Posted on 08/10/2002 6:01:23 AM PDT by Clive
Harare - Zimbabwean officials threatened strong action against hundreds of white farmers defying a government order evicting them from their land, state media reported on Saturday.
Though farmers reported no serious moves against them since the midnight Thursday deadline to abandon their land passed, senior officials appeared infuriated that their orders were being ignored.
"All the excuses by the farmers show what an arrogant and racist bunch they are. It shows they want to derail the land redistribution programme by any means. They will not succeed," Ignatius Chombo, the powerful local government minister, told the state-run Herald newspaper.
Chombo said "appropriate measures" would be taken against farmers breaking the law.
Nearly 3 000 white farmers were ordered to leave their land as part of the country's programme to seize white-owned farms and give them to blacks.
'They will live to regret it'
Vice-president Simon Muzenda warned the authorities would act firmly against farmers opposing the "irreversible" land programme. "You are told by government what we want done and you simply do that," he told state radio on Saturday.
Co-vice-president Joseph Msika, head of the land reform task force, told state television late on Friday farmers staying on their land would "live to regret it".
"Those who are not going to work within the laws of Zimbabwe have nobody to blame but themselves. The law will take its course," he said.
The evictions deadline came as half Zimbabwe's 12.5 million people face a severe hunger crisis, according to the World Food Program. The WFP blames the crisis on drought combined with the agricultural chaos caused by the seizures of commercial farms, mainly owned by whites.
The government has targeted 95% of white-owned farms for seizure.
Only two incidents of pressure to leave
No attempts were made across the country Friday to force farmers off their land, the Commercial Farmers Union, representing 4 000 white farmers, said.
It set up an operations centre in Harare where officials said there were no reports on Saturday morning of forced evictions.
The union reported two incidents on Friday in eastern Zimbabwe in which ruling party militants and blacks resettled on seized land tried to pressure white farmers to leave.
Police intervened and defused the confrontation, officials said.
The farmers union said many farmers had packed up personal belongings and valuables for safekeeping ahead of the deadline, but up to three-fourths of those who faced immediate eviction vowed to stay until it became clear what the government was going to do.
Justice for Agriculture, a newly formed pressure group that has called on farmers to challenge evictions in court, said about 800 farmers abandoned their land in recent weeks as the deadline approached.
Another 300 farmers had taken impromptu vacations at the start of symbolic annual weekend celebrations honoring the guerrilla war that ended white rule and led to independence in 1980, the group said. - Sapa-AP
Governance by, for, and about thuggery.
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This more or less sums up the general philosophy of statists and government at all times and places up until the American Republic. The challenge to this idea by the Founders is the real reason why leftists hate America.
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