Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe on Saturday admitted that his government’s land redistribution has been fraught with problems.
”The conference deliberated on and debated our agrarian reforms. It is clear this is an area with some problems,” Mugabe told his party activists at the close of the ruling Zanu-PF’s annual conference.
He cited the problems as multiple ownership of farm land by some of his party’s top officials, under-utilisation of land and white farmers still not keen to give way to landless blacks.
”We still have [white colonial] Rhodesian farmers resisting land reforms, often supported by some of us in the party and government,” Mugabe said.
Zimbabwe’s land redistribution, launched in 2000, have seen about 4 000 white farmers lose their properties as part of a policy that Mugabe maintains will correct imbalances created under British colonial rule.
In August, Parliament passed reforms that legally ban white farmers from challenging land grabs. Fewer than 500 white farmers still own land in Zimbabwe.
Critics have alleged that the changes, which have driven out thousands of large-scale commercial farmers, have partly contributed to food shortages.
Mugabe blamed government officials for inadequate agricultural inputs, as well as lack of technical support for farmers and low rainfall for the poor agricultural output and food insecurity in the country.
”There are serious shortcomings in government planning and steps will have to be taken to correct them,” Mugabe said.
He also promised that due to widespread irregularities in land allocation, his office will now be in charge of all distribution.
”No land can be apportioned without our office saying yes. We did this because we saw, we had experienced a lot of irregularities, a lot of corruption, a lot of favouritism.
”We want a fair distribution. We all know that fairness did not happen in every case, people were taking farms and so on … It’s not good and it does not give us a good name. So let us be orderly,” he said.
Mugabe pledged to improve security on the farms, weeks after a white farmer was reportedly burnt to death in his bedroom by suspected arsonists, on a farm near the capital.
Motion to reject UN envoys
At the conference, Zanu-PF also urged the government not to entertain any more ”clandestine” envoys sent to Harare under the auspices of the United Nations.
”The conference resolved to encourage government to rethink its position on entertaining any future UN envoys sent into the country as clandestine and insidious agents of the British and other Western countries in pursuance of their hidden agenda of regime change in Zimbabwe,” said a conference statement.
The resolution was adopted a day after Mugabe accused UN envoy on humanitarian affairs and relief-aid coordinator Jan Egeland, who visited the country earlier in the week, of being a ”damn hypocrite and a liar”.
The long-time leader hinted on Friday that he might ban any more emissaries sent from the UN because he believed they were shoring up Britain’s anti-Zimbabwe campaign.
Mugabe said Egeland misrepresented the facts of a meeting between the two men by claiming that they had discussed a critical report compiled by another UN envoy, Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, who spent two weeks in Zimbabwe in July assessing the impact of the government’s urban demolition campaign.
The head of state said no reference was made to the Tibaijuka report during their two-hour meeting in the capital.
The conference said it is convinced that the Tibaijuka report was ”a direct product of some anti-government non-governmental organisations operating in Zimbabwe”.
Harare has rejected the report, saying it exaggerated the facts and ignored the fact that victims of the clean-up campaign had a safety net on which they could rely.
”Most of those affected by the clean-up programme have rural homes or farms they can return to,” said Zanu-PF, adding Zimbabwe has one of Africa’s lowest rates of urban squalor.
Zanu-PF said it is disappointed that Egeland failed to stick to the truth about his Harare trip and decided to tell the media of its outcome before UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who had sent him to Zimbabwe.
It said contrary to the UN’s assertions that food shortages are a result of controversial land reforms, the country has experienced three successive years of drought, but the government has ensured nobody has died of hunger.
Zimbabwe embarked in May on an urban clean-up exercise that saw tens of thousands of people lose their shelter and livelihood.
Opposition lose court bid against leader
Meanwhile, a high court on Friday threw out a bid by some members of Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), to win legal backing for their highly divisive decision to suspend party leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
Judge Yunus Omerjee dismissed an application by MDC deputy secretary general Gift Chimanikire asking the Harare court to enforce a decision taken two weeks ago by a party disciplinary committee suspending Tsvangirai.
”The court has considered the submissions brought before it and in the result the application is hereby dismissed,” Omerjee said, adding that he would provide the full judgement later.
Once a major political force challenging Mugabe’s grip on power, the MDC has been bogged down in infighting over Tsvangirai’s decision to call a boycott of the November 26 Senate elections.
Tsvangirai maintained that the elections were a waste of money at a time when the country was facing severe food shortages, but his opponents within the MDC contended that voters should be given a choice at the ballot box.
Tsvangirai had dismissed the suspension as unlawful and defied the committee’s ban on holding rallies, making public statements, visiting party offices or using party property.
Mugabe’s Zanu-PF won 43 of the 50 contested Senate seats, while the MDC picked up seven seats in the elections that were marred by poor turnout.
Tsvangirai told supporters at a rally in Harare on Sunday that he would never comply with the suspension order, saying the disciplinary committee was chaired by an ”ignoramus” — referring to his deputy, Gibson Sibanda.
In papers submitted to the high court, Tsvangirai’s lawyer, Selby Hwacha, argued that the suspension was void because the MDC leader had not been charged and convicted of an offence.
He said the MDC constitution ”empowers the committee to suspend only where a member has been found guilty of an offence”. — Sapa-AFP