Zim: 'This is ethnic cleansing'
2005-08-03 09:15
Harare - The leader of Zimbabwe's dwindling population of white farmers on Tuesday likened attempts to strip them of any remaining rights to their land to ethnic cleansing.
President Robert Mugabe's government has seized about 5 000 white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to black Zimbabweans since launching its "fast track land reform" in 2000.
It is now proposing a constitutional amendment that the Commercial Farmers Union says would withdraw farmers' rights to contest the seizure of their properties in court.
"As virtually every white farmer has been listed for acquisition in some way or other, this surely provides direct evidence that a process of ethnic cleansing is taking place," union leader Douglas Taylor-Freeme said at the group's annual congress in the capital, Harare.
Mugabe's government defends the campaign as a bid to redress colonial era imbalances in land ownership.
But critics charge the often-violent seizures, coupled with erratic rainfall, have crippled Zimbabwe's agriculture-based economy. The United Nations estimates about four million people are now in need of food aid.
Taylor-Freeme said many of the farms seized - which cover 70% of Zimbabwe's most productive land - are now lying unused. Agricultural production has dropped 60% and exports are a fraction of what they were before 2000.
Taylor-Freeme dismissed government claims over the past year that more hectares have been planted and higher tonnages of grain are expected as "a national joke."
Further land seizures would only "enhance the collapse of the agricultural industry ... and reduce any meaningful investment," he said.
Taylor-Freeme estimated about 30% of evicted white farm owners were still "hanging on" to tiny portions of their land despite the presence of pro-government militants.
Zimbabwe's security police chief, who oversees land seizures, rejected over the weekend an appeal by Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono for "progressive" whites to return to help the farms' new black owners to revive production.
"We are not inviting any white farmers back, never," Didymus Mutasa was quoted as saying in state-run media. "The land is for black people."
- AP