Posted on 09/09/2001 3:44:28 AM PDT by Clive
author/source:Sunday Times (UK)
published:Sun 9-Sep-2001
posted on this site:Sun 9-Sep-2001
Article Type : News
Around the country, farms lie wrecked and smouldering from weeks of rampages
Tom Walker and RW Johnson
President Robert Mugabe was taking a holiday in Libya yesterday as his war veterans refused to move from white-owned farms, despite government assurances that Zimbabwe's 18-month crisis over the illegal occupation of farmland was at an end. Many farmers said they felt betrayed by Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, who pledged £36m in compensation for white farmers giving up land in a deal reached by Commonwealth ministers in Abuja, Nigeria, last week. Diplomats in Harare commented that if Mugabe was seeking to rehabilitate himself in time for next month's Commonwealth summit in Brisbane, cementing his newly formed friendship with a pariah such as Muammar Gadaffi, the Libyan leader, would hardly enhance his credibility.
Zimbabwe's government ministers preferred not to comment on their leader's mysterious trip abroad - which was said to be combining business and pleasure - when he had so many pressing duties at home. The Nigerian foreign minister, Sule Lamido, was in Harare, hoping to verify the Abuja accord on land reform. Southern African regional leaders are due to fly in to meet Mugabe tomorrow. "He's got a lot of security issues to consider while in Libya," said an official close to the government. "He's also tying up an oil and foreign currency deal, and basically everything here has to wait until the old man gets back and gives his blessing."
Around the country, farms lie wrecked and smouldering from weeks of rampages. The war veterans' leader, Joseph Chinotimba, claims his followers are legally entitled to remain on white-owned land. Farmers in the Doma and Chinhoyi regions north of Harare complained this weekend of continued intimidation by veterans' groups that surrounded their houses and kept up a constant barrage of drumming, screams and threats. On the road south from the capital, there was a renewed invasion by about 300 squatters of a farm in the Beatrice area, and in nearby Norton, soldiers and police turned up on one white property demanding that the farmer's wife extinguish a fire that had started as they arrived. The woman was then forced to run for nearly a mile while the army and police drove behind, threatening her with hose pipes.
State television saw things differently, however. The governor of Manicaland insisted that palls of smoke over farmland were the result of whites destroying grass needed by veterans to thatch their huts. "What does Abuja mean?" asked one exasperated farmer. "Mugabe has given nothing away, and there's no real commitment to end the violence. Jack Straw has walked into a stupid trap. There are all these headlines of a deal and in fact half the country is shut down."
Although Colin Cloete, the president of the Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU), insisted that the accord augured well for the future, his members are deeply divided. Just before the Commonwealth foreign ministers met, an agreement was reached between a private sector-sponsored faction of the CFU called the Zimbabwe Joint Resettlement Initiative, and the Mugabe government, which one farmer said yesterday had "sold us all down the river". Supporters of the initiative, however, said it was the last chance to pull Zimbabwe back from the brink of anarchy. "It's a dream that you're ever going to get 100% backing," said one source close to the talks with the government. "But you've got to realise how desperate the farmers were. People have got to get on with their lives - not just the white farmers but also the poor indigenous guys."
According to the Amani Trust, a local human rights organisation, 27 black workers have died this year after being shot, burnt or beaten; 1,770 have been assaulted; six have reported being raped, and 583 have been detained or kidnapped. Over the same period more than 20,000 have been forced from their homes. "Apart from the deaths, all figures can be assumed to be conservative," said a spokesman for the trust. Mugabe's government has been given a list of farms to be handed over, comprising nearly 1m hectares of land, a fifth of what Mugabe says is eventually needed by landless blacks.
"It has taken 20 years for them to willingly submit this list," said Olivia Muchena, the minister responsible. "And we have had a step-by-step verification process, checking the farm deeds, the geographic locations, the exact status of every farm."
Yet there are contradictory claims about what should happen next. The CFU says 551 will be handed over; the government says 461. And while the Abuja accord says all war veterans will move off farms not designated for handover, 90% of farms have appeared on one or more of a series of lists compiled since 1998, and nobody was moving yesterday.
A spokesman for Straw denied he had been "sold a dummy" by Mugabe, and said there would be concerted pressure from Commonwealth nations and the European Union to ensure next year's presidential election was effectively monitored. "The test of Abuja is on the ground," he said. "Mugabe's government has made a commitment not just to Britain, but to African leaders. There will be no money until the violence has definitely ended."
There is the Bulawayo municipal election this weekend.
There is a meeting with Mbeki and the rest of the SADC leaders in harare.
Should be an interesting Monday.
So, he really needs this rest from all the activities of the past few weeks.
And, he can take a quiet satisfaction in having received a standing ovation at Durban for his speach against white racism.
So what could be better for a busy statesman than a quiet weekend with a good friend and fellow statesman like Gaddafi while his happy citizenry are safe in the hands of his ministers and party cadre.
He's been a very busy despot, I'm glad that you don't begrudge him the time spent in beautiful Libya.
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