Invaders target city buildings

Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s militant black empowerment lobby group, the Affirmative Action Group (AAG), has launched a number of property invasions in Bulawayo similar to the occupations of white-owned farms by war veterans, Zimbabwean news reports said Wednesday.

AAG members and supporters, mostly unemployed youths, have seized four buildings in Bulawayo, one owned by an Asian businessman and the others by a white businessman, the reports said.

AAG founder and president Philip Chiyangwa was quoted as saying that the occupation of vacant properties had started in Bulawayo, the country’s second city, and would spread to other centres as part of an overall strategy for blacks to re-acquire what “rightfully belonged to them”.

“It’s part of the whole strategy to tell whites that they don’t own what they all claim belongs to them,” he said.