Parliament debates controversial amendment

Zimbabwe's parliament meets this week to discuss a controversial constitutional amendment which would empower the government to seize white-owned commercial farms without compensation for
the resettlement of disadvantaged communal farmers.

The amendment, identical to a clause in a draft constitution that was rejected in a national referendum in February, needs a two-thirds majority in the 150-seat parliament to pass into law. There are only three opposition MPs in parliament.

The amendment is being debated at a time when hundreds of white-owned farms have been occupied by landless peasants led by liberation war veterans demanding immediate resettlement, and protesting the defeat of the government's constitutional proposals. The amendment says that Britain, the former colonial power, is responsible for compensation awards, and empowers
the government to expropriate farms, paying only for improvements to the property rather than the land itself.

"As soon as the land amendment goes through, the land invasions will peeter out," economic analyst Eric Bloch told IRIN on Tuesday.

Welshman Ncube, a senior member of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), said the government-backed farm invasions are politically orchestrated rather than a spontaneous response to land hunger in the impoverished communal areas where the bulk of rural Zimbabweans live. "It has nothing to do with the land issue. Constitutionally, for 10 out of the 20 years of independence, the government has had unlimited power to do as it
wished with land resettlement," he told IRIN.

British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook met President Robert Mugabe on Monday on the sidelines of a summit of African and European leaders in Cairo, Egypt where they discussed the strained relations between the two countries. On land reform, Cook reportedly said that Britain would be prepared to help
fund a land reform programme that was "within the rule of law" and that tackled "the problem of rural poverty".

A senior embassy official in Harare told IRIN on Tuesday that Britain's position remains as it always has been. Britain would help fund resettlement, "provided it was transparent, cost-effective and alleviates poverty", as outlined at a donor meeting on land reform in 1998. So far, "we are waiting for the government to come back to us," the official said.