Mugabe’s Allies Urge West to Help End Crisis

Key southern African leaders have rallied behind President Robert Mugabe, urging the West to provide funds for land redistribution and defuse the mounting political crisis in Zimbabwe.

Presidents Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Sam Nujoma of Namibia and Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique said after talks with Mugabe at Victoria Falls on Friday that Western governments should make good on their promise at a 1998 donor conference to finance land reform.

Squatters and veterans of Zimbabwe’s 1970s war of independence have occupied hundreds of white-owned farms in a drive for land that they say was stolen under British colonial rule.

The chaos has plunged the southern African country, already reeling from economic hardship and a fuel shortage, into political turmoil.

“We think the donors, including Great Britain, have to deliver. They have to fulfill their commitments,” Chissano told a news conference after the talks.

Mugabe did not speak at the news conference. The besieged white farming community had hoped that he would say something to defuse the volatile situation in the countryside.

The farm invasions and political violence ahead of elections that are expected in May have left seven people dead, and many more have been hurt at the hands of the invaders and government supporters.

The government says Zimbabwe’s 1% white minority controls about 75% of the best farmland and a third of all the country’s arable land. Farm organizations say the figure is closer to 40%.

Farmers said late Friday that they were waiting in fear amid death threats and warnings of further invasions. They said their workers were fleeing into the bush in fear of the war veterans and young supporters of the ruling party.

A farmer said many landowners had abandoned their property or sent women and children away.

“We have been hearing reports of people getting threats against their lives and that they’re going to be invaded,” he said.

“There is a general sense of fear. People are hearing that new invasions are on the cards,” said another farm source.