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Mugabe plays race card
07/04/2008 08:35 - (SA)
Harare - President Robert Mugabe called for Zimbabweans to protect their land from whites, stoking emotive land issues as the country anxiously awaited presidential poll results, a newspaper reported on Monday.
"Land must remain in our hands. The land is ours, it must not be allowed to slip back into the hands of whites," Mugabe was quoted as saying by the state daily Herald amid reports that his loyalists invaded several white-owned farms at the weekend.
Speaking at a funeral of his wife's uncle, Mugabe urged Zimbabweans to jealously guard the land for which thousands of freedom fighters died during the liberation war in the 1970s.
"Today, we cannot afford to retreat in the battle for land," said Mugabe.
Controversial land reforms
On Saturday, Mugabe's supporters seized one of Zimbabwe's few remaining white-owned farms, state media said, amid heightened tensions over the unclear outcome of last week's presidential elections.
Ruling Zanu-PF spokesperson Patrick Chinamasa had accused the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) of seeking to reverse Mugabe's controversial land reforms.
"The MDC claim they have won and they are unleashing former white farmers on farms occupied by new farmers to reverse the land reform programme.
Earlier state television had reported that the southern city of Masvingo had seen a large influx of whites and that Mugabe's supporters had seized a farm "in reaction to reports of former white commercial farmers who are trickling back to reoccupy... land".
Farmers leaders said at least five farms had been invaded, but police had moved in to disperse the so-called "war veterans", many of whom were born after Zimbabwe gained independence 28 years ago.
'We are prepared to act in defence'
A leader of war veterans in the southern Masvingo province, where the first fresh invasion took place on Saturday, Isaiah Muzenda, threatened farmers with unspecified action.
"We are also warning them of strong action if they continue to tread on that dangerous path.
"We are prepared to act in defence of our land. We will take very strong action, which I will not reveal, against such actions from the unrepentant white former farmers," Muzenda was quoted as saying by the paper.
Mugabe had often used the war veterans to intimidate opponents and they were at the vanguard of the occupations of some 4 000 white-owned farms during his controversial land reform programme, which began in 2000.
Critics blamed Mugabe's land reform programme for Zimbabwe's meltdown from regional breadbasket to economic basket case.
Faced with 80% unemployment and six-digit inflation, almost one third of Zimbabwe's 13 million population had left the country, both to find work and food as even basics such as bread and cooking oil were now hard to come by.
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