Posted on 06/10/2002 4:51:56 PM PDT by blam
Mugabe flaunts his land grab to summit
By Bruce Johnston in Rome and Peta Thornycroft in Harare
(Filed: 11/06/2002
President Robert Mugabe used a United Nations food summit in Rome yesterday to hail his land grab as a "visionary" response to the hunger and poverty laying waste to his country.
Robert Mugabe takes his seat before the start of the UN food summit in Rome He made his policy of expropriating white-owned land the mainstay of his address at the opening day of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's World Food Summit.
He told fellow delegates that his government had "responded to the people's cry for land" by embarking on a "fast-track acquisition and resettlement programme". This "now enables people to fight poverty by directly working on their own land.
"Their own, I say with emphasis, because land, being the most important natural resource of any country, must belong to, and be owned by, the indigenous people.
"Hence Zimbabwe's land must rightly belong to Zimbabweans, that being the true test of our national sovereignty." He thanked countries that had offered assistance to Zimbabwe "in this period of need" but dropped a reference to Britain.
In Zimbabwe yesterday, the opposition accused Mr Mugabe of being a "world-class hypocrite" and said his summit attendance was "obscene".
Prof Welshman Ncube, secretary-general of the Movement for Democratic Change, said: "While Mugabe is starving the people of Zimbabwe to death through the partisan distribution of food, he has the audacity to squander precious foreign currency attending this summit when the food crisis is of his own making."
In the past 28 months, Mr Mugabe and his cronies have seized 90 per cent of productive white-owned farmland, most of which is now fallow. With all staple foods in short supply, the opposition said distribution of food aid in several well-documented cases was denied to its members, including children.
"Winter crop farming has been distributed for political expediency," Prof Ncube said, in reference to more than 100 white commercial farmers who were ready to plant wheat but were unable to go ahead because Joseph Made, the agriculture minister, did not give permission before he left for the summit in Rome.
Farmers face up to two years in jail if they grow crops on their land which is under notice of final acquisition.
Mr Mugabe travelled to Rome despite a European Union travel ban because he is not excluded from attending UN events. He was thus able to use the four-day summit as a loophole to defy "smart sanctions" imposed by Brussels.
Mr Mugabe and his delegation have been staying at the five-star, £500 a night Excelsior hotel since Saturday, police sources said. The historic hotel is on Via Veneto, one of the centrepieces of the city's dolce vita in the 1950s and 1960s.
Yesterday the hotel, a majestic temple of marble, gilt, brocade, frescos and precious carpets, where some suites boast private cinemas, saunas and sundecks, had become a fortress, protected by armed police and security guards.
The Nigerian delegation is also staying there. All day yesterday, silver Mercedes limousines glided in and out of its entrance carrying delegation members, while wives returned with their designer shopping.(..and they want your money.)
Mr Mugabe's bodyguards were reported to have roughed up a television cameraman at the hotel and tried to seize his film after he "door-stepped" the Zimbabwean leader. Mary Robinson, the UN high commissioner for human rights, suggested that some African leaders at the summit had been responsible for the hunger and deprivation afflicting their countries.
"I think it is true that leaders of developing countries do not always adopt good policies," she said. "But I think it is very welcome that the Africans themselves have recognised the need to tackle corruption and strengthen the rule of law and human rights standards.
"There are very grave problems with Zimbabwe and I have raised those issues publicly and have written to President Mugabe on several occasions," she added. "I am very concerned about the situation."
So says Mary Robinson. What, precisely, are you "concerned" about Ms. Robinson? The fact blacks are seizing land from whites or that blacks in Zimbabwe are starving?
I suppose it is if you are a savage.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Out standing in front of a firing squad, if there's any justice.
So the white farmers who've lived in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe all their lives, were in many cases born there, and hold Zimbabwean passports, are not really Zimbabweans, in Mugabe's estimation. Out of anyone else's mouth, this would be the rankest evidence of racism, ethnic cleansing, genocide, you name it, but coming from a black Marxist tyrant, it passes without comment.
Yup, turning the farms over to 'hunter-gatherers' is real 'visionary.'
Feed yourself, big guy.
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