Farmer Slain Amid Zimbabwe Land Occupations

A farmer was killed with shotgun blasts and four others abducted in the first reported slaying of a white landowner during Zimbabwe’s wave of illegal land occupations, a farmers group said today.

David Stevens was abducted from his occupied property near Macheke, 75 miles east of Harare, the capital, and driven into the bush, where he was shot, said Commercial Farmers Union officials.

Four of Stevens’ neighbors who went to his assistance after he was confronted by squatters Saturday were abducted, and their whereabouts were not immediately known, the union said.

John Osborne, a neighbor who witnessed the killing, said Stevens, who was in his 40s, was hit in the head and back by shotgun blasts, the union said. Osborne was beaten and hospitalized, it said.

President Robert Mugabe, whose party backs the squatters, has refused to force an end to the occupations, describing them as a justified protest against the ownership of one-third of the nation’s productive land by the descendants of British settlers.

Opponents have accused him of backing the squatters to secure support in upcoming elections. But his government Friday appealed for an end to the stalemate, a day after the High Court ordered police to evict the squatters.

On Saturday, a group of former guerrillas in the bush war that led to Zimbabwe’s independence vowed to continue their takeovers.

Chenjerai Hunzvi, head of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Assn., said Saturday that he was powerless to order squatters to leave white-owned land.

“If there are human rights, we have right to our land . . . and that must be respected,” Hunzvi told about 500 cheering supporters at the ruling party’s headquarters in Harare. “The redistribution of land must be speeded up.”

Zimbabwe’s 4,000 white-owned farms occupy about a third of the country’s productive farmland, while millions of blacks are landless and impoverished. Since the end of February, thousands of squatters armed with clubs, axes and guns have invaded more than 900 white-owned farms and demanded that the farmers sign away their land.

Police resisted the court order to evict the squatters. One officer was shot and killed April 4 as he tried to arrest a suspect in the beating of a white farmer, union leaders said.