April 5, 2000
HARARE, Zimbabwe (PANA) - A police man was shot dead Tuesday in a scuffle with veterans of Zimbabwe's independence war who have occupied white-owned farms across the country to press for land reform.
Home affairs minister Dumiso Dabengwa said the police man had been shot in unclear circumstances when he went to arrest a group of war veterans who had earlier assaulted a white farmer.
The death is the first such case since the veterans occupied hundreds of white-owned farms with tacit government backing to press their demands for land reform.
Much of Zimbabwe's best farmland is controlled by about 4,500 white farmers, with the majority blacks consigned overcrowded in areas with infertile soils.
The government, which has picked up land reform as its main electoral plank in parliamentary polls scheduled for May, has threatened to seize white farms without adequate compensation unless the former colonial power, Britain, released promised funds for the programme.
Britain denies the financial obligation, and has criticised President Robert Mugabe of promoting lawlessness for defying a court order to remove the veterans from the white-owned farms they have occupied.
The government presented a draft bill in parliament Wednesday to amend the constitution to allow for the acquisition of the white farms without fully paying for them.
"Never, never, never again shall our land be alienated from its people or our people from the land," justice minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, said.
The bill compels Britain to provide funding for land reform, failure of which will lead the government to acquire white-owned farms without adequately paying for them.