No arrests on deadline for white farmer evictions

A NEW deadline for Zimbabwe's white farmers to quit their properties and make way for landless blacks expired yesterday with no news of fresh arrests.

John Worswick, Vice Chairman of farm lobby group Justice for Agriculture, said some farmers had hurriedly left their land as the 1200 GMT deadline approached, but would soon return.

“I’m sure a lot of them will be going back to their farms tomorrow. We also had a lot of farmers on their properties who haven’t been arrested,” Mr Worswick said.

“The threat was very real, it was there... but it hasn’t happened. We are looking at a situation of a damp squib, it was an empty threat if you like,” he added.

President Robert Mugabe has ordered 2,900 commercial farmers to quit their land without compensation under a controversial program to seize white-owned farms and hand them over to landless blacks.

JAG says some 2,500 farmers defied the initial eviction orders. Police charged more than 300 defiant farmers.

Earlier, JAG spokeswoman Jenni Williams said the latest order for white farmers to leave their land yesterday appeared to be unofficial and urged farmers to defy it.

“This is not an official deadline. It’s a deadline that District Administrators and police have seemed to talk about, but we’ve had no government ministers actually say this is a specific deadline.”

Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said he was not aware of the yesterday’s deadline, but said police were carrying out arrests relating to an initial August 8 government deadline.

“It’s an ongoing exercise as far as we are concerned,” he said, without giving any details on new arrests.

Last Wednesday, Mugabe told white farmers to cooperate over the reforms, leave the country or face jail.

Zimbabwe has been in crisis since pro-government militants led by veterans of the 1970s liberation war began invading white-owned farms in early 2000.

Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, says his land drive is aimed at correcting colonial injustice, which left 70% of the country’s best land in the hands of white farmers.

Aid agencies say nearly half the country's 13 million people need food aid this year, a result of a wider food crisis in six drought-stricken southern African countries which they say has been exacerbated by Mugabe’s land reforms.