Zimbabwe police continue round-up of white farmers

Zimbabwe’s government stepped up its efforts to seize white-owned land today as it rounded up more farmers defying eviction notices.

A total of 133 farmers who failed to heed an August 9 deadline to leave their farms had been arrested since Friday, said police spokesman Andrew Phiri.

There would be -no favour or compromise- for those who broke the government’s land redistribution laws, he said.

The increasingly unpopular government of President Robert Mugabe is ignoring court orders and Western condemnation and plans to seize nearly 5,000 white owned farms, claiming they are to be distributed to landless blacks.

About 2,900 farmers have already been ordered off their land, but 60% of these failed to comply, said Jenni Williams, a spokeswoman for the farmer’s pressure group, Justice for Agriculture.

Farmers had no intention of confronting the police but would fight for their farms and their title deeds through the courts.

"Farmers are not defying the government, but rather orders they believe to be illegal," she said.

Phiri said no violence had been reported over the past two days.

Justice for Agriculture reported that one farmer was beaten up by ruling party militants and police at his Harare home Saturday, despite having vacated his farm.

Williams said between 30 and 40 of the farmers who were arrested had since been freed on bail.

The others remained in police cells and were hoping to appear in court Monday.

Among those arrested were four farmers whom police saw fighting a brush fire northwest of Harare.

"Heaven knows what the charges will be," Williams said.

The farmers’ lawyers believe the eviction orders violate constitutionally entrenched rights of freedom from racial discrimination, and also contain technical errors, rendering them invalid.

However Assistant Police Commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena said police would continue arresting farmers until they received an instruction to cease doing so from the attorney general’s office.

This policy would also apply to farmers who had won court orders staying their eviction, he said.

Among those who have obtained an Administrative Court order to delay the planned seizure of his ranch is former Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith, 83.

Smith, who led the fight against majority rule between 1965 and independence in 1980, said he intended to carry on producing food regardless of the threat of a two year jail sentence.

Police have not yet visited his property outside the central city of Gweru.

The government claims the farm seizures are an extension of its efforts to liberate the country from colonial rule, which left most of the best farmland under the control of whites.

The policy has contributed to more than two years of political chaos in Zimbabwe, brought the country to the brink of economic ruin and contributed to widespread food shortages which threaten half the population.

Government opponents accuse Mugabe of using the land issue to cling to power, despite having lost his people’s support.

Several Western governments have imposed targeted sanctions against senior Zimbabwean officials, freezing their overseas assets and denying them entry visas.