OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Saturday
ZIMBABWES President Robert Mugabe on Friday scoffed at white farmers sincerity, who this week pledged to work with the government to resolve a land reform crisis.
“Now they are saying ‘we want to negotiate with government, we want to work together with government'” Mugabe said in an address on state television.
“Do they really mean it, with honest and in sincere terms or they want again to hoodwink us?” he said in his first reaction to overtures by the mostly white 4_500-strong Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) for the resumption of dialogue with government to resolve the land impasse. White farmers on Wednesday expressed their commitment to re-open dialogue with government to resolve the violence-wracked land reform scheme.
“Commercial farmers re-confirmed their absolute commitment to urgent dialogue with government, without preconditions, and to assisting in the successful, orderly implementation of land reforms,” they said at the end of their meeting.
But Mugabe, speaking in a mixture of English and Shona to hundreds of flood victims in the country’s northeastern Muzarabani district, said some of the farmers had expected Britain, the former colonial power to step in with aid in the land dispute.
“Some [farmers] are saying maybe Britain will come to our assistance – that is what shows us that you [white farmers] are still nationals of Britain, you want help from Britain, you don’t seek for help from us,” Mugabe said.
“Okay, so let Britain assist you,” said Mugabe adding but “Britain can never, never, ever get us off the policy we have adopted with regards to land reforms, never ever, no matter what,” he added.
The CFU special congress took place this week after more than a year of violence in Zimbabwe’s countryside linked to forcible invasions of hundreds of white-owned farms by veterans of the nation’s liberation war.
The farmers have turned to the courts, and they have already declared Mugabe’s land reform plan unconstitutional, ordering the eviction of illegal occupiers. – AFP
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