knocked me down and they started stomping me with their boots.''
Speaking on condition that he was not named, a white farmer from Beatrice, where Dunn was killed, denied Tuesday there was any revenge attack.
He said he saw a neighbor stop by the roadside to talk to Mlambo, who he said had given farmers a guarantee a week earlier that Dunn, a local opposition party official, would not be hurt.
The farmer told Reuters his neighbor asked Mlambo about the promise and the subsequent killing.
``Charles ran away. We drove after him and rugby tackled him and we put him in the back of a pickup truck. At no time was he touched in my presence. He had no cuts, no bruises,'' he said.
In northwest Zimbabwe tension built at Rydings Junior School, a leading private school. Classes for 350 mainly white children were cancelled after reports that war veterans camped nearby planned to take over some of the buildings.
``They want 50 percent of the school, which is just not acceptable. That is why the parents have decided that we close the school temporarily until the situation is resolved, `` said Charles Slight, chairman of the school's board of tustees.
Norway Freezes Aid Payments
The Norwegian government joined most of Zimbabwe's donors on Tuesday by announcing a freeze on most aid payments.
``Aid that goes to social measures targeting the poorest will be shielded from the freeze as far as possible,'' said Norwegian Development Minister Anne Kristin Sydnes.
British Foreign Office minister for Africa Peter Hain said Britain was committed to land reform but that order had to return to the former British colony.
``Britain remains ready to help fund a fair land program...But this can only be provided if President Mugabe ends the illegal farm occupations, restores law and order and stops the violence,'' Hain told reporters on a visit to Namibia.
Traders and investors in South Africa and abroad cited the Zimbabwe crisis as a key reason for the fall of the South African rand to a new all-time low of 7.09 to the dollar.
The Zimbabwe stock market fell nine percent as more investors took flight amid a worsening political and economic climate, brokers said.
In Kenya, a white government minister said hundreds of families invaded two farms after calls by radicals in parliament for the occupation of under-utilised white-owned farms.
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, 76 and in power for 20 years, has refused to condemn the illegal land invasions and has said white brought the violence on themselves by resisting the seizure of land taken from blacks under British colonial rule.
But the deputy director of the farmers union, Jerry Grant, said the invasions were less about land than about the ruling party's efforts to win parliamentary elections expected in June.
``I have said it before. This has nothing to do with farming. It's politics at its dirtiest,'' Grant told Reuters.
At least 19 people -- including three farmers, farm workers and opposition supporters -- have died during three months of farm invasions and associated political violence.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott said on Tuesday the United States would not help to fund land reform in Zimbabwe until the government acted to end violence.
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No boycott planned in Zimbabwe
WebPosted Wed May 10 14:49:08 2000
HARARE - The leader of Zimbabwe's main opposition party says a boycott of parliamentary elections is not an option. Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change has apparently changed his mind.
Earlier on Wednesday, Tsvangirai said the MDC would consider a boycott at a meeting on Saturday. Now, he says the meeting is more likely to focus on organizing mass action.
The MDC is trying to decide how to react to the recent violence in the country.
The party is considered capable of defeating President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party at the polls. Tsvangirai says that's the real reason there has been so much bloodshed in Zimbabwe in the past few months.
Black war veterans have taken over white-owned farms, saying they want the land. The squatters have beaten farmers and farm workers. Many of the people who have been assaulted are MDC supporters.
The MDC says the land issue is clearly a cover for a campaign of pre-election intimidation.
White farmers and black war veterans are meeting to discuss the land crisis. The leader of the war veterans says there is one way to end the violence & whites should hand over their land.
Nineteen people have been killed in the fight over the farmland.
 
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Zimbabwe Farmers, Veterans Remain at Odds

Tuesday May 9 2:32 PM ET

By Cris Chinaka
HARARE, Zimbabwe (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's white farmers held talks Tuesday with black war veterans who have occupied hundreds of their farms, but said they failed to win assurances that the violence would end.
Chenjerai Hunzvi, leader of the veterans who began seizing white farms in February, told Reuters after the three-hour-long meeting that the surrender of white-owned land to blacks was the key to ending the violence.
``We are making progress, but our aim is to take our land. The farmers agree we must take some land back...We are going to give people the land,'' he told Reuters.
Farmers coming out of the meeting in Marondera, southeast of the capital, said privately there had been no assurance from the war veterans that violence would end.
Sherry Dunn, whose husband Alan died Monday after a beating by suspected liberation war veterans, told reporters she and her three daughters would stay in Zimbabwe.
Farmers simultaneously denied a report that a black farm worker had been beaten up in revenge for her husband's death.
``Alan left England and he has been living here longer than he did in England. He loved Africa. He loved farming in Africa. We'll stay,'' Dunn's widow said in Beatrice, south of Harare.
``We are all Zimbabweans. We are born and bred here. Our children are Zimbabweans. We all are. Where this racialism comes from... It's not us. It's not the Europeans,'' she said.
Farmer Denies Revenge Attack
A white farmer denied that farmers beat up a black farm worker but admitted that farmers grabbed the worker as he tried to run away and put him in the back of a pickup truck.
Black worker Charles Mlambo said Monday he was beaten by white farmers and knew of a second man also attacked in apparent retaliation for the attack on Dunn.
Mlambo told Reuters in hospital: ``I was going to the post office. These white people stopped their car near me. One asked me in Shona whether I knew Mr. Dunn, then the guy in the car reversed and knocked me down and they started stomping me with their boots.''
Speaking on condition that he was not named, a white farmer from Beatrice, where Dunn was killed, denied Tuesday there was any revenge attack.
He said he saw a neighbor stop by the roadside to talk to Mlambo, who he said had given farmers a guarantee a week earlier that Dunn, a local opposition party official, would not be hurt.
The farmer told Reuters his neighbor asked Mlambo about the promise and the subsequent killing.
``Charles ran away. We drove after him and rugby tackled him and we put him in the back of a pickup truck. At no time was he touched in my presence. He had no cuts, no bruises,'' he said.
In northwest Zimbabwe tension built at Rydings Junior School, a leading private school. Classes for 350 mainly white children were cancelled after reports that war veterans camped nearby planned to take over some of the buildings.
``They want 50 percent of the school, which is just not acceptable. That is why the parents have decided that we close the school temporarily until the situation is resolved, `` said Charles Slight, chairman of the school's board of tustees.
Norway Freezes Aid Payments
The Norwegian government joined most of Zimbabwe's donors on Tuesday by announcing a freeze on most aid payments.
``Aid that goes to social measures targeting the poorest will be shielded from the freeze as far as possible,'' said Norwegian Development Minister Anne Kristin Sydnes.
British Foreign Office minister for Africa Peter Hain said Britain was committed to land reform but that order had to return to the former British colony.
``Britain remains ready to help fund a fair land program...But this can only be provided if President Mugabe ends the illegal farm occupations, restores law and order and stops the violence,'' Hain told reporters on a visit to Namibia.
Traders and investors in South Africa and abroad cited the Zimbabwe crisis as a key reason for the fall of the South African rand to a new all-time low of 7.09 to the dollar.
The Zimbabwe stock market fell nine percent as more investors took flight amid a worsening political and economic climate, brokers said.
In Kenya, a white government minister said hundreds of families invaded two farms after calls by radicals in parliament for the occupation of under-utilized white-owned farms.
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, 76 and in power for 20 years, has refused to condemn the illegal land invasions and has said white brought the violence on themselves by resisting the seizure of land taken from blacks under British colonial rule.
But the deputy director of the farmers union, Jerry Grant, said the invasions were less about land than about the ruling party's efforts to win parliamentary elections expected in June.
``I have said it before. This has nothing to do with farming. It's politics at its dirtiest,'' Grant told Reuters.
At least 19 people -- including three farmers, farm workers and opposition supporters -- have died during three months of farm invasions and associated political violence.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott said on Tuesday the United States would not help to fund land reform in Zimbabwe until the government acted to end violence.
(Adds UK minister Hain paras 20-21, stock market fall para 23)
By Cris Chinaka
HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's white farmers held talks Tuesday with black war veterans who have occupied hundreds of their farms, but said they failed to win assurances that the violence would end.
Chenjerai Hunzvi, leader of the veterans who began seizing white farms in February, told Reuters after the three-hour-long meeting that the surrender of white-owned land to blacks was the key to ending the violence.
``We are making progress, but our aim is to take our land. The farmers agree we must take some land back...We are going to give people the land,'' he told Reuters.
Farmers coming out of the meeting in Marondera, southeast of the capital, said privately there had been no assurance from the war veterans that violence would end.
Sherry Dunn, whose husband Alan died Monday after a beating by suspected liberation war veterans, told reporters she and her three daughters would stay in Zimbabwe.
Farmers simultaneously denied a report that a black farm worker had been beaten up in revenge for her husband's death.
``Alan left England and he has been living here longer than he did in England. He loved Africa. He loved farming in Africa. We'll stay,'' Dunn's widow said in Beatrice, south of Harare.
``We are all Zimbabweans. We are born and bred here. Our children are Zimbabweans. We all are. Where this racialism comes from... It's not us. It's not the Europeans,'' she said.
Farmer Denies Revenge Attack
A white farmer denied that farmers beat up a black farm worker but admitted that farmers grabbed the worker as he tried to run away and put him in the back of a pickup truck.
Black worker Charles Mlambo said Monday he was beaten by white farmers and knew of a second man also attacked in apparent retaliation for the attack on Dunn.
Mlambo told Reuters in hospital: ``I was going to the post office. These white people stopped their car near me. One asked me in Shona whether I knew Mr Dunn, then the guy in the car reversed and knocked me down and they started stomping me with their boots.''
Speaking on condition that he was not named, a white farmer from Beatrice, where Dunn was killed, denied Tuesday there was any revenge attack.
He said he saw a neighbor stop by the roadside to talk to Mlambo, who he said had given farmers a guarantee a week earlier that Dunn, a local opposition party official, would not be hurt.
The farmer told Reuters his neighbor asked Mlambo about the promise and the subsequent killing.
``Charles ran away. We drove after him and rugby tackled him and we put him in the back of a pickup truck. At no time was he touched in my presence. He had no cuts, no bruises,'' he said.
In northwest Zimbabwe tension built at Rydings Junior School, a leading private school. Classes for 350 mainly white children were cancelled after reports that war veterans camped nearby planned to take over some of the buildings.
``They want 50 percent of the school, which is just not acceptable. That is why the parents have decided that we close the school temporarily until the situation is resolved, `` said Charles Slight, chairman of the school's board of tustees.
Norway Freezes Aid Payments
The Norwegian government joined most of Zimbabwe's donors on Tuesday by announcing a freeze on most aid payments.
``Aid that goes to social measures targeting the poorest will be shielded from the freeze as far as possible,'' said Norwegian Development Minister Anne Kristin Sydnes.
British Foreign Office minister for Africa Peter Hain said Britain was committed to land reform but that order had to return to the former British colony.
``Britain remains ready to help fund a fair land program...But this can only be provided if President Mugabe ends the illegal farm occupations, restores law and order and stops the violence,'' Hain told reporters on a visit to Namibia.
Traders and investors in South Africa and abroad cited the Zimbabwe crisis as a key reason for the fall of the South African rand to a new all-time low of 7.09 to the dollar.
The Zimbabwe stock market fell nine percent as more investors took flight amid a worsening political and economic climate, brokers said.
In Kenya, a white government minister said hundreds of families invaded two farms after calls by radicals in parliament for the occupation of under-utilised white-owned farms.
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, 76 and in power for 20 years, has refused to condemn the illegal land invasions and has said white brought the violence on themselves by resisting the seizure of land taken from blacks under British colonial rule.
But the deputy director of the farmers union, Jerry Grant, said the invasions were less about land than about the ruling party's efforts to win parliamentary elections expected in June.
``I have said it before. This has nothing to do with farming. It's politics at its dirtiest,'' Grant told Reuters.
At least 19 people -- including three farmers, farm workers and opposition supporters -- have died during three months of farm invasions and associated political violence.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott said on Tuesday the United States would not help to fund land reform in Zimbabwe until the government acted to end violence.
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