HUGH NEVILL & PHILIPE BERNS-LASSERRE, Victoria Falls | Saturday 10.30am.
African heads of state who met with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe rallied around him on land redistribution, but made it clear they were deeply concerned about the stability of the entire region.
Their solution to the often violent occupations of white-owned farms in Zimbabwe was to call on donor countries — notably Britain, the former colonial power — to honour old pledges and provide the funds necessary to buy the properties to allow the Harare government to settle landless blacks on them.
“The central issue in this dispute is the provision of resources which would enable the resettlement process, agreed by everybody, to start,” President Thabo Mbeki told journalists at the end of a nine-hour summit in the resort town of Victoria Falls on the border with Zambia.
He met with Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, Mozambique’s President Joaquim Chissano and President Sam Nujoma of Namibia.
Mbeki, Chissano and Nujoma said after the summit that the land problem had been allowed to fester, and should have been addressed by the donors long ago.
“This problem is not going to go away unless it is addressed,” Mbeki said.
Chissano, who chaired the summit, said: “We think the donors, including Great Britain, have to deliver.”
In London, Foreign Office Minister Peter Hain reacted by saying the money was available, but only if land reform was “within the rule of law.”
Britain said initial redistribution had been tainted by nepotism and corruption and suspended payments with about $70-million handed over.
A Zimbabwean delegation headed by Local Government Minister John Nkomo is due to visit London on Thursday to discuss the issue — a trip the presidents hailed as a renewal of dialogue.
The visiting presidents at the summit made it clear they did not think such occupations would spread to their countries — a signal of reassurance to the outside world, which often regards the region as a unit, according to leading South African businessmen.
But the occupations here are accompanied by an economic crisis which is already having an effect throughout the region.
Zimbabwe is unable to pay its electricity bills to South Africa, fuel is often critically short, businessmen have stopped investing here, and the knock-on effect has weakened the South African rand.
The white farmers produce export crops, but hundreds of their farms are now occupied by squatters led by veterans of the independence war, and analysts say that wholesale redistribution would produce thousands of tiny subsistence farms and send agricultural export receipts plunging.
Mbeki, Chissano and Nujoma took pains not to criticise Mugabe, who sat unsmiling as they spoke.
While, in neighbouring Botswana, President Festus Mogae meanwhile said he feared the crisis would result in an influx of refugees. — AFP