White farmers defiant as deadlock continues

The deadlock between white farmers and the Zimbabwean government that has ordered them to abandon their land showed no signs of breaking today.

For a third straight day since the eviction deadline passed, farmers defying the order reported no official moves to forcibly remove them.

Nearly 3,000 white farmers were ordered to leave their property by Friday as part of a plan to seize white-owned lands and turn them over to blacks.

Several senior government officials have warned white farmers they face arrest and possible imprisonment of up to two years if they continue to defy eviction orders.

Farming officials reported tension in some agricultural areas over the weekend, but said no violence was reported ahead of scheduled celebrations tomorrow to mark the guerrilla war that led to Zimbabwe’s independence from white rule two decades ago.

President Robert Mugabe is to address an annual gathering at Heroes Acre, a shrine to black guerrillas killed in the seven-year bush war that led to liberation in 1980.

The burial of a senior former ruling party politician near the shrine will be included in the ceremonies, the state media reported Sunday.

Bernard Chidzero, an economist and former finance minister in the government died Thursday at the age of 75.

Chidzero, a political moderate, is among several politicians who did not fight in the independence war but have been posthumously declared national heroes by Mugabe and buried with military honours.

In the past, Mugabe has used ceremonies at the burial shrine to harshly criticize the nation’s white population.

Whites make up less then one percent of the country’s population but owned most of the country’s commercial farmland until Mugabe began his land reform programme.

However, despite Mugabe’s promises to redistribute the farms to landless blacks, many farms have gone to his confidantes and ruling party officials.

But the disruptions in farming have contributed to a looming famine. Relief agencies say up to half of the country’s 12.5 million population face a severe hunger crisis in the coming months.

The government says its “fast track” land seizure programme was launched in 2000 as a final effort to correct colonial era injustices.

Critics say it is part of the increasingly authoritarian government’s effort to maintain power amid more than two years of economic chaos and political violence mainly blamed on the ruling party.

The government has targeted 95% of white-owned farms for seizure.