Zimbabwe farm workers taking the heat

IOL

By Jeremy Lovell

29th May 2000

Harare – Activists of Zimbabwe’s ruling party beat and intimidated farm workers who did not attend its election rally, farmers said on Monday.

“They took a roll call and sent people to farms whose workers were not adequately represented and beat them up,” claims a spokesperson for the Commercial Farmers’ Union.

Zanu-PF, which is facing its biggest election challenge in 20 years, held the rally near Glendale, 80km north of the capital, Harare, on Sunday.

“There is also widespread extortion going on all over the country as they demand food, money, transport and shelter,” the spokesperson. “They are running out of money.”

President Robert Mugabe, who does not face re-election until 2002, has called parliamentary elections for June 24-25 for which parties and their candidates have until Friday to register.

In South Africa, government officials were not available to comment on weekend newspaper reports that President Thabo Mbeki had secured money from Norway and Saudi Arabia to fund the acquisition of 118 white-owned farms in Zimbabwe for redistribution to landless blacks.

Mbeki’s African National Congress (ANC) met a high-level Zanu-PF delegation in Johannesburg on Saturday and closed ranks with Mugabe’s party, demanding unconditional British funding for land redistribution.

The Mugabe government has accused Britain of reneging on past promises to help settle the land redistribution issue.

Dead people’s names on voters list

The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has been combing the electoral roll to ensure that all 120 of its candidates and the 10 people who have to nominate each of them are on the roll in the correct constituencies.

“It really is a shambles,” said MDC parliamentary candidate David Coltart. “We haven’t been able to get a copy for ourselves, yet we know Zanu-PF has one.”

The MDC said at the weekend that it already had found serious anomalies in the voters’ roll, including names of dead people and members of the same household listed in different constituencies.

The government, in what is widely seen as an attack on whites and particularly British nationals, has said anyone found to be holding two passports would be barred from voting. Zimbabwean law prohibits dual nationality.

Coltart, who said he renounced British citizenship years ago to become a Zimbabwean citizen, said he might have to go to court to prevent his candidacy from being rejected.

Foreign diplomats said privately that as whites formed less than one percent of the country’s 12-million population and were, therefore, electorally irrelevant, the move was pure harassment.

At least 24 people, mostly black, have been killed and hundreds beaten and forced to flee their homes in the face of a campaign of land invasions and political intimidation in the past three months.

Farmers and diplomats said at the weekend that police, who have been criticised for failing to stop the violence, appeared to be taking a more active role in crime prevention.

Mugabe has condemned the violence, but said the invasions by party supporters and war veterans of more than 1 000 of the country’s 4 500 mainly white-owned commercial farms was justified because the process of land redistribution had been too slow.

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