Zimbabwe High Court to Rule on Farm Takeovers

Zimbabwe’s High Court will rule today whether police must enforce an order to evict thousands of squatters from white-owned farms in a case that tests the rule of law under President Robert Mugabe.

Veterans of the war against white minority rule in the former Rhodesia have invaded more than 500 of the 4,500 commercial farms, plunging the country into its worst crisis since independence from Britain in 1980.

Foreign Minister Stanislaus Mudenge, attending a Third World summit in Havana with Mugabe, said the land conflict was “a potentially explosive situation which will negatively affect the whole region if it is not resolved.”

The war veterans are demanding land that they say was stolen from their ancestors, and they have vowed to continue their campaign. Wednesday, they moved onto John Worswick’s Lindhurst Estate farm 75 miles west of Harare, the capital.

“We have come here for what belongs to us, for what belongs to the people of Zimbabwe,” war veteran leader Agrippa Gava said as about 40 supporters armed with axes and clubs chanted anti-white slogans.

Mudenge defended the occupations.

“There are no land invaders. They are ex-combatants, people trying to demonstrate their desire for a more just land redistribution by self-settlement,” he said.

The Commercial Farmers Union won an eviction order last month, but police chiefs refused to enforce it, saying they had insufficient manpower and feared civil war.

Atty. Gen. Patrick Chinamasa, asking for the ruling to be overturned, told Judge Moses Chinhengo on Monday that the court should not have issued an unenforceable order.

The invasions have crippled the predominantly white-owned farms that form the backbone of Zimbabwe’s now ruined economy.

Farmers and their workers have been attacked and their property damaged, and many have been forced off their farms or had to sign over large tracts of land.