President Robert Mugabe on Monday ordered white farmers defying eviction orders to pack up and leave but said loyal farmers willing to cooperate with his government would not be left completely landless.
”All genuine and well meaning white farmers who wish to pursue a farming career as loyal citizens of this country will have land to do so,” Mugabe said.
After ignoring government orders throwing them off their land, hundreds of white farmers had anxiously awaited Mugabe’s annual Hero’s Day address to the nation, marking the guerrilla war that ended white rule more than two decades ago.
The deadlock between white farmers and the government continued for a fourth day on Monday. Farmers remaining on their land reported no official action to forcibly evict them since the deadline midnight Thursday.
Mugabe stopped short of calling for immediate action against defiant farmers.
But those who ”want another war should think again when they still have time to do so,” he said.
Mugabe said no white farmer need go without land but his government would not allow whites to remain on large properties or own more than one farm while clinging to ties with Britain, the former colonial power.
”To those who want to own this country for Britain, the game is up and it is time for them to go where they belong. There is no room for rapacious supremacists,” he said.
Nearly 3 000 white farmers have been ordered to leave their land as part of the country’s often violent program to seize white-owned farms and give them to blacks. The government has targeted 95% of white-owned farms for seizure.
Several senior government officials have warned white farmers they face arrest and possible imprisonment of up to two years if they continue to defy eviction orders.
The government says its ”fast track” land seizure program was launched in 2000 as a final effort to correct colonial era injustices.
Critics say it is part of the increasingly authoritarian government’s effort to maintain power amid more than two years of economic chaos and political violence mainly blamed on the ruling
party.
The evictions deadline came as half Zimbabwe’s
12,5-million people face a severe hunger crisis, according to the World Food Program. The WFP blames the crisis on drought combined with the agricultural chaos caused by the seizures of commercial farms,
mainly owned by whites. – Sapa-AP