-Caveat Lector-
Mugabe: I'll Take Land From Whites
By ANGUS SHAW
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - President Robert Mugabe vowed to seize land from
whites and not pay them anything for it as the government had previously
promised.
``We have waited long enough and now is the time to take back our land,''
Mugabe said Saturday night at a ruling party convention. He said his party
would scrap the constitution's ``stupid clause'' that guarantees compensation
to landowners.
Mugabe's new position is likely to estrange his government further from
international investors, Western donor nations and financial institutions
supporting market-led reforms in the ailing economy of this southern African
country.
Mugabe told delegates of his Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front
that Zimbabwe's 12.5 million blacks could not achieve economic goals as long
as the 60,000-strong white community controlled large tracts of land and
dominated the nation's industry and commerce. Under the plan, landless blacks
would be settled on the seized farms
``Without land, there is neither economic development nor empowerment,'' he
said. He justified his move by saying that British settlers ``seized our land
from us, our ancestors, and no compensation was paid. It was taken for
nothing.''
About 4,000 white farmers, mostly the descendants of British settlers, own
about a third of the country's productive land. Known as Rhodesia, Zimbabwe
was a British colony before independence in 1980.
Since 1980, the state has bought more than 2,000 white farms for
resettlement, but the program has been plagued by mismanagement and
corruption. Only about 70,000 black families have been resettled, less than
half the target of 160,000 families.
Until 1992, the bill of rights in the constitution allowed for land
acquisition only under ``willing seller-willing buyer'' deals. But the ruling
party subsequently passed laws that permitted the government to seize farms
but pay compensation related to the properties' market value.
The constitutional clause that guarantees compensation for appropriated land
could be scrapped in a revised national constitution that is to be put to a
referendum next year ahead of parliamentary elections.
Opposition groups accuse Mugabe of using land seizures as a ploy to distract
attention from worsening economic hardships.
Last year, soaring prices blamed on economic mismanagement triggered food
riots that forced Mugabe deploy troops to quell civil unrest for the first
time since independence.
Labor unrest and a series of strikes continued in 1999 as inflation spiraled
to a record 70 percent. With hundreds of businesses shutting down,
unemployment reached 50 percent.
About 7,000 delegates from across the nation attended the five-day ruling
party convention.
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