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Constitution to be amended

    JOHANNESBURG

    President Robert Mugabe’s government plans to amend the constitution to give it the power to seize white-owned farms for resettlement without paying compensation, news reports said.

    The amendment, published in a government Gazette on Wednesday, would hold Britain responsible for paying compensation to farmers whose land will be seized. The government would need at least 100 votes in the country’s 150-member, ZANU-PF-dominated parliament, to pass the amendment.

    The proposed amendment comes one month after Mugabe’s ZANU-PF lost a referendum on a draft constitution which proposed, among other things, the seizure of white-owned land without compensation and the widening of presidential powers.

    Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s home affairs minister reportedly ordered former liberation fighters who have invaded white farms to leave the properties by Friday. Dumiso Dabengwa, told journalists on Thursday that as the government planned to give itself the right to take white land without compensation, there was no need to for the invasions.

    This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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