This is from The Observer, the stablemate of the London Guardian. Hope you
folks find it useful.

Hamjatta
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A shot away from anarchy

Zimbabwe faces civil war as black veterans vow to defy a court ruling against
seizures of white land.

Zimbabwe: special report

Burhan Wazir reports from Harare
Sunday March 19, 2000

The plastic trumpet tooted loudly over the park in Harare as more than 5,000
opponents of President Robert Mugabe's embattled administration chanted
slogans and voiced their hatred of one of Africa's longest-serving leaders.
'The President is dead,' shouted one demonstrator, standing in a fountain.
Behind him, the plastic trumpet continued its anarchic cacophony.
Zimbabwe is plunging headlong into chaos. Yesterday the demonstrators -
backing anti-government moves by the opposition party, the Movement For
Democratic Change - brought the capital to a standstill following a
humiliating defeat for Mugabe in the High Court. Judges ruled on Friday that
war veterans had 24 hours to vacate more than 400 white-owned farms they had
seized over the previous month.

The veterans are soldiers from Zimbabwe's war of independence. Backed by
Mugabe himself, they are protesting against land ownership by 'colonial'
whites. The President says the veterans should remain on the farms until the
government gives them their own plots. But most Zimbabweans believe Mugabe is
merely promising free land in an effort to shore up support for his
beleaguered government in next month's parliamentary elections.

But near yesterday's demonstrations another, more worrying rally was held by
more than 1,000 of the veterans who had taken over the most profitable farms.
They announced they will ignore the High Court ruling. 'No one, not the
government nor the courts, can keep us off the land,' said one former
soldier. 'It belongs to blacks.'

The veterans claim to possess arms caches which they would use to launch an
uprising should the state try to evict them - though these weapons are mostly
antique remnants of the war. Nevertheless, the spectre of full- scale civil
war gets closer every day.

Two decades after Mugabe won Zimbabwe's first majority rule elections, his
country lies in economic and political tatters. Unemployment is nearly 60 per
cent and inflation around 70 per cent, and the President's plans for a new
constitution have been firmly rejected by voters.

Anarchy is just a shot away, and the nation's white minority- sensing the
coming crisis - are beginning to leave. The British High Commission has
lodged a record number of applications for passports.

'This country is facing its worst economic crisis in 20 years,' says Ibbo
Mandaza, editor-in-chief of the African Political and Economic Monthly . 'And
Mugabe won't accept any share of the blame - neither for the corruption, nor
the mismanagement. It's difficult to see how he can hang on to power.'

In his desperation, Mugabe has turned on the nation's white minority,
accusing them of conspiring with his opponents to destabilise the country,
returning to the anti-white axioms that were the mainstay of his early
political career.

Mugabe formed his party, the Zimbabwe African National Union in 1963, and
used it to advocate deposing the white government of Rhodesia (as the country
was then known) by force. He was jailed for ten years in 1964, for speaking
out against the Prime Minister Ian Smith. 'The time has come for African
rule,' he said then.

After his election, Mugabe tempered his socialist leanings and finally
deleted all references to Marxism-Leninism - his party's creed - from the
nation's constitution in 1991. But much of Mugabe's latter years have been
marred by massive party corruption that has left his legacy in ruins.

Last month's draft constitution was riddled with controversy, as opponents
accused Mugabe of handpicking the Constitutional Commission's 400 members. At
least 200 were politicians from Mugabe's party.

On top of this crass manipulation, Zimbabwe has been brought to a grinding
halt by fuel shortages, while prices for basic commodities have rocketed.
'The corruption indicates a party too long in power,' says Ibbo Mandaza. 'The
result of this corruption is a hugely devalued currency, and inflated
prices.'

Mugabe's desperate political miscalculations are instantly apparent in the
farm seizures that shocked wealthy whites. A total of 4,400 white farmers own
more than half the country's productive land. War veterans captured 443 farms
throughout the country, disrupting production and antagonising workers.

Mugabe has endorsed the attacks, citing the squatters' actions as a protest
against Zimbabwe's colonial heritage.

Richard Brooker, 54, has lived in Zimbabwe his whole life. Until last week,
he owned four farms 30 miles north of Harare. But 50 war veterans moved in a
week ago yesterday. In the ensuing argument, Brooker was told to vacate his
farm with only what he could carry. A security team of five veterans is
installed in the farmhouse, as the remainder capture other farms in the area.

Brooker acknowledges that he knew land resettlement for black farmers was
coming. 'I'm not against the idea of establishing black farms, even as a
businessman,' he says.

'But there have to be parameters; you just can't have people charging in and
taking control of all we've built. I don't know how much longer I can live in
this country. This isn't an issue about land - it's Mugabe's way of clinging
onto power.'

Standing on the balcony that now acts as a look-out post on Brooker's farm,
the veterans' leader, Joshua Ndiweni, defends his soldiers' invasions with
revolutionary rhetoric. 'This is African soil. This is Zimbabwean soil. We
don't need whites here. Why should they be farming on our land? Why should
they make the profits?'

These war veterans are proving unpopular allies for Mugabe, however. Last
Thursday leaders of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans'
Association said that, if Mugabe lost the April elections, they would rather
the country be run by a military government than by the opposition. .

Such statements are likely to appal an electorate that still remembers
Mugabe's long, weary bush war of the Seventies. And Mugabe's past
resettlement schemes for black farmers have had disastrous results for the
economy. Since 1980, the Zimbabwean government has purchased more than 8.3
million acres of land from white farmers, yet much of the land remains
under-utilised. And Mugabe's populist gesture to shore up his flagging
support has ignored the reality of poorly trained peasant farmers with little
financial support.

'It's no good giving the land back to people who don't know what to do with
it,' says Colin Cloete, of Zimbabwe's Commercial Farmers' Union. 'What could
be more unproductive? This country is in deep financial crisis.'

Political pundits in Harare say Mugabe has twice been asked to step down in
recent weeks by party members horrified by the economic disruptions caused by
the invasions.

'His Cabinet is split,' says Masipula Sithole, Mugabe's opponent in the 1996
elections, and politics professor at the University of Zimbabwe. 'His
Ministers know African nationalism is no substitute for food in the belly.'









hkanteh

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