Mugabe Unveils Land Reform Election Manifesto
May 4, 2000

Rangarirai Shoko
PANA Correspondent

HARARE, Zimbabwe (PANA) - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has announced a
land-based election manifesto for his governing ZANU-PF party, and blasted
former colonial power Britain for interfering in the country's internal
affairs and obstructing state land reform plans.

He told thousands of supporters Wednesday that the party would implement the
controversial land reform programme involving the transfer of six million
hectares of white-owned farmland to landless blacks and compel Britain to pay
for the exercise as part of its agreed colonial obligations.

Mugabe, who faces his toughest electoral challenge since he became president
after independence in 1980, gave no date for parliamentary elections that he
postponed in April to allow adequate preparations, including voter
registration.

He has continued to trade disagreements with Britain over the land issue, and
described London's protests about his government's land reform plans
"hypocritical."

He also accused the British government of Prime Minister Tony Blair of
whipping up negative international opinion of Zimbabwe as a cover for its
refusal to honour its colonial obligations.

"Whether or not the British pay (for land reform), we are going ahead with
the programme. We cannot take orders from Number 10 Downing Street or from
Robin Cook (Britain's foreign secretary)," Mugabe declared.

Zimbabwe and Britain have locked horns over land reform, with the latter
refusing the former's demands to bankroll the exercise. The reform seeks to
redress a colonial land ownership imbalance in which just 4,500 white farmers
own more than 70 percent of the country's arable farmland.

Mugabe's administration intends to acquire half of the land holdings of the
white farmers and distribute it to landless blacks who were consigned during
colonial rule to the countryside where they farmed on infertile soils.

But Britain says Harare should adequately compensate white farmers from whom
it acquires the land, a request Mugabe refuses to accept on grounds London
had promised to fund the exercise as part of an independence deal.

In recent weeks, Britain had mobilised international pressure on Zimbabwe to
back-down on the reform programme.

However, Mugabe said he would implement the reforms in spite the pressure, as
that is his party's main campaign theme for the parliamentary elections.
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 Copyright © 2000 Panafrican News Agency. All Rights Reserved.


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