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Zimbabwe -- Beware the U-turn***……….The key to understanding what Mugabe and his Zanu PF party are up to - for blacks as well as whites - is the word "leases." The ruling party moguls, security force chiefs and 54,000 others getting so-called "model 2" holdings, capable of being farmed on an individual basis, will not be granted the freehold their 5,000 white predecessors had (The first 2,900 seizure and eviction orders fell due on August 9 and scores of whites were detained over the past weekend for defying them, although their constitutional validity is heavily in doubt). At the first sign of political disloyalty the "new farmers", as Mugabe calls them, will be liable to instant eviction.

"Owning land for Britain" means supporting civil society, or talking to human rights groups critical of Zanu PF, or voting for an opposition party. Mugabe showered praise on his ruling party youth militia, now commonly known here as the "Green Bombers". Their fraudulent claims to be ex- guerrillas from the 1972-80 bush war in Rhodesia were exposed in the early days of farm invasions, after the February 2000 constitutional referendum. It was the crushing defeat of Zanu PF in that referendum that caused Mugabe to unleash country-wide violence under cover of agitation for land reform in order to ensure a semblance of victory in the June 2000 parliamentary elections and the March 2002 presidential poll.

This campaign of terror Mugabe calls the "Third Chimurenga" or civil war. "The Third Chimurenga has yielded a New War Veteran: these young men and women who slugged it out on the farms in support of their elder veterans...We are not apologetic about our national youth service programme...it is mandatory, it is national, it links to the politics and defence of our country…It seeks to and will build a new national cadre who is self respecting, adequate, assertive and patriotic and thus does not apologise for being black," he said. Mugabe sees his enemy as "White-ism" - the route `"through which the forces of imperialism and neo-colonialism enter."

Mugabe either does not know that it is impossible to run commercially viable farms on the lord-and-vassal system he is imposing, or feels that the economic costs are more than offset by the blessings of "political stability" (i.e. he gets to stay in power until he can hand over to his children). Commercial agriculture here only prospered by being keenly responsive to world market trends. In the 20 years since the state monopoly, the Minerals Marketing Corporation, was created, millions have been lost through the tardiness of bureaucrats in responding to potential orders - they are paid for loyalty, not for initiative.

Doris Lessing, a founder member of Rhodesia's long defunct Communist party, concedes that her father's Kermanshah Farm at Banket (one of the 2,900 now being seized, although her family sold up 60 years ago) was hopelessly sub-economic at 400 hectares - and those were the days of ox-ploughing. To maintain competitive edge in an age of mechanisation, farmers need security of tenure, title deeds that can be lodged with financial institutions against loans.

Mugabe cheated his way to power and he must go, says US***America has issued its strongest attack yet on President Mugabe of Zimbabwe, describing him as an illegitimate leader who won power by fraud and saying it would encourage his people to "correct that situation". Stopping just short of calling for a change of regime, Walter Kansteiner, the US government's Africa policy chief, said America does "not see President Mugabe as the democratically legitimate leader of the country".

Mr Kansteiner said Washington was working with countries in Africa and Europe to "encourage the body politic of Zimbabwe" to "correct that situation and start providing an environment that would lead to a free and fair election". US support being offered to Zimbabwean aid organisations and human rights groups is reminiscent of the West's successful move to undermine Slobodan Milosevic by providing Serbian pro-democracy activists with money, computers and other aid.***

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