THURSDAY AUGUST 16 2001 Mugabe troops will carve up white farms http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-2001283765,00.html FROM MICHAEL HARTNACK IN HARARE IN A further move towards militarising Zimbabwean society, President Mugabe plans to deploy soldiers to subdivide 5,000 white-owned farms by next April's elections. Using soldiers instead of land inspectors and agricultural experts would help to create "a general mood and psychology of obedience," Joseph Made, the Agriculture Minister, said. Despite attempts to "ethnically cleanse" whites, one farmer said that they would go back to the land to try again. At the weekend a mob broke into the homestead in the Chinhoyi area where the farmer's parents-in-law, aged 81 and 77, have lived for more than 50 years and stripped it bare. "You are just so, so vulnerable and you feel so, so helpless," he said. "If you retaliate in any kind of way, you are in for the high jump - yet the police just sit and watch them loot all this stolen stuff on to vehicles. But what has happened is not going to make the farming community give up, so you wonder what is next." A neighbour, Briget, said: "We won't go back - there is absolutely nothing left. They have even taken the roof off the house." She and her husband had bought their farm only two years ago, when the Lands Ministry issued a certificate saying that the farm would not be required for resettlement for at least five years. Legal sources believe that the week-long spree of farmhouse trashing around Chinhoyi was aimed at breaking the white Zimbabwean farming community's will to resist, thus speeding up the takeover of properties in time for the campaign by Mr Mugabe for re-election. If all 5,327 designated farmers continue to contest designation, it could take the administrative court several years merely to rubber-stamp the seizures. Police have been deeply implicated in recent terror campaigns against white farmers, when officers said they had orders not to intervene. Farming sources said that using soldiers to divide plots "spells the end of any serious attempt to put ecologically sound and sustainable smallholdings in place of present large-scale commercial agriculture". Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said that Mr Mugabe wanted to hasten land reallocation to give recipients a stake in continuing the ruling Zanu (PF) party's 22-year rule. Use of soldiers in the farm takeover plan dovetails with the President's promises of plots to all 60,000 of his uniformed services and the recent posting of retired military and secret police personnel to key positions in virtually every department of state. The Consumer Council of Zimbabwe reported yesterday that 74 per cent of the country's 13 million people cannot afford basic necessities. The currency is worth 2 per cent of its value at 1980.
