ZIMBABWE: WAR VETERANS LEADER CHENJERAI HUNZVI

Описание: (15 Jul 2000) English/Nat
XFA
Tension mounted in Zimbabwe on Saturday as Vice President Joseph Msika promised that 200 formerly white-owned farms were about to be distributed to landless blacks.

Militant veterans of the country's bush war convened at the head quarters of the ruling ZANU-PF party.

To a cheering crowd, war veterans leader Chenjerai Hunzvi announced that any farmer who refused to give up his farm would find himself "six feet under."

On Friday, the Commercial Farmers Union accused black war veterans and ruling party militants of threatening at least 50 white farmers with violence and death if they didn't give up their lands.

Farmers are being told to get off within days or even hours or be forced off.

In some cases, the Union said, farmers have been told they would be killed if they resisted.

War veterans and ruling party militants occupying more than 1-thousand-700 farms say a government programme of land redistribution is going too slowly.

The Commercial Farmers Union fears activists are preparing to overrun homesteads they previously left untouched.

President Robert Mugabe, who has described the occupations as a justified protest against unfair land ownership by whites, has ordered police not to intervene in the illegal occupations.

Voters in February rejected a constitutional amendment allowing the government to seize white-owned farms for landless rural poor without paying compensation.

The ruling party later passed the amendment anyway.

About 4-thousand white farmers own a third of the nation's productive land, where about 2 million farm workers and their family members live.

About 7-and-a-half million people live on the other two-thirds.

Zimbabwe is facing its worst economic crisis since independence and farm leaders have warned that unless law and order is restored, the agriculture-based economy could collapse completely.

SOUNDBITE (English)
"The commission farmers have been trying to say they offer the government some farms. They have nothing to offer the government. They have something to relinquish because they took our land."
SUPERCAPTION: Chenjerai Hunzvi, war veterans leader

SOUNDBITE (English)
"Land is going to be taken by the government. If the government is going to delay taking the land, we will take it."
SUPERCAPTION: Chenjerai Hunzvi, war veterans leader

SOUNDBITE (English)
"The whole process is designed to ensure fair and equitable redistribution of land to correct the racial imbalance in land apportionment created by the former colonial rulers. Those who cry foul of this programme don't have the interest of this country at heart. They're either people who reside outside Zimbabwe or are influenced from outside."
SUPERCAPTION: Joseph Msika, Zimbabwean Vice President

SOUNDBITE (English)
"Shall we say it's the beginning of the end of the uncertainty. I'm sure of that. Yes. I think there is an understanding in our country that we have to get together and do things in a manner that's suitable to everyone in our country."
SUPERCAPTION: David Hasluck, director of the Commercial Farmers Union

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