Posted on 09/08/2001 6:30:57 PM PDT by Clive
BRITAIN'S compromise land deal with Zimbabwe appeared in jeopardy yesterday after President Mugabe failed to give his approval, preferring to keep his whereabouts a mystery while the Nigerian Foreign Minister waited in vain to brief him.
The Zimbabwean leader had been in Libya last week to negotiate cheap fuel supplies for his crumbling economy from his ally, Col Muammar Gaddafi. His officials have refused to disclose his whereabouts since Thursday, when the deal was hammered out, saying only that he was abroad on a "brief holiday". Mugabe's silence fuelled fears that he will ignore the accord.
Sule Lamido, the Nigerian Foreign Minister, was kicking his heels in Harare after arriving yesterday to brief Mr Mugabe on the terms of the agreement brokered by Commonwealth ministers in Abuja, Nigeria.
Mr Mugabe has made no public comment on the deal, but he has ignored previous pledges by his ministers to end the invasions of white-owned farms by violent mobs funded by his ruling Zanu-PF Party. The Abuja accord was signed by Stan Mudenge, his Foreign Minister.
The timing of the deal has also raised suspicions. It comes shortly before next month's Commonwealth summit in Brisbane when Zimbabwe's land crisis was expected to dominate talks, prompting the belief that Harare is attempting to fend off criticism with a deal that it has no intention of implementing.
Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, has emphasised that "progress will depend on events on the ground". A senior British official said: "Nobody is starry-eyed about this. The test will be what happens now."
Leaders of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) dismissed the deal as a sham. Under the agreement, Britain will release £34 million of its taxpayers's money for a 'fair and just' land redistribution programme if the rule of law and order is restored and squatters are removed from farms that have not been listed for acquisition.
Tendai Biti, the MDC's shadow foreign minister said: "Abuja gave the Mugabe regime a propaganda coup. It allowed Zanu-PF a triumphant hand by making land the issue and said nothing about respect for human rights, about respect for the courts. The whole thing is as naive as it is untrue.
"The British said nothing about election monitors for next year's presidential election, but they agreed to put their £34 million back on the table. How can you give money for nothing? Abuja isn't a treaty, it's just a gentlemen's agreement and Mugabe's regime can't be trusted."
Learnmore Jongwe, the MDC spokesman, said: "This is a political crisis, not a land crisis, and the Commonwealth said nothing about the crisis in the judiciary, nothing about the persecution and bombing of the independent press, and nothing about Mugabe's bloody attempt to cling to power."
There were also indications that Zimbabwe was rowing back on Abuja after Mr Mudenge said the government would only move squatters off farms not earmarked for resettlement. As Harare has already designated 95 per cent of white-owned land for seizure (amounting to 24 million acres), only a few farms will benefit from the accord.
No respite from the violence and intimidation has come about since the deal was signed. On Friday, squatters prevented farmers from working in the Doma district, a tactic intended to force them into bankruptcy, and yesterday Zanu-PF bused in thousands of youths to Bulawayo to vote in mayoral elections for which they were not registered.
In the latest land invasion, more than 150 squatters yesterday moved onto Logan Lee farm in Beatrice near Harare, destroying tobacco seed beds and burning the compound where black farmworkers live.
He's probably in Switzerland visiting his money.
So far, 98 percent said NO, Mugabe will do just as he pleases.
He is an African Statesman. That cannot be refuted. Respect him for what he is.
A tyrant...hey, not everybody's ready for honest elections.
One can only presume that you are some sort of inbred hillbilly racist, who wants to see black people denied justice.(sarcasm off)
Much like Yassir Arafat is a head of State, and not merely some grubby little terrorist.....
One of the most pernicious perversions of the un is elevating an assortment of thugs, dictators, tyrants, rogues, and robbers of their own people to "heads of state...."
It would be 'disrespectful'of established interstate norms, however, to 'take them out' as a substitute for war against their conscript troops.
Better that 100,000 Iraqis die than that some French-speaking, tea-sipping, cookie-pushing twerp of a foreign service officer be offended or perturbed by the assassination of someone who lives in a palace.
Hardly more than 30 out of the almost 200 members of the U.N. are anything like a decent modern country, and only a dozen or so more are relatively efficient dictatorships. The rest constitute the 'Dogpatch' of world politics. Zimbabwe is sadly typical of the sorry state of affairs throughout much of the formerly colonized world. Independence has been no blessing to the people of Africa. To pretend that these ramshackle little satrapies are real modern states is a joke.
They are effectively renegade protectorates sans protectors, and despite the neo-Marxist rhetoric, there is no power, especially not the U.S., particularly eager to pick up the imperial mantle.
Africa needs a re-shuffle of peoples and boundaries, but God only knows what form this may take.
The odds favor a rather bloody affair, and for a rather long time. Pity.
"Pity About Africa....."
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