Pressure mounts on Zimbabwe's white farmers

Ruling party militants and local officials began putting pressure on a few of the hundreds of farmers defying a government order to leave their homes, farmers’ leaders said today.

Among a dozen incidents reported around the country, five farmers in southeastern Zimbabwe left their land early today after local officials, armed police and soldiers warned them they were violating the eviction laws, a farmers’ group said.

Justice for Agriculture, a new group calling for the evictions to be challenged in court, said militants elsewhere threatened violence if farmers did not abandon their properties.

A black settler on one farm in the Banket tobacco and corn district fired a pistol in the air in an effort to drive the owner and his black workers away yesterday, said Jenni Williams, a spokeswoman for the pressure group.

A black manager employed by a white farmer was assaulted by militants yesterday northwest of Harare, she said.

At least four other farmers were under pressure from black settlers to leave, said Williams and the Commercial Farmers Union, representing 4,000 white farmers.

Impatient settlers may have been emboldened by remarks yesterday by President Robert Mugabe during symbolic celebrations marking the guerrilla war that ended white rule more two decades ago.

Mugabe praised militants and “young men who slugged it out on the farms” during his programme of land seizures over the past two years.

“They are the new war veterans ... not impostors but genuine fighters for their land,” he said.

Land occupations have been led by veterans of the guerrilla war, politicians and ruling party militants.

The farmers’ union said farms in the southeastern Middle Save district were visited on Sunday by state officials escorted by several police and soldiers who asked owners why they were still on their land and ordered them to go.

“It is a pressure tactic,” said Colin Cloete, head of the union.

The stand-off with white farmers came as half Zimbabwe’s 12.5 million people face a severe hunger crisis, according to the UN’s World Food Programme.

The UN agency blames the crisis on drought combined with the agricultural chaos caused by the seizures.

The government had taken no official action against hundreds of white farmers defying eviction orders since a deadline passed on Thursday.

The government has targeted 95% of white-owned farms for seizure in its often-violent land reform programme.

Nearly 3,000 white farmers face eviction. About 60,000 farm workers are estimated to have been left jobless on farms already shut down.

About 350,000 workers live with their families on white farms and evictions threaten to displace as many as 230,000 workers, farmers said.

The government claims its programme is a final effort to correct colonial era imbalances in land ownership. Critics said 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 Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party.

Human rights groups have expressed concern over allegations the government was withholding food supplies from opposition strongholds.

Mugabe said yesterday that he would not tolerate opposition to his plans to redistribute white-owned farms to blacks nor would he allow whites to retain massive farms.

However, he said he was willing to allow “loyal” whites to stay on some land.

The Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans’ Association, which has led the often violent occupation of white-owned farms over the past two years, said its members would not take the law into their own hands to remove defiant farmers.

“It is now the responsibility of the government of Zimbabwe to make sure the laws of Zimbabwe are obeyed in all respects,” chairman Patrick Nyaruwata said.