Augustine Mukaro

A fresh wave of farm takeovers hit the southeastern Lowveld in Zimbabwe this week with Zanu-PF supporters and land officers seizing five plots with a ready-to-harvest sugarcane crop. The farm owners, most of them South Africans, have since appealed to the South African embassy in Harare to intervene, reports the <i>Zimbabwe Independent</i>.

<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/199502/Zim_icon.GIF" align=left>In their latest efforts to win the March 31 parliamentary election in Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe Africa National Union-Patriotic Front candidates have resorted to politicising the scarcely available grain in the country to starve suspected opposition supporters into submission.

The Zimbabwean government has once again taken its begging bowl to the donor community for financial assistance, despite claims that the country can go it alone. Highly placed sources at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said a number of government ministries have been engaged in talks with the UNDP over the past two months.