- Title: ZIMBABWE: WHITE FARM ISSUE DOMINATES ELECTION CAMPAIGN.
- Date: 8th April 2000
- Summary: BINDURA, ZIMBABWE (APRIL 7, 2000) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. MV/TRACK: ZIMBABWEAN PRESIDENT ROBERT MUGABE WITH CROWD 0.25 2. GV/MV: VARIOUS OF SUPPORTERS CHEERING AND DANCING (2 SHOTS) 0.39 3. GV: SECURITY 0.43 4. SCU: SOUNDBITE (English) ZIMBABWEAN PRESIDENT ROBERT MUGABE: "We have extended the policy of national reconciliation to the
- Embargoed: 23rd April 2000 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: BINDURA AND SHURUGWE, ZIMBABWE
- Country: Zimbabwe
- Reuters ID: LVAAKXI5IQJ2APJTHC5MVRMKDX4M
- Story Text: Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, fighting to extend
the increasingly unpopular 20-year rule of his ZANU-PF party,
has played the land card that has won him the peasant vote in
every election so far and begun a round of political jousting
with the country's former prime minister, Ian Smith.
On Thursday (April 6) Robert Mugabe persuaded his
party, a coalition of forces that fought for and won
independence from Britain and Ian Smith's renegade white
administration in 1980, to authorise the confiscation of
white-owned farms.
The bill absolved Mugabe's government of the obligation to
compensate farmers and ostensibly put the onus on Britain.
Calling the constitutional amendment the end of the
revolution, he said whites should accept the seizure of the
farms he chooses to take or quit the country.
"If they want to go, we will open the borders for them.We
will give them a police escort," he told supporters.
The promise of large-scale land redistribution has helped
to ensure comfortable victories in all previous parliamentary
and presidential elections since white rule ended, but
frequent disappointments have made voters sceptical of
Mugabe's promises.
Only 100 of ZANU-PF's 147 members of parliament -- exactly
the minimum needed for the required two-thirds majority --
voted for the land-grab amendment on Thursday.
"The fact that he got the barest minimum votes is an
indication he is not carrying all his members with him," said
Heneri Dzinotyiwei, president of the opposition Zimbabwe
Integrated Programme.
"There are divisions over strategy, and quite a number of
his people have doubts on whether the party programme has the
support of the people."
Both Dzinotyiwei, who fought alongside Mugabe in the
independence war, and Nkiwane said Mugabe lacked credibility.
Mugabe used to draw thousands to his rallies, but only
1,500 turned out on Friday (April 7) for his first speech
since the land vote.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, whose Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) handed Mugabe his first political
defeat in February when it successfully campaigned for a "no"
vote in a referendum on constitutional change, drew 12,000 in
the same town a few weeks ago.
To prove he is serious about "giving land to the people",
analysts say they expect Mugabe to target dozens of farms
around the country for immediate occupation.
Mugabe said on Friday he had not ordered the invasion of
an estimated 800 farms by people claiming to be veterans of
the liberation war, but that he did support the move.
He went on to vent a personal attack on the former prime
minister, Ian Smith, citing him as responsible for the deaths
of 50, 000 Zimbabweans during the liberation struggle - a
claim that Smith swiftly refuted: "Well I say that is not the
truth, quote me his case - I'd like to answer it and I believe
I can answer all of them, the points which are raised like
this - I mean I would like to know what his case is," he said
in a recent interview.
Invasions continued on Saturday with more farms being
claimed at Mazowe, near Harare, and in Kadoma.
But economists say the occupations could seriously
undermine the last efficient part of the Zimbabwean economy --
the farms that produce the staple maize crop and the tobacco
that is the main source of foreign exchange.
Zimbabwe is battling its worst economic crisis since
independence, dramatised in a severe fuel shortage that forces
motorists to queue for up to 12 hours for a tank of petrol.
The opposition says foreign exchange reserves have dropped
to the equivalent of one day's imports, and debts are piling
up so fast that importers cannot get credit outside the
country.
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