Whites Prepare to Quit Farms Ahead of Zimbabwe Land Seizures

White families whose land is threatened with government seizure prepared to abandon their homes Friday ahead of an expected invasion of squatters, farm leaders said.

Late Friday, the government announced that the state would immediately begin seizing 804 farms, most of which are white-owned.

Farm leaders urged calm in this southern African country, where the government has ignored constitutional ownership rights and laws protecting private property. The often-violent occupations of more than 1,400 white-owned farms began in February.

Farmers met Friday at provincial offices of the Commercial Farmers’ Union and local farmers’ clubs as their wives packed bundles of valuables in the event that hurried exits were necessary.

Vincent Kwenda, director of land acquisition in President Robert Mugabe’s office, told the state-run Herald newspaper that the farms would be resettled by landless blacks immediately after owners received individual notices of seizure from the government, probably starting Monday.

The farms named were among those on a list issued by the government in 1998 after their owners had fought the state’s seizure plans in court. That list included 841 farms, and there was no indication given why some had been omitted from Friday’s list.

Mugabe has called the illegal occupations a justified protest against unfair landownership, mainly by the descendants of British settlers.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan “remains convinced . . . the issue of land acquisition, redistribution and resettlement will not be resolved without good-faith efforts by all parties to achieve a mutually agreed way forward,” U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said.

About 4,000 white farmers own about a third of the country’s productive land, supporting 2 million farm workers and their family members.

The Movement for Democratic Change, the biggest threat to Mugabe’s ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front in parliamentary elections scheduled for later this month, accuses Mugabe of allowing the occupations and promising free land to the rural poor to bolster his flagging popularity and to punish white farmers for openly supporting the opposition.