Commonwealth visit could lead to further isolation

A Commonwealth mission charged with monitoring September's Abuja agreement began a two-day visit to Zimbabwe on Thursday. The visit came as farming organisations and civic groups said that state-backed invasions of white-owned farms have escalated despite the deal the government signed in Nigeria pledging to end the land crisis.

"We welcome the visit because it will show the world that things have actually got worse since Abuja," Lovemore Madhuku, chair of the influential National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) told IRIN on Thursday. Analysts said the ministerial mission would probably try to set a timetable for the government to comply with the Abuja agreement that links British funding for an orderly and legal land reform programme to government calling a halt to the violent seizure of white-owned farms.

"One problem with Abuja was that it didn't say when the chaos on occupied farms should cease, it's a loophole that Mugabe is using to maintain the status quo," a Harare-based economist told IRIN. Nigerian Foreign Minister Sule Lamido leads the mission, which includes Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon, British Foreign Office Minister Baroness Valerie Amos, Kenyan Deputy Foreign Minister Peter Odoyo and South African Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana.

President Robert Mugabe's government has been giving mixed signals about the visit. While it agreed to cooperate with the Commonwealth team, an article in the state-controlled Herald newspaper on Thursday attacked Britain for not implementing its side of the Abuja deal.

Another Herald article criticised the European Union (EU) for allegedly telling Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge earlier in the week that Zimbabwe would face sanctions unless it accepted EU observers into the country to witness presidential elections next year.

When opening talks with the Commonwealth delegation Mudenge warned against such threats. "Some are suggesting a complicated system of extortion and bribes using an exotic rendering of the conclusion on electoral support as currency, and as threats of all manner of unspecified measures as the bludgeon for proselytising Zimbabwe," he told the visiting ministers.

The government has also criticised white farmers for mounting a "propaganda campaign" aimed at showing that the government was failing to implement the accord. The mainly-white Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) said last week that after surveying most commercial farms in the country it had found that a further 700 had been occupied or disrupted since Abuja.

The CFU warned that output of key crops, such as tobacco, wheat and maize, could fall by 40 percent next year. "We're very concerned that government will try and stage manage this Commonwealth visit. We have not been approached to show the delegation farms that represent what is really going on," CFU spokeswoman Jenny Williams told IRIN.

After meetings with Mugabe and Mudenge, the delegation spoke to stakeholders and representatives from civil society. On Friday, the delegation was due to travel to the countryside by helicopter to see the situation on the ground. Analysts said it was unlikely that the visit would have much affect on Mugabe's controversial land reform programme.

"If South Africa and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have failed to moderate his (Mugabe's) policies, its hard to see how the Commonwealth can have an impact," economist Tony Hawkins told IRIN. He predicted that the visit could lead to further international isolation for Zimbabwe.