OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Friday 6.00pm.
GOVERNMENT, farmers and militant war veterans agreed at talks in Harare on Friday to set up a land commission to oversee the peaceful transfer of white-owned land in Zimbabwe to landless blacks.
David Hasluck, director of the Commercial Farmers Union, said the proposal has been agreed at a three-hour meeting between President Robert Mugabe, the CFU and war of liberation veterans who have invaded some 1200 commercial farms since February.
Hasluck said Mugabe has approved the idea, forged in three days of negotiations this week between the CFU and the war veterans, but has insisted that tribal chiefs also be represented on the commission.
The CFU will hold talks on Monday with Zimbabwean Vice-President Joseph Msika, Hasluck said, during which the establishment of the commisison will be discussed further.
It is hoped the establishment of a commission will defuse violence which has accompanied the land invasions, he added.
Three farmers have been killed and scores, if not hundreds, of farmworkers have been beaten by war veterans since the land-grab began.
Friday 2.00pm
ZIMBABWE’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change has dropped a threat to boycott forthcoming elections in protest at the government’s support for farm invasions by landless blacks.
However, it has not ruled out mass action and a general strike.
“There won’t be any boycott,” said David Coltart, an MDC legal expert and candidate in Zimbabwe’s second city of Bulawayo.
Linking the decision to the “astonishing response” the MDC has received from the electorate, Coltart said: “We are ready to go as far as we have to to change the situation in the country.” He said supporters opposed to a boycott have told MDC activists “they were ready to go and vote in any case.”
The opposition party had threatened on Wednesday to take steps against the “tyranny” of President Robert Mugabe, including a general strike and an elections boycott, in view of violence that has claimed at least 18 lives since February, most of them MDC supporters.
Coltart was to attend a meeting of the party leadership on Friday and Saturday, during which strike action may be considered instead. — AFP