OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Monday 11.40am.
ZIMBABWE’s race-based land crisis has escalated with the invasion of more than 200 white-owned farms by thousands of people led by independence war veterans.
The government and police should act immediately to prevent “an escalating state of anarchy,” said David Hasluck, director of the Commercial Farmers’ Union, representing commercial farmers who own 30% of the land.
He said police commissioner Augustine Chihuri has ordered that the invaders should be moved by dawn on Monday, but the war veterans are staying put.
“They are saying they are the law here and don’t take instructions from police,” said Hasluck, whose organisation represents the country’s 4000 mainly white commercial farmers.
He said he has been assured by the police chief that President Robert Mugabe now agrees that the invaders should be moved off the farms, after saying last Thursday that the government will not act against them.
Mugabe, who came to power at independence in 1980, says white colonists stole Zimbabwe’s land in the first place and the black majority should be able to take it back without paying compensation.
Mobs led by veterans of the 1970s war against white-minority rule have arrived at farms scattered throughout the country on trucks and in buses and set about allocating themselves plots and building homes.
Hasluck said there had been a number of “nasty incidents” in which squatters had entered the farmhouses, and in a number of cases wives and children had fled the farms to safety. — AFP