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Zuma: Don't be unrevolutionary
13/10/2002 07:59 - (SA)
Harare - South Africa's foreign minister on Saturday voiced strong support for land reform in Zimbabwe, saying during a visit here that it would be "unrevolutionary" to criticise the controversial programme, state television said.
"People may have views about how you do it (land reform)... The real thing is that the issue is about the redistribution of land to the Zimbabwean people and that can't be wrong," Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said on the third day of her visit.
"It would be unrevolutionary to say it is wrong to give land,"
she added.
Outside Africa there has been disappointment over the South
African government's refusal to criticise land reform in Zimbabwe
which has allegedly seen a dozen white farmers killed and tens of
thousands of people displaced.
President Robert Mugabe's two-year old programme to take land
from whites to give to new black farmers has also been blamed in
part for recent fluctuations in the value of the South African
rand.
Quite tight economies
"Our economies are quite tight," Dlamini-Zuma acknowledged.
"When there is an economic problem (in Zimbabwe) of course that would also affect us."
The minister said relations between the two neighbours had been strengthened in the long term.
There are growing calls for land reform to be speeded up in
South Africa where whites own much of the productive land.
- Sapa-AFP
- SAPA
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