Government to seize farms

President Robert Mugabe has made land the centrepiece of his ruling party’s election manifesto and on Wednesday said that the government is to acquire five million hectares of white-owned farm land for redistribution.

Launching ZANU-PF’s manifesto under the theme “land is the economy, the economy is land”, Mugabe said that some 4,000 white commercial farmers owned 12.2 million hectares of the country’s prime agricultural land, while 70 percent of the country’s 12 million people were landless. “We will still be humanitarian, we want just about half of the 12 million hectares to come our way,” he announced.

Mugabe, who did not set a date for upcoming parliamentary elections, said that those not comfortable with his land reform policy were free to leave the country. He added that government supporters led by war veterans who had occupied white farms would not be ordered off.

ZANU-PF campaign strategist Jonathan Moyo told IRIN that Zimbabwe’s political crisis is related to a “fundamental struggle” over land ownership. “For once we have an election in Zimbabwe fought not over political power but over economic power.” He said that a presidential decree would be used “in the next 10 days” to amend the country’s land acquisition act to enable the seizure of white farms.

The farms have already been designated for acquisition, but the government’s original strategy was thrown out by the courts over procedural irregularities. Those stipulations would no longer apply under an amended land act. Moyo said that the government’s land redistrubution policy would create 600,000 new jobs over five years, and would be “within the rule of law”.

Spokesman for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, Learnmore Jongwe, said that the land issue is a “gimmick” designed to obscure the government’s economic failures. “The MDC believes land cannot be the first issue in the election. We believe the primary issue is the economy.” He claimed that the government’s campaign strategy is “violence and anarchy” in the countryside, and there is “no political will to deal with the land issue once and for all”.

Moyo, however, alleged that the political violence that has seen MDC supporters killed and intimidated has been fomented by former Rhodesian special forces white farmers conducting “Third Force dirty tricks”. He claimed they were being backed by the former colonial power, Britain.