Implosion
Betrayed 'veterans' declare war on Mugabe

11th October 2004

THEY are Zimbabwe's "black bourgeoisie", the elite of Robert Mugabe's power base now taking over the country's finest farms which were "liberated" from their white owners.

Thousands of so-called war veterans are being kicked off the prime land to make way for the president's cronies and friends in a move which militants in the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) warn could send the country into civil war and ethnic cleansing.

MDC representative in the UK, Dr Brighton Chireka, told Scotland on Sunday: "Mugabe has declared war on the very people who kept him in power after he was so heavily defeated in a referendum four years ago.

"The war veterans were used to get rid of 4,500 white farmers and the country was told that those farms belong to local people.

"Now Mugabe has chased off squatters and war veterans and is handing over once productive commercial farms to a collection of fat cats - the new black bourgeoisie which is made up of his family, his friends, sycophantic soldiers, policemen and crooked businessmen from the ruling party, Zanu (PF).

"This signals the start of our Fourth Chimurenga and I dread to think what will happen next."

Chimurenga is a Shona word for war. The first was when tribes rose up against white rule in the 1890s: the second was when 35,000 blacks lost their lives between 1972-1979 fighting Ian Smith to end Rhodesia, and the third was announced by Mugabe when he launched his infamous farm invasions in 2000.

"We have worked and prayed to avoid this situation, but it's going to be hard, perhaps impossible, to hold the young turks in our organisation who are demanding immediate action against a clever dictator who has brought our country to the edge of ruin."

These explosive words came as thousands of black squatters, most of them from Malawi and Mozambique, huddled together for protection along pot-holed roads leading from the capital to Bulawayo and various parts of Mashonaland, where about 80% of Zimbabwe's 11.8 million people live.

They are existing on handfuls of grain and mouthfuls of water in cardboard boxes and their only other protection at the start of the rainy season, which turns pot-holed roads into rivers, is plastic sheeting.

Chireka said: "Robert Mugabe used so-called war veterans to invade farms, terrorise landowners and remove almost 500,000 black farm workers who are today fending for themselves as hand-to-mouth gold panners, vendors of stolen firewood and odd-job men.

"Many of those people are from outside our borders and Mugabe says they have no right to be in Zimbabwe. He wants to rid the country of foreigners. The ethnic cleansing started with whites because they supported the MDC, but it hasn't ended.

"Reports say that once productive farms have been turned into dustbowls and now Mugabe wants to give an impression that he's going to make farms productive again by handing them over to his cronies. People are asking, 'Why did we fight against white rule in Rhodesia. All Mugabe has done is replace a minority white clique with a black minority clique'."

Mugabe's spokesman is a leading Zimbabwean intellectual from the west of the country, Dr Jonathan Moyo. He is known locally as the "Dr Goebbels of Zimbabwe".

Moyo has told Zanu (PF) businessmen that the first stage of the "land ownership war" was won when 4,500 farmers left the land and started new lives either in Britain, South Africa, Zambia or parts of the Commonwealth keen to gain the expertise of men and women known as some of the finest corn and tobacco farmers in the world.

MDC activist Dr Patrick Musami, who left Zimbabwe after seeing the country's medical services collapse in the mid-1990s, said: "Mugabe wants to establish an African form of feudalism.

"He's like some old African chief who believes he can control people through an elaborate patronage system. But millions of angry young urbanites in run-down and disgustingly poor and unhealthy townships are saying, 'No more. Enough is enough'.

"Graduates can't get jobs. Inflation is now 600% and 90% of people live on less than one US dollar a day. Yes, there will be a civil war between the haves and the have-nots. The eviction of black squatters from farms at the start of the 2004 rainy season is the straw that broke the Zimbabwean camel's back."

Meanwhile, a global think-tank has warned that if South Africa and Zimbabwe do not take concrete steps to tackle land reform issues in a way that places land into the hands of ordinary people, racial problems could explode throughout the southern African region.

The report, 'Blood and Soil in Southern Africa', says that in South Africa small farmers are being excluded from land reform efforts and the poorest are missing out, as had happened in Zimbabwe.

Trevor Grundy - The Scotsman (UK)