This is from the Financial Times Interactive.

Hamjatta

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middle east and Africa
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Mugabe delivers stern warning to Zimbabwe's white farmers
By Tony Hawkins in Harare - 7 Apr 2000 20:01GMT



Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe delivered his harshest warning yet to
beleaguered white farmers in a speech that may prove the start of the ruling
party's election campaign.

Accusing the 4,500 white commercial farmers of bankrolling a new opposition
movement ahead of an election due next month, Mr Mugabe said he supported
so-called war veterans who have occupied about 800 white-owned farms.

Speaking at a party rally at the farming and mining town of Bindura on Friday
Mr Mugabe said: "At last the people of Zimbabwe have acquired their sovereign
rights."

His speech followed the passage of a constitutional amendment paving the way
for the expropriation without compensation of white-owned farm land on
Thursday.

He warned whites that they would not be able to prevent the surrender of some
of their land.

"Have we now come to the position where they are determined to fight against
Mugabe and his government? If that is the case, I will declare the fight to
be on and we will win it," he said.

"The white man has not changed. I appeal for him or her to repent."

Businessmen warned that in the eyes of international investors Zimbabwe had
crossed the Rubicon.

The Commercial Farmers Union, which represents the country's largely white
commercial farmers, said it was "very concerned".

Although bankers and business leaders also declined to speak on the record at
so sensitive a time, there was no disguising the mood of gloom and
foreboding.

"This time, we really have put ourselves beyond the pale," said one
investment analyst, while others warned of deteriorating business and
consumer confidence between now and the elections which Mr Mugabe says will
be held next month.

Claims by government ministers that war veterans would now withdraw from the
farms they have been occupying were swiftly rebuffed by Chenjerai Hunzvi, the
veterans' leader.

"There is no reason for us to leave before the land belongs to us. We have
waited for so long," he said.

Mr Mugabe clearly sees land expropriation as his best - if not his only -
hope of winning the parliamentary elections. Government sources say they are
confident that once the ruling Zanu-PF party wins the election, the British
government will have to choose between an orderly land redistribution
programme and a further deterioration in an already anarchic situation.

They see the constitutional amendment as a tactic to force the international
donor community generally to finance land reform rather than risk economic
collapse in Zimbabwe.

But businessmen warn that Mr Mugabe's high-risk strategy will prove
counter-productive. Britain's stance on land has been supported by the US,
Holland, Norway and Sweden, which have frozen assistance for a pilot land
resettlement programme agreed in September 1998.






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