Posted on 12/13/2002 6:38:46 AM PST by Clive
THE ruling Zanu PF party is involved in an international campaign to sell its controversial land acquisition programme with a view to sparking similar seizures across the continent. This has not gone down well with the South African authorities, the Zimbabwe Independent understands.
It emerged this week that President Robert Mugabe's party was working with the South African opposition party, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), Namibia's Swapo and local NGOs to mobilise like-minded movements across the region ahead of a land summit scheduled for June next year.
PAC secretary-general Thami ka Plaatjie confirmed to the Independent in a telephone interview from Pretoria this week that there was an all-out effort to forge alliances with other landless people across the region to work out a "pragmatic solution" to the land problem.
"From our own research there is obviously much land hunger in the region," he said. "So we are calling for a regional summit to discuss regional land problems and to review the Zimbabwe exercise and avoid the pitfalls."
Plaatjie, who has repeatedly rapped the South African government for its slow land reform programme, was in Zimbabwe a fortnight ago to consult with NGOs and chiefs on the agrarian exercise. He said they were working with NGOs in Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland whom he declined to name.
But Zanu PF sources have said the Inyika Trust, Ibbo Mandaza's Sapes Trust, and the Institute for Public Policy and Research in Namibia who have called for an international conference on the land question in that country, are some of the NGOs supporting the project.
Other NGOs linked to the regional land reclamation drive are Africa Strategy and Davira Mhere which recently held a conference in the United Kingdom to market Mugabe's controversial programme.
Plaatjie said the agenda of the land summit will be discussed at the PAC's 8th Congress in Pretoria tomorrow which will be attended by Zanu PF and the Landless People's Movement (LPM) of South Africa. He said they were currently scouting for funding for the regional summit likely to be held in South Africa.
A Zanu PF source told the Independent that the LPM's Thato Lesupi has been in the country before while a representative of the Manenzhe Community in the Limpopo province was expected soon to meet Vice-President Joseph Msika who chairs the Land Acquisition Committee.
Both the LPM and the Manenzhe Community under Chief Takalan have been calling for a land summit and have threatened land invasions Mugabe-style. Zanu PF sponsors their visits to Zimbabwe, the source said.
The Independent understands that the Office of the President in Pretoria is deeply concerned by the way in which the Zimbabwe authorities are encouraging the landless lobby in South Africa to undertake an agenda that, while embarrassing President Thabo Mbeki, provides Mugabe with a regional political support network.
Officers based at the Zimbabwe High Commission in Pretoria frequently undertake activities that in any other country would be seen as incompatible with their diplomatic status.
Mbeki has no one to blame but himself for this "embarrassment." Let's hope this causes him to rethink his support of Mugabe.
And where unjust thugs destroy the principle of property out of "land hunger", the people are left with bark to eat. But hey, that is just "hunger hunger", so who cares? Land hunger changes governments, so obviously it is of the first importance to neo-communism. Hunger hunger only kills millions of unoffending, innocent people. Only missionaries and other insane westerners care about that sort of thing.
I would like to know which NGOs these might be and who pays their tab.
Me, too. When my tax money supports racist communist murderers, it bothers me a little bit.
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