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| Africa Subsaharan | |
| Zimbabwe: Desperate Mugabe sends in his thugs to seize white farms | |
| 2008-04-07 | |
| Robert Mugabe sent gangs of militant supporters to invade white farms yesterday. The move indicates he is ready to use violence to cling on to power. War veterans from Zimbabwe's liberation struggle invaded eight of the few remaining white-owned commercial farms, driving at least four cattle ranchers off their land and seizing equipment and livestock. "I've got one farmer and his wife with two young children and people banging on windows, beating drums and telling them to vacate the farm," Hendrik Olivier, the head of the Commercial Farmers' Union said. State radio reported the war veterans had threatened to occupy all white farms in the southern Masvingo province. The resurgence of the war veterans, who led violent occupations of white farms during the government's land redistribution programme, raised fears that Mugabe's supporters would physically intimidate opponents ahead of a presidential election run-off. A high court judge is to rule today on an opposition demand to publish the results of the March 29 presidential poll. But Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party has demanded a vote recount, and a further delay in the release of results. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change - which claims its leader Morgan Tsvangirai won the vote outright - said it would not accept a recount and did not want a run-off. "How do you have a vote recount for a result that has not been announced? That is ridiculous," said opposition spokesman Nelson Chamisa. "We are not going to accept the so- called run- off. It is going to be a 'run- over' of Zimbabwe. People are going to be killed. We are not so naive a leadership to lead our people to slaughter." He accused Zanu-PF of vote fraud, saying that police have told opposition leaders that the ruling party has been tampering with ballots since early last week. A lawyer for Zanu-PF called for a recount because of "errors and miscalculations in the compilation of the poll result".
Unofficial tallies by independent monitors show Mr Tsvangirai won more votes than Mugabe - but fewer than the 50 per cent required to avoid a run-off. On Saturday Mr Tsvangirai called on Mugabe to step down and accused him of "preparing a war against the people" to boost his chances of winning a second vote. He expressed fears that the state would mobilise the armed forces, youth brigades and war veterans to terrorise voters into supporting the 84-year- old, who has ruled Zimbabwe since his guerilla army helped overthrow white minority rule in 1980. But he stopped short of saying the opposition would boycott any run-off. Mugabe has been accused of winning previous elections through violence and intimidation. Scores of opponents were killed during the 2002 and 2005 campaigns. His popularity has been battered by an economic collapse following the often-violent seizures of white-owned commercial farms since 2000. Some 5,000 farms were seized and about 300 white farmers remain on the land. A third of the population has fled the country and 80 per cent are jobless. Inflation is the highest in the world at more than 100,000 per cent. Official results for parliamentary elections, held alongside the presidential race, showed Zanu-PF had lost its majority in the parliament for the first time in the country's history. Final results for the 60 elected seats in the senate gave the ruling party and the opposition 30 seats each. | |
| Posted by:anonymous5089 |
| #10 I didn't know that any "White Farmers" still existed in Zim-bob-land |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2008-04-07 22:11 |
| #9 It's amazing that 300 farmers are feeding as many Zimbabweans as they are. |
| Posted by: Injun Elmealing3304 2008-04-07 21:41 |
| #8 Next up for redistribution: farms owned by light skinned blacks. |
| Posted by: charger 2008-04-07 21:15 |
| #7 Barbara: My thought too. When I saw the title (I just had to click it), I thought maybe Fred's found the secret to time travel. This really is not news, at least in the "new" sense. |
| Posted by: BA 2008-04-07 20:46 |
| #6 I'm shocked. I didn't know there were any white farms left. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2008-04-07 19:04 |
| #5 Coming up next: The 100 Million Dollar Bill. Get em while they're hot. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2008-04-07 13:04 |
| #4 So ... he wants his country to go from hunger and malnutrition to complete starvation? Well, that is progress, I guess. In a retarded sort of way... |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2008-04-07 12:59 |
| #3 I ain't no thug. I be an "ontrapenewer"...n a "war vetrin'... |
| Posted by: Farmin B. Hard 2008-04-07 11:08 |
| #2 The move indicates he is ready to use violence to cling on to power. The childish simplicity in that statement is positively charming. The newsworthy bits here are that any white farmers are still left in Zimbabwe and that there are people ZimBob has not already bought off using seized farms as currency. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2008-04-07 10:33 |
| #1 Mugabe has been accused of winning previous elections through violence and intimidation. Scores of opponents were killed during the 2002 and 2005 campaigns. I don't think there's anything stopping him this time either. |
| Posted by: Crolusing tse Tung2745 2008-04-07 09:27 |