Abuja | Thursday
A COMMONWEALTH conference on the situation in Zimbabwe was due to get under way in Nigeria early on Thursday with arriving delegates expressing a cautious optimism after an offer from white farmers aimed at resolving the country’s land dispute.
Ministers and officials from Australia, Britain, Canada, Jamaica, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Zimbabwe, along with Commonwealth Secretary General Don McKinnon, were due to meet with host Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo for a working breakfast before launching the meeting around 9:30 (0830 GMT).
“We come here with a spirit of optimism and high hopes that we can help solve the problem” in the southern African country, McKinnon said on arrival from London late on Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, Zimbabwe’s government announced it was accepting the offer of nearly one million hectares of farmland from white commercial farmers.
The initiative “represents a home-grown solution which amply shows that Zimbabweans are capable of solving their own problems,” said Vice President Joseph Msika.
However Msika said that the country, whose economy has been pushed to the verge of collapse by months of political violence and upheaval, would need financial assistance from outside to pay compensation for land seized.
“Without assistance from outside, Zimbabwe alone is not able to finance this,” he said.
The British RAF plane that brought McKinnon from London also brought British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, Nigeria’s Foreign Minister Sule Lamido and officials from Jamaica and Australia.
The foreign minister of Zimbabwe and ministers from Canada and South Africa were expected to arrive early on Thursday for the meeting.
While Zimbabwe has been keen for the meeting to focus purely on the issue of land and financial compensation, Britain, the former colonial power, and other countries have highlighted concerns over political violence, the rule of law and transparency.
The small southern African country with a largely poor majority black population and a largely wealthy white minority has been shaken since February 2000 by seizures of white-owned farms by landless blacks and by violence by pro-government militants.
While all sides agree reforms are needed, political opponents of President Robert Mugabe, who has been in power for 21 years and faces elections in 2002, have been attacked, killed and beaten by his supporters with the apparent backing or acquiescence of the police.
Britain has spearheaded international criticism and Mugabe has, in turn, accused the former power of trying to continue running the country and failing to pay compensation for land reforms he says were agreed in 1980 independence negotiations.
Lamido, the Nigerian foreign minister, said he was “extremely hopeful” about the meeting which he said had been called by Obasanjo to help broker agreement between what he called “two friends of Nigeria”.
“Both Britain and Zimbabwe are friends of Nigeria and the president wants to see what we can do to broker an agreement between our friends,” he said. Meanwhile, the farm of Ian Smith, the octogenarian former prime minister of Rhodesia, has been invaded by veterans of Zimbabwe’s liberation war, the white farmers union said Wednesday.
“His farm has been invaded,” said a Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) representative.
Smith’s farm is in the Midlands, in the central Shurugwi Province.
The representative did not say whether Smith (82) was threatened during the invasion or provide further details.
Smith, who was prime minister of Rhodesia when it was a British colony, unilaterally declared independence from Britain in 1965. The ensuing liberation war against white minority rule in the country, from 1972 to 1979, claimed at least 27 000 lives. Under pressure from Britain, Smith stepped aside and Rhodesia became independent in 1980, with the new name Zimbabwe.
Liberation war hero Mugabe became president, and, in a reconciliation gesture, allowed Smith to stay in Zimbabwe. – AFP