London | Sunday
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe aims to expel all white farmers from Zimbabwe before next year’s elections, the Sunday Telegraph reported, citing a secret document which outlines the plans. The British broadsheet said a secret order from Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party to self-styled war veterans outlines the political goals of the campaign being waged against white farmers.
Entitled “Operation Give up and Leave”, it reads: “The operation should be thoroughly planned so that farmers are systematically harassed and mentally tortured and their farms destabilised until they give in and give up,” the Sunday Telegraph said.
It added that the document was circulated in July, just before a recent round of invasions in which many farmers were evicted and farms brought to a standstill by the forced removal of their workers.
Farmers who resist, the document says, should face the “Pamire-silencing method”, a reference to Chris Pamire, a businessman and former Zanu-PF supporter who fell out with Mugabe and was killed in a mysterious road accident, according to the Sunday Telegraph.
Referring to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, the document says: “The opposition should be systematically infiltrated with highly-paid people to destabilise and cause divisions and infighting.”
Meanwhile war veterans were promised “big rewards if the opposition and white farmers are brought to their knees”, the newspaper reported.
Concerns have been growing that violence will intensify as Mugabe, angered by the continued presence of the whites, steps up his election campaign.
Meanwhile, Richard Caborn, Britain’s minister for sport, was urging the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to reconsider its October tour of Zimbabwe after the BBC was banned from the event, the Sunday Telegraph reported.
In an interview with the paper, Caborn said Britain viewed Zimbabwe’s ban on the BBC “very seriously”.
Zimbabwe is unhappy at the BBC’s coverage of the violence against white farmers and has expelled its correspondents.
Land reforms in the southern African nation — aimed at redressing colonial inequities which left 70% of prime agricultural land in the hands of relatively few white farmers — have poisoned its political and economic life.
Violence has left dozens of blacks and at least seven white farmers dead. – AFP